The Medieval Serbian State (12th–15th c.)
From the rise of the Nemanjić dynasty under Stefan Nemanja to the fall of the Serbian Despotate in 1459 — the high era of medieval Serbian statehood, culture, and Orthodox Christian institutions.
The medieval Serbian state took recognisable shape under Stefan Nemanja (r. 1166–1196), founder of the Nemanjić dynasty, who unified the Serbian lands of Raška and laid the dynastic foundations that would last more than two centuries. His son Sava founded the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church in 1219, an institution that would outlast the medieval kingdom itself.
The empire of Dušan
Under Stefan Dušan (r. 1331–1355), the Serbian state reached its territorial and cultural apex, taking in much of the Balkans and being proclaimed an empire in 1346. Dušan's Zakonik (Code of Laws), promulgated in 1349 and expanded in 1354, is one of the most important medieval European legal documents.
Fragmentation and the Ottoman conquest
After Dušan's death the empire fragmented. The Battle of Kosovo (1389) between Serbian forces under Prince Lazar and the Ottomans under Sultan Murad I marked a turning point; the Serbian Despotate that followed gradually lost ground until its formal fall in 1459.