50 Fun Facts About Balkans

What do Bulgarians call the mountain range that gives the Balkans its name?

The range runs about 560 km across Bulgaria from the Serbian border to Cape Emine on the Black Sea; its highest point is Botev Peak.

What is the highest point in the Balkans, at 2,925 metres?

Its name comes via Ottoman Turkish from the Arabic for 'near God' or 'place for prayer'; it is the sixth most prominent peak in mainland Europe.

Which German geographer coined the concept of the 'Balkan Peninsula' in 1808?

Carl Ritter and other geographers objected, arguing only the land south of the mountains could count as a peninsula.

What does the word 'balkan' mean in Ottoman and modern Turkish?

The earliest known use of the name for the range appears on an early 14th-century Arab map.

By what ancient Thracian name were the Balkan Mountains known from antiquity through the Middle Ages?

In Greek myth the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus; another version says Typhon's blood (haima) fell there.

Which rivers are most often given as the northern boundary of the Balkan Peninsula?

That is why only the part of Croatia south of the Sava and Kupa, and Serbia south of the Danube, fall inside strict definitions.

Which sea borders the Balkan Peninsula to the southwest?

The Adriatic lies to the northwest, the Aegean to the south, the Turkish Straits to the east and the Black Sea to the northeast.

What is the approximate area of the Balkan Peninsula?

That is a little larger than Sweden; modern geographers dispute whether it is technically a peninsula at all.

What alternative name for the region has gained ground since the 1990s as 'Balkans' turned negative?

An EU initiative of 1999 was called the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe, and the Balkan Times renamed itself in 2003.

In the 19th century, 'Balkan Peninsula' was a synonym for which Ottoman term for its European lands?

After the 1878 Congress of Berlin the term was revived for political reasons.

What neologism covers the ex-Yugoslav states except Slovenia, plus their non-Slavic southern neighbour?

The EU uses it for the Balkan countries not yet members; Croatia, counted among them, joined the EU in July 2013.

What word for a region's fragmentation into small hostile states was coined around the Balkan Wars and World War I?

It is pejorative, and geopoliticians cite the peninsula as a classic 'shatter belt'.

Which Neolithic Balkan civilisation developed a form of proto-writing before the Sumerians and Minoans?

The Balkans were the route by which farming spread from the Middle East into Europe in the 7th millennium BC.

Which two Byzantine missionary brothers spread Christianity to the pagan Balkans in the 9th century?

Their disciples went on to develop the Cyrillic alphabet at the Preslav Literary School.

The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century in which medieval state?

It was created at Preslav under Tsar Simeon I, probably by disciples of the two brothers who had earlier devised the Glagolitic script.

Which city, conquered by the Ottomans in 1362, became their capital before Constantinople?

The Serbian Empire was disintegrating at the time and was absorbed after a famous 1389 battle.

Which leader fought the Ottomans from 1443 to 1468, taking Kruje and leading the League of Lezhe?

He had deserted the Ottoman army at the Battle of Nish; his victories at Albulena and the first siege of Kruje made him famous across Europe.

Which Balkan nation-state was the first to win independence from the Ottoman Empire, in 1821?

Five more Balkan states followed between 1878 and 1912.

Which four states allied against the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War of 1912-13?

It stripped the Ottomans of nearly all their remaining European territory.

The Second Balkan War began in 1913 when Bulgaria attacked its former allies over which region?

It ended up fighting all four other combatants of the first war and lost territory on every front.

Which Bosnian Serb student assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Bosnian capital on 28 June 1914?

He was a member of Young Bosnia; a friend had shown him a newspaper cutting announcing the archduke's visit.

What was the state created in 1918 that would later be renamed Yugoslavia originally called?

Serbian geographers such as Jovan Cvijic had promoted the 'Balkans' concept to underpin a state of all South Slavs.

Which four countries signed the Balkan Pact in Athens in February 1934?

The Danube touches ten countries; the island of Ada Kaleh was drowned when the gorge's dam was built in 1970.

Which Axis power invaded Yugoslavia and its southern neighbour in April 1941, with a Balkan ally?

Italy had invaded from its protectorate in 1940 and been thrown back; the two conquered countries were partitioned between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria.

Which conflict of 1944-49 prompted the Truman Doctrine and became the first battleground of the Cold War?

Communist volunteers from neighbouring communist states backed the insurgents.

Which grouping did Tito's Yugoslavia help found with India and Egypt after breaking with the Soviet Union?

Yugoslavia broke with Moscow in 1948 and courted the West instead.

Which Balkan country declared itself the world's first constitutionally atheist state in 1976?

Under Enver Hoxha the country also broke with Moscow and drifted toward China before turning isolationist.

How many republics made up socialist Yugoslavia under its 1946 constitution?

Serbia also contained two autonomous units which had much of the status of republics but could not secede.

Which capital endured modern history's longest siege of a capital, 1,425 days from 1992?

Only eight years earlier the same city had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Which former Yugoslav republic was the first to join the European Union, in 2004?

It joined in the 2004 enlargement; three more Balkan countries followed between 2007 and 2013.

Milos Obilic, Tsar Lazar and Karadjordje are folk heroes of which Balkan people?

Most Balkan peoples place their folk heroes in the era of the Ottoman advance or retreat.

The 2018 Prespa Agreement between two Balkan neighbours settled a long-running dispute over what?

Signed beside the shared Lake Prespa, it added a geographic qualifier to the smaller country's name and cleared its path to NATO.

Which territory declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008?

It is one of the few parts of the Balkans with abundant energy resources - coal, lead, zinc, chromium and silver.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's presidency is made up of how many members, one from each major ethnic group?

Each of the three constituent peoples elects a member; the country's small Jewish community is 90 percent Sephardic and some elders still speak Ladino.

Bulgaria is the world's largest producer of lavender and of which other perfume ingredient?

The rose fields lie in the valley south of the Balkan range.

Which ancient Balkan lake with 200+ endemic species had a feature on Titan named after it by NASA in 2010?

It straddles a mountainous border in the southwest Balkans and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

Which walled Adriatic city, formerly the Republic of Ragusa, ruled itself from the 14th to the 19th century?

Its 2 km of walls doubled as King's Landing in HBO's Game of Thrones.

The Ottoman-era Old Bridge destroyed by shelling in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004 stands in which city?

Commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557, it crosses the Neretva; the city is named after the bridge keepers, the mostari.

The Bay of Kotor, with its medieval towns of Kotor and Perast, is an Adriatic inlet in which country?

It is the southernmost part of historical Dalmatia and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

Which Croatian national park is famous for its cascade of sixteen tufa lakes and waterfalls?

Founded in 1949 in the karst of central Croatia, its lakes shift in colour from azure to green and grey.

Which monastery, founded by the hermit Saint Ivan in the 10th century, is Bulgaria's largest and most famous?

It lies 117 km south of Sofia at 1,147 metres and houses about 60 monks.

Which Greek rock formation in Thessaly hosts Orthodox monasteries built atop giant natural stone pillars?

Twenty-four monasteries were founded there, mostly in the late 14th century; four remain active today.

What is ajvar, the condiment that became popular across Yugoslavia after World War II?

Its name comes from the Turkish havyar, 'caviar'.

What is rakia?

Usually 40 percent alcohol but far stronger when home-made, it is most often distilled from plums (sljivovica) or grapes.

What percentage of Skopje was destroyed by the earthquake of 1963?

The city sits near a fault between the African and Eurasian plates and was also wrecked by quakes in 518 and 1555.

Which Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun was born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910?

Her family lived in the then-Ottoman city until 1934, when they moved to Tirana.

Which inventor was born to an ethnic Serb family in 1856 in Smiljan, a village now in Croatia?

Both Serbia and Croatia claim him; Belgrade's airport and Zagreb's streets both bear his name.

Which Serbian tennis player holds the men's record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles?

His haul includes a record ten Australian Open titles and an Olympic gold medal.

The Danube is Europe's second-longest river, after which?

Once a frontier of the Roman Empire, it passes through or touches ten countries.

The Iron Gates gorge on the Danube lies on the border between Serbia and which country?

The Danube is Europe's second-longest river and touches ten countries; the island of Ada Kaleh was drowned when the gorge's dam was built in 1970.