Kozara

Kozara's wooded hills contained the monastery of Moštanica, beside the stream of the same name south of Kozarska Dubica. The monastery first appears in written records in 1579. Its precise foundation date and original patrons remain uncertain, although later traditions gave it a much older past. The community belonged to the Orthodox religious landscape of the Kozara foothills.

Its position near the frontier between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires exposed the monastery to repeated destruction, plunder and rebuilding. At the end of the eighteenth century, Avakum, later revered as a deacon and martyr, was born nearby and entered monastic life here. After the Hadži-Prodan revolt of 1814 he was imprisoned and executed in Belgrade. Moštanica linked the mountain's local religious community with the unsettled political and spiritual networks of the wider Balkan frontier.