This article includes information on the demographic history of Kosovo.
Prehistory and antiquity The Dardani (; ; ) were a Paleo-Balkan tribe who lived in a region named Dardania after their settlement there."Δαρδάνιοι, Δάρδανοι, Δαρδανίωνες" Dardanioi, Georg Autenrieth, "A Homeric Dictionary", at Perseus The eastern parts of the region were at the Thraco-Illyrian contact zone. In archaeological research, Illyrian names are predominant in western Dardania (present-day Kosovo), and occasionally appear in eastern Dardania (present-day south-eastern Serbia), while Thracian names are found in the eastern parts, but are absent from the western parts. Thus, their identification as either an Illyrian or Thracian tribe has been a subject of debate; the ethnolinguistic relationship between the two groups being largely uncertain and debated itself as well. The correspondence of Illyrian names, including those of the ruling elite, in Dardania with those of the southern Illyrians suggests a "thracianization" of parts of Dardania.
Roman antiquity After the Roman conquest of Illyria in 168 BC, Romans colonized and founded several cities in the region, such as Ulpiana, Theranda and Vicianum,Hauptstädte in Südosteuropa: Geschichte, Funktion, nationale Symbolkraft by Harald Heppner, page 134 later incorporating it into the Roman province of Illyricum in 59 BC. Subsequently, it became part of Moesia Superior in AD 87. The region was exposed to an increasing number of 'barbarian' raids from the 4th century AD onwards, culminating with the Slavic migrations of the 6th and 7th centuries. Archaeologically, the early Middle Ages represent a hiatus in the material record. The decrease in material finds corresponds to the effects which the plague of Justinian probably had throughout the Balkans as millions of people died and many regions became depopulated. The population decrease in the Balkans partially influenced the Slavic migrations of the following centuries.
Early and High Middle Ages
The region had been part of the Roman and the Byzantium until the first major Slav raids took place in the middle of Justinian's reign. In 547 and 548 the Slavs invaded the territory of modern Kosovo, and then got as far as Durrës on the Northern Albanian coast and reached all the way down to Greece.
Although the Balkans had been raided by Slavic tribes, the early Slavic settlement and power in Kosovo did not become large until the region was later absorbed into the Bulgarian Empire in the 850s, when Christianity and a Byzantine-Slavic culture was cemented in the central and eastern Balkans. This era represents the formation of most Slavic toponyms in Kosovo which reflect Old Bulgarian development. The Gorani people in Kosovo represent the last population in Kosovo which still speaks a Bulgarian/Macedonian dialect.
Following the collapse of the Bulgarian Empire, the region again became part of the Byzantine Empire after the empire fully re-established itself. It would stay under Byzantine rule for nearly two centuries until Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja, who had expanded his empire south and into Kosovo, conquered it by the end of the 12th century.Fine 1994, p. 7
According to Serbian scholars, although Albanians lived between Lake Skadar and the Devoll river in the 1100s, Albanian migration into the plains of Metohija () commenced at the end of the century. Some of the arriving Albanians were assimilated by Serbs and Montenegrins.
According to historian Noel Malcolm the Vlach-Romanian and Aromanian languages originated in the region from Romanized Illyrians and Thracians, and was a contact zone between the Albanian and Romanian language.
Vlach-Romanian and Aromanian toponyms are present in the surrounding areas, such as Surdul in Southern Serbia. Katun is a living style associated with Eastern Romance people. Katun means 'village' in the Albanian, Aromanian and Romanian languages.
When King Stefan of Dečani founded the Visoki Dečani Monastery in the 1330s, he referred to "villages and katuns of Vlachs and Albanians" in the area of the white Drin. Dečanski granted the monastery pasture land along with Vlach and Albanian katuns around the Drim and Lim rivers, which carried salt and provided serf labour for the monastery.
Dušan's Code, the legal system established in 1349, included a prohibition of intermarriage between Serbs and Vlachs. The protection of Slav peasants by the Dušan's Code forced many Vlachs to migrate from Serbia.
Several Albanian personal names and place names appear in various parts of Kosovo and North Macedonia in the 13th century, the first identifiably Albanian place name appearing in Kosovo, attested in a 1253 statement by Serbian knez Miroslav. By 1330, the frequency of identifiably Albanian names in a 1330 chrysobull describing estates in Decan is "many", although attempts to ascertain reliable percentages of the Albanian population relative to Serbs at this period or later are described by Madgearu as "difficult".
The presence of Vlach villages in the vicinity of Prizren is attested in 1198–1199 by a charter of Stephan Nemanja. An old Albanian population lived in the region before the Ottoman period.A Hanzic – Nekoliko Vijesti o Arbanasima na Kosovu i MetohijiMilan Sufflay – Povijest Sjevernih Arbanasa, p. 61-2
9th–13 century
Bulgarian rule
Between ca. 830 and ca. 1015 the region was Bulgarian. According to historian Richard J. Crampton, the development of Old Church Slavonic literacy during the 10th century had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into the Byzantine culture, which promoted the formation of a distinct Bulgarian identity in that area. Afterwards it was ceded to the Byzantine empire as a province called Byzantine Bulgaria.
Byzantine rule
In 1072 an unsuccessful rebellion led by local Bulgarian landlord Georgi Voiteh arose in the area and in 1072 in Prizren he was crowned "Tsar of Bulgaria". At the end of the 11th century, the Byzantine domains in the Balkans became an arena of fierce hostilities. At the end of the 12th century, formally Byzantium was still the sovereign. The disintegration of Byzantium was complete when in 1204 the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople.
Late Middle Ages
Chrysobulls related to tax rights for Orthodox monasteries form the vast majority of the existing sources for the available demographics of Kosovo in the 14th century. The Dečani chrysobulls (1321–31) of Serbian king Stefan of Dečani contains a detailed list of landholdings and tax farming rights which the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Visoki Dečani held over settlements and various communities in an area which spanned from southern Serbia (modern Sandzak), Kosovo, Montenegro and parts of northern Albania. The chrysobulls were signed by King Stefan of Dečani who confirmed existing rights and gave new ones to the monastery. The chrysobulls listed that Visoki Dečani held tax farming rights over 2,097 households of meropsi (dependent farmers-serfs), 266 Vlach households (pastoral communities) and 69 sokalniki (craftsmen). Among the settlements over which Dečani held tax rights in modern-day Kosovo, find Serbs living alongside Albanians and Vlachs. In the golden bull of Stefan Dušan (1348) a total of nine Albanian villages are cited within the vicinity of Prizren among the communities which were under tax obligations. During this period, among a part of the Albanians a degree of Serbianization and conversions to Serbian Orthodoxy seems to have taken place.
The Ottoman cadastral tax census (defter) of 1455 in the District of Branković (defter Vuk-ili) is one of the oldest Ottoman tax registers in the Balkans. The District of Branković at the time of the defter included parts of central Serbia (present-day Toplica District and the historical Raška Region), part of northeastern Montenegro and parts of eastern Kosovo (the Kosovo Plain). The vast majority of names recorded in Vuk-ili by the Ottomans in 1455 are Slavic.
The defters of 1485–87 of the Sanjak of Shkodra and parts of the former Branković areas recorded: Vushtrri district: 16,729 Christian households (412 in Pristina and Vushtrri) 117 Muslim households (94 in Pristina and 83 in rural areas) District of Peja: Peja (town) 121 Christian households 33 Muslim households Suho Grlo and Metohija: 131 Christian households Donja Klina – nationalities not clear according to Ottoman records based on religion Deçan – nationalities not clear according to Ottoman records based on religion Rural areas: 6,124 Christian households (99%) 55 Muslim households (1%)
Scholarship on Kosovo has encompassed Ottoman provincial surveys that have revealed the 15th-century ethnic composition of some Kosovo settlements. However, both Serbian and Albanian historians using these records have made much of them while proving little. Madgearu (2008) argues that the series of defters from 1455 onward "shows that Kosovo... was a mosaic of Serbian and Albanian villages", while Prishtina and Prizren already had significant Albanian Muslim populations, and that the same defter of 1455 indicates the presence of Albanians in Tetovo. During the 15th century, Albanians moved to the town of Novo Brdo to work on the mines.
16th century
1520–1535 Vushtrri: 19,614 households Christians 700 Muslim households (3.5%) Prizren Christians 359 Muslim households (2%)
1591 Ottoman defter from 1591:TKGM, TD № 55 (412), (Defter sandžaka Prizren iz 1591. godine). Prizren – Christian majority, significant Muslim minority Gora – No nationalities are recorded. only religious affiliations of dwellers. Opolje – Christian majority, significant Muslim minority
17th–18th centuries
In 17th century reports indicate western Kosovo and parts of central Kosovo was Albanian speaking while the Eastern region was Slavic speaking. A wave of Catholic Albanian colonists arrived in the 17th century to the towns of Pristina and Gjakova.
In the 17th century the towns of Peja, Prizren, Prishtina were majority Muslim.
Catholic bishop Pjetër Mazreku noted in 1624 that the Catholics of Prizren were 200, the Serbs (Orthodox) 600, and Muslims, almost all of whom were Albanians, numbered 12,000.
During the Great Austro-Turkish War, Albanian Catholic leaders Pjetër Bogdani and Toma Raspasani rallied Kosovo Albanian Catholics and Muslims to the pro-Austrian cause. Reports of 20,000 Albanians in Kosovo that had turned their weapons against the Turks. After the Austrians were forced to retreat, reprisals on the population followed as a result. In the 1690s Raspasani wrote that most of the Catholics in Kosovo had fled to Budapest where most of them died of hunger or disease.
Significant clusters of Albanian populations lived in Kosovo especially in the west and centre before and after the Habsburg invasion of 1689–1690. Due to the Ottoman-Habsburg wars and their aftermath, some Albanians from contemporary northern Albania and Western Kosovo settled within the wider Kosovo area in the second half of the 18th century, at times instigated by Ottoman authorities.Geniş, Şerife, and Kelly Lynne Maynard (2009). " Middle Eastern Studies. 45. (4): 556–557. There were also movements and forcible movements of Orthodox Serbs into Kosovo instigated by Ottoman authorities and as such, historians have concluded these events affected all categories of the populations rather than one eroding the other.
Significant Albanian clusters also existed in Eastern Kosovo. Some of the towns had a large Muslim Albanian population that did not regain their pre-1690 levels until the mid 19th century.
Early reports state that hundreds of villages between the area of Trepca, Vushtrri and Prishtina region of eastern Kosovo were abandoned, while villages in the western part of Kosovo were still inhabited.