Bihać

Bihać stands on the Una in the northwestern Bosnian borderlands. A royal charter of 1260 records the town on Saint Ladislaus's island, then a possession of the abbey of Topusko. Two years later King Béla IV granted it the privileges of a free royal town. Water and a deep ditch protected its walls, while its position made it an important stronghold of the Una valley.

Bihać resisted Ottoman attacks for more than a century before Hasan Pasha's army captured it in 1592. The church of Saint Anthony was converted into the Fethija Mosque for the new garrison; its old tower served the call to prayer before a minaret was built. Bihać became the seat of an Ottoman captaincy and judicial district, and in 1616 the centre of a sanjak. Its walls continued to face sieges during the wars that followed.