Opolje

The villages of Brodosavce, was mentioned in a charter dated 1330, of King Stephen Uroš III. The ruins of the Zinovo fortress is most likely located beneath Brodosavce. There exists ruins of medieval Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries in Brodosavce, Brut, Plajnik, while old Serbian cemeteries exist in several of the villages.

The Serbian rulers King Stephen Uroš III (in 1326) and Emperor Stephen Dušan (in 1348, 1355) mentioned many of the Opolje and Gora villages in their charters, which shows that they existed before those dates.[2] Opolje was a church estate of the Church of the Holy Theotokos in Prizren throughout the Middle Ages.[7]

The surrounding region possesses a good amount of Aromanian toponyms which Dumbrowski argues show the linguistic situation before Slavification.[8]

In 1455, the southern territories of the Serbian Despotate were annexed by the Ottomans, and organized into the beylerbeylik of Rumelia. Gora, in its broadest meaning, became a nahiyah of the Sanjak of Prizren.[9] The Ottoman conquest resulted in the old trade routes that linked the Adriatic to the Aegean and Black sea lost their importance because of the insecurity on the roads, and the towns and villages along the roads stopped growing.[9] There are no sources which name Opolje a nahiya in the 15th century.[10]

The Ottoman defter from 1591 registers Gora as inhabited exclusively by Serbs, while Opolje to the north is Albanian populated.[11] In the early 16th century, Opolje and the other Šar župas were governed by Kukli-Bey of Bukhara,[7][12] a period which is marked with the beginning of Islamization of Opolje.[12][13][14] Kukli-Bey was seated in Opolje, and after his death, the local villagers were given the lands, and used the mountains in the outskirts of the villages.[7]

In 1955, Lutovac argued that in the 16th century, the Slavic population of Opolje partially adopted Islam and partially emigrated elsewhere, and the vacancies created by emigration were filled by Albanian incomers.[15] Dumbrowski in 2012 argued that the situation described by Lutovac led to language shift from Slavic to Albanian in Opolje and the surrounding region (but not Gora), and that this is the reason for what Dumbrowski argues is evidence of Slavic substrate effects in the Opoja Albanian dialect.[8] Pulaha in 1984 noted that most Christians in Opolje in 1591 had Albanian names, which Dumbrowski interprets to indicate that at the time Opolje was switching from Slavic to Albanian, what Dumbrowski argues were the Albanian incomers had not yet been fully Islamized.[8]

In 1913, Sredska, Opolje and Luma were economically tied to Prizren.[16]

From 1945 to [sometime after 1981] Opolje was part of the municipality of Gora, but was then given status of a municipality (due to its Albanian population, as opposed to Gora, which was inhabited by Gorani people). It was abolished on November 3, 1992, under the law of the federal Federal Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, and instead joined into the municipality of Prizren.[1] The Gora municipality and Opoja region remained separated during the Milošević period.[17]

During the Kosovo war (1999), Albanians from Opoja fled to neighbouring Albania in cars, trucks and tractors along with others on foot that following the conflict returned home.[18] After the war, Opoja was merged with Gora to form the municipality of Dragaš by the United Nations Mission (UNMIK) and the new administrative unit has an Albanian majority.[17][18] Located in Gora, the town of Dragash is the regional and municipal centre for both the Opoja and Gora regions of Dragash municipality.[17]