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During its great days in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries under the Nemanja dynasty it dominated the Balkan Peninsula, produced a code of law which is unique in mediaeval records, developed a prosperous commerce and mining industries, and seemed on the point of striking a new note in architecture.
Neither have the Bosnians, as a whole, ever been attached to the Orthodox Church as have the remainder of the Balkan Slavs. The early history of the Slavs in the Peninsula is obscure. They were a tribal people, and were for some time dominated by the Bulgars. Not till the end of the twelfth century did they unite under their very able line of Nemanja princes and rise to be a power.
Even under the Nemanjas the local chieftains were semi-independent, and their inability to cohere proved the undoing of the realm. Bosnia at an early date it is said A.D. 940 was ruled by elective Bans. Stefan Nemanja the First Crowned of Serbia, called himself King of Serbia, Dalmatia and Bosnia, but the title seems to have been but nominal.
Like its famous sister at Ostrog, it is constructed in a position where Nature has provided the best means of defence, and this the hand of man has skilfully utilised and improved. It was founded in the year 1252 by one of the sons of the famous Servian king, Stephan Nemanja, and dedicated to S. Nicholas. Right well has the saint watched over and protected his feof.
This was outwardly expressed in the firm establishment on the throne of the national Nemanja dynasty, which can claim the credit of having by its energy, skill, and good fortune fashioned the most imposing and formidable state the Serb race has ever known.
Their first efforts against the Greeks were not successful, but securing the support of the Serbs under Stephen Nemanja in 1188 and of the Crusaders in 1189 they became more so; but there was life in the Greeks yet, and victory alternated with defeat. John Asen I was assassinated in 1196 and was succeeded after many internal discords and murders by his relative Kaloian or Pretty John.
A Serb, Constantine, grandson of Stephen Nemanja, occupied the Bulgarian throne from 1258 to 1277, and married the granddaughter of John Asen II. After the fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1261, the Hungarians, already masters of Transylvania, combined with the Greeks against Constantine; the latter called the Tartars of southern Russia, at this time at the height of their power, to his help and was victorious, but as a result of his diplomacy the Tartars henceforward played an important part in the Bulgarian welter.
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