Under Ottoman Rule (15th–19th c.)
Four centuries during which the Serbian lands were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, while the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Patriarchate of Peć preserved cultural and religious continuity.
After 1459, the Serbian heartland was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The administrative and military system of the Ottomans reshaped land tenure, taxation, and population movements across the region. Yet much of Serbian identity, language, and religious life persisted, anchored by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
The Patriarchate of Peć
Restored in 1557 under Patriarch Makarije Sokolović, the Patriarchate of Peć served as the principal institution of Serbian self-organisation across the empire until its second abolition in 1766.
Migrations and uprisings
The period saw the Great Migrations of the Serbs under Patriarch Arsenije III (1690) into Habsburg lands, and a sequence of revolts that eventually grew into the First Serbian Uprising (1804) led by Karađorđe.