KOSSOVO

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 916 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: KHA-KRI

KOSSOVO , or Kosovo, a vilayet of European Turkey, comprising the sanjak of Uskub in Macedonia, and the sanjaks of Prizren and Novibazar (q.v.) in northern Albania. Pop. (1905), about 1,100,000; area, 12,700 sq. m. For an account of the physical features of Kossovo, see ALBANIA and MACEDONIA. The inhabitants are chiefly Albanians and Slays, with smaller communities of Greeks, Turks,

Vlachs

VLACHS

and

gipsies

GIPSIES, or GYPSIES

. A few good roads traverse the vilayet (see USKUB), and the railway from Salonica northward bifurcates at Uskub, the

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

, one branch going to Mitrovitza in Albania, the other to Nish in Servia. Despite the undoubted

mineral

MINERAL

wealth of the vilayet, the only mines working in 1907 were two chrome mines, at Orasha and Verbeshtitza. In the volume of its agricultural trade, however, Kossovo is unsurpassed by any Turkish province. The exports, worth about 950,000, include livestock, large quantities of

grain

GRAIN (derived through the French from Lat. granum, seed, from an Aryan root meaning " to wear down," which also appears in the common Teutonic word " corn ")

and fruit, tobacco, vegetables, opium, hemp and skins.

Rice

is cultivated for local

consumption

CONSUMPTION (Lat. consumere)

, and sericulture is a growing industry, encouraged by the Administration of the Ottoman Debt. The yearly value of the imports is approximately 1,zoo,000; these include machinery and other manufactured goods, metals, groceries, chemical products and petroleum, which is used in the flour-mills and factories on account of the prohibitive price of coal. There is practically no trade with Adriatic ports; two-thirds of both exports and imports pass through Salonica, the

remainder

REMAINDER, REVERSION

going by rail into Servia. The

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

towns, Uskub (32,000), Prizren (30,000), Koprulii (22,000), Ishtib [Slay. Slip] (21,000), Novibazar (12,000) and Prishtina (11,000) are described in

separate

SEPARATE

articles.
In the middle ages the vilayet formed part of the Servian Empire, its northern districts are still known to the Serbs as Old
Servia (Stara Srbiya). The plain of Kossovo (Kossovopolje, " Field of Blackbirds "), a long valley lying west of Prishtina and watered by the Sibnitza, a tributary of the Servian Ibar, is famous in Balkan history and legend as the scene of the battle of Kossovo (1389), in which the power of Servia was destroyed by the Turks. (See SERVIA: History.)

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