Ohmućević

The Ohmućević were a Serbian noble family of the fourteenth century, whose most famous member was the feudal lord Hrelja. First recorded in the 1320s as a Serbian commander in a Byzantine civil war, Hrelja built a domain around Štip and Strumica in Macedonia while serving Serbian kings, including Stephen Dušan. In 1334 and 1335 he rebuilt the church of the Rila Monastery and erected the stone Hrelja's Tower.

By the late 1330s he ruled from Strumica as a semi-independent autocrat, formally acknowledging Byzantine suzerainty; he later backed John VI Kantakouzenos, who granted him Melnik and the title of protosebastos. Having again submitted to Dušan, Hrelja died at the Rila Monastery in 1342, shortly after taking monastic vows.

The family's later descendant Petar Ohmućević, who died in 1599, became an admiral in the Spanish navy and commissioned the Ohmućević Armorial to document his claimed Illyrian ancestry.