Nevesinje

Nevesinje lies on a broad, high field beneath the Velež mountains in Herzegovina. Roads cross the basin towards Mostar, Gacko and the Neretva valley. In the Middle Ages the district belonged to the lands of powerful Bosnian nobles, including Stjepan Vukčić Kosača. Medieval stećci, carved tombstones found in cemeteries throughout the district, mark the resting places of its inhabitants.

The Ottomans conquered Nevesinje in 1465, and it became the seat of a judge in 1535. When Evliya Çelebi visited in 1664, he described mosques, schools, a bathhouse and dervish lodges. The frontier brought danger as well as trade: in the later seventeenth century the district suffered raids by forces operating with Venice, and in 1769 the Ottomans fortified Zalom on the road towards Montenegro.