Bihac: the Croatia that was

When the Roman Empire's soldiers travelled down through the Balkans so many centuries ago, they happened upon a river so beautiful they named her 'Una', or 'The Only One'.

Just a few dozen kilometers inland from the Adriatic sea, the river Una spread out across a wide and fertile valley where the Romans founded a small outpost. The remains of that outpost still exist and reveal a small but well-built fortress and housing for Roman soldiers.

The area was mentioned briefly in Roman records but was not referenced again until 1260. In a letter from that year, Hungarian King Bela IV described the town of Bihac as a property of the Croatian church in Topusko.

Over the coming centuries, Bihac was fortified and given the status of a royal city - eventually becoming the capital of the Croatian kingdom.

The town of Bihac lost its civic status in the 1300s when many of its inhabitants adopted the heretical beliefs of the independent Bosnian Church, which had by that time gained considerable power and its followers were in control of an isolated region on the frontier of Roman Catholicism: Bosnia.

Bihac, however, was anything but isolated - located, as it were, at a point where a series of important travel and trade routes converged from the north, west, and south. Roman Catholicism was still present in Bihac and was predominant in the lands surrounding the town. In fact, of all the churches in Bihac - only a single one was devoted to the Bosnian Church. All of the rest, and there were - at one point - more than 6, were Roman Catholic.

Bihac eventually became one of the strongest fortresses in Bosnia and many aspects of its defensive walls were incorporated into the defenses of other Bosnian towns, including the capital - Jajce.

While the town of Jajce became famous for holding out against Ottoman forces for almost a century longer than Greece and Serbia, and decades longer than the rest of Bosnia - Bihac is often not acknowledged for the tremendous and even more impressive feat it accomplished.

According to Bosnian records, Ottoman forces first reached Bihac in 1466 but the town did not fall until 1592.

The Ottomans reserved a special brutality for Bihac they did not inflict upon the rest of Bosnia.  The town's nobility - which included men, women, and children and included at least 62 people from three families - was gathered together and executed. All but one of the Roman Catholic churches were destroyed and the Bosnian Church was converted into a mosque.

There is evidence to suggest the people of Bihac were not terribly sad to see the nobility slaughtered as the nobles had forced the peasantry to defend the town with their lives for decades, beyond reason or the slightest hope of eventual victory.

There was enough support for the Ottoman Empire that Bihac was not incorporated into the Bosnian sandzak as other royal cities - including Jajce - had been. Bihac was instead awarded its own sanjak and although it was officially part of the overall Bosnian pashaluk, indications are it operated completely independently of authorities in Jajce, Travnik, and eventually Sarajevo. In 1699, to quell a small rebellion showing signs of spreading, the Ottomans finally incorporated Bihac into the Bosnian sandzak. This lasted until the 1800s, when it was again awarded status as an independent Sandzak - a few decades before Austria-Hungary assumed control of Bosnia.

It is a sense of independence that Bihac has not lost. During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, Bihac and the surrounding area declared its independence as the Islamic republic of Western Bosnia. The city continued to use ancient Croatian and Bosnian symbols to identify itself.

The symbol of St. Mark's Church in Zagreb, Croatia, is also the symbol of Bihac - with certainly regional modifications. The same symbol was used during the era of the independent Bosnian Kingdom.

St. Mark's Church:

Bihac:
 

During the war, Croatia never forgot about Bihac either. After years of a vicious siege carried out by Serbian forces, the Croatian army moved into Bosnia and Herzegovina during it's 1995 Lightning Campaign. Bosnian cities considered historically important to Croatia were liberated - including Bihac and Jajce - even if they had no Roman Catholic residents.

The Croatian soldiers were welcomed as heroes in the areas where Serbian forces were driven away, and maintain to this day a sense of gratitude and comradery with Croatia not found among Bosniaks in any other region of Bosnia.

"Bihac is LIBERATED! The Muslims here, they're...it's madness, it's tears, it's crying, it's truly madness!" - HRT, 1995

Identification found in a mass grave:

Today Bihac is the fastest growing city in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The city enjoys one of the highest foreign investment rates in the country and - although it is near completely Muslim - excellent ties with Croatia and the Latin world in particular.

It is once again a capital, the capital of the Una-Sana county.