Gjakova

Gjakova lies between Peja and Prizren, on a route linking the Balkan interior with Shkodra. An Ottoman register of 1485 recorded it as a village with a market. Over the following century it grew into a town, its bazaar taking shape around the mosque endowed by Hadim Suleyman in 1594. When Evliya Çelebi visited in 1662, he described a thriving place of stone houses and gardens, with mosques, inns, a bath and some three hundred shops. The market drew merchants along the route between Shkodra and Constantinople, while religious endowments provided public buildings around which the town developed. Albanian families formed an important part of its early population.