Pljevlja

Pljevlja lies in a high basin surrounded by wooded mountains, on a road from Dubrovnik through the Balkan interior. In the fifteenth century it was a village in the lands of the Kosača family, whose fortress at Kukanj stood nearby. Under Ottoman rule the growing market became known as Taşlıca, a name referring to its stony ground.

By the sixteenth century Taşlıca had become a judicial centre, and in 1572 the governor of the Sanjak of Herzegovina moved his seat here from Foča. Hüseyin Pasha Boljanić endowed a great domed mosque, while inns served travellers on the road. In 1667 Evliya Çelebi described a prosperous town of Muslim and Christian quarters, where the Breznica stream watered gardens, turned mills and supplied tanneries before joining the Ćehotina.