The area of today’s Sarajevo has been inhabited for 7,000 years, and during the rule of the Roman Empire, an urban settlement called Aquae developed. The oldest history of this area was discussed by a full professor at the history department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, prof. Dr. Salmedin Mesihovic.
Mesihovic states that Sarajevo has a long continuity of the settlement way of life, and that the earliest known traces date back to the early Neolithic, i.e. the period of 7,000 years ago, when the existence of a settlement on Butmir, after which an entire culture was named, is evident.
The old age
“Already in the epochs of the Eneolithic and the Early Bronze Age, the population left settlements in the river valleys and settled in settlements on hills and plains called castles. A large number of these castle settlements that existed during long periods of the Bronze and Iron Ages (from the 3rd millennium BC era until the beginning of the new era) have been recordeduntil today,” explains Mesihovic.
Roman rule
Professor Mesihovic says that the establishment of Roman rule and the long peace that followed after the end of the Great Illyrian (Baton’s) Uprising contributed to the development of the first, true urban entity in the area of Sarajevo following the traditions of classical Greco-Roman, Mediterranean civilization.
“On the area of today’s Luzani settlement and the park-hotel-healing complex “Banja Ilidza” a settlement was developed which was named Aquae (in Latin Toplice, Spa), which after the end of the Romanization process of the local Illyrian population (probably Desitiata) will become both urban and the administrative center of the autonomous municipal unit that covered the entire Sarajevo area. At the end of the 3rd century, this unit had the official name RES PVBLICA AQ(uae), that is, Aquae republic, explains Mesihovic.
He points out that the unit itself is urban and the administrative center was in the true sense a city settlement, with walls, planned construction, streets that intersect at right angles, city villas, hospices (a kind of hotel), city square (forum), water supply, houses heated by central heating (hypocaust), honorary inscriptions, colonnades of columns. In addition to this center, the Republic of Aquae had its satellite and suburban settlements throughout the Sarajevo area.
“Especially significant are the finds of buildings, commercial plants and movable material (e.g. floor mosaic) from the settlement that spread over today’s Marin-dvor, Kovacici, the lower reaches of Kosevski potok, approximately from the railway station to the former Sipad directorate building,” says Mesihovic.
He concludes that modern and postmodern Sarajevo did not arise ex nihilo, but is the result of a long-lived, even multi-millennium, sedentary, settlement and urban way of life, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
