The old town of Soko, the national monument of BiH, is located on a rocky hill in the village Soko around 7 kilometers north of Gracanica, and it originates from the Middle Ages, or the period of the medieval Bosnian state. It was first mentioned in historical documents in June 1449 as the town that belonged to duke Radivoj, brother of the Bosnian king Stjepan Tomas, one of the most influential feudalists of that time in Bosnia. Most certainly the town was founded at least a decade earlier, perhaps at a time when Radivoj, with the support of the Ottomans, was trying to get the Bosnian crown. There are assumptions that it was founded in the second half of the 14th century, during the reign of King Tvrtko I, as one of the fortresses that protected the northern border of Bosnia.
With the political collapse of the medieval Bosnian state, Soko together with neighboring Srebrenik fell in Hungarian hands, and it was part of the so-called Srebrenik banate until 1520, as a military frontier that protected Hungarian territory from the Ottoman invasion from Bosnia. After the Ottomans suddenly managed to conquer Srebrenik, the crew of Soko retreated, and set the town on fire.
“But the Ottomans restored it, and placed their own crew in it. Since then until the first half of the 19th century, Soko was a military fortress, and its importance was especially expressed at the time of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars in the late 17th and early 18th century,” said historian Edin Sakovic. At the end of the 19th century, it was mentioned as a “well-preserved ruin”, worth visiting of the tourists, but during World War II it served to village units to resist the attackers – partisan units that operated on the wider area of Gracanica.
Soko is included in the category of most endangered cultural heritage in our country, which requires restoration and conservation measures, according to historian Edin Sakovic.
(Source: A. Dedic/Faktor.ba)
