Place:Šabac, Mačva, Serbia, Serbia and Montenegro

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Šabac (Serbian Cyrillic: Шабац) is a city and the administrative centre of the Mačva District in western Serbia. The traditional centre of the fertile Mačva region, Šabac is located on the right banks of the river Sava. , the city proper has population of 53,919, while its administrative area comprises 118,347 inhabitants.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Archaeological evidence attests to more permanent settlement in the area from the Neolithic. In the Middle Ages, a Slavic settlement named Zaslon existed at the current location of Šabac.^[1] The settlement was part of the Serbian Despotate until it fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1459.

In 1470, the Ottomans built the first fortress in the town and named it Beyerdelen (Böğürdelen, meaning "side-striker"). In 1476 the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus captured the fort; it remained under administration of the Kingdom of Hungary until 1521, when it was again captured by the Ottomans. Under Hungarian administration, the town was part of the Banate of Macsó, whereas under Ottoman administration it was firstly part of the Sanjak of Zvornik within the Province of Bosnia, and later part of the Sanjak of Smederevo. Šabac was the administrative centre of the nahiye of Šabac, a local Ottoman administrative unit. During the Ottoman period, Šabac was a typical oriental town with tiny streets, small shops and several mosques. The population was composed of both Muslims and Serbs, along with smaller numbers of Hungarians and Croats.^[1]

Until the 19th century, Šabac was mostly under Ottoman administration, but control of the town changed hands several times between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy during the Ottoman-Habsburg wars. The first period of Habsburg rule began in 1718, when Šabac was incorporated into the Habsburg Kingdom of Serbia. After the Treaty of Belgrade (1739), Šabac reverted to Ottoman control and, straddling the boundary between the two empires, it gained importance as a market town. A second period of Habsburg control of the area followed starting in 1789. The storming of the city was one of the early experiences of the renowned military leader Józef Poniatowski. Ottoman control over the area was restored a few years later.

Šabac became a site of importance in Serbian history in the First Serbian Uprising when, in 1806, Karađorđe led the Serbian insurgents into one of the first victories over the Ottoman army near the nearby village of Mišar. Until 1813, the town was part of Revolutionary Serbia. A brief period of restored Ottoman control followed, but after the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, Šabac was included into the now-autonomous Principality of Serbia under the Obrenović dynasty. This first ruling family of modern Serbia left its mark on the town; knez Miloš Obrenović's brother, the enlightened Jevrem Obrenović, built a personal residence and helped modernise the town: the period from 1820 to 1850 saw the establishment of a hospital, a pharmacy, a Serbian grammar school, a gymnasium, a theatre, and a musical society.

The Ottoman army evacuated the fort of Šabac in 1867, marking the end of the Ottoman presence in the area. The first newspaper in the Kingdom of Serbia was printed in Šabac in 1883, and the town was also the first in Serbia where women started visiting kafanas (pubs) on Sunday afternoons, as was customary for men.

The town prospered until the First World War, when it was occupied and devastated by the Austro-Hungarian army and had its population halved (from cca. 14,000 to 7,000) on the orders of Kasimir von Lütgendorf, despite the fact that the Royal Serbian Army evacuated the town without resistance. Lütgendorf later ordered three of his own soldiers to be publicly executed by bayonet in the town square for drunkenly discharging their rifles despite orders from his superior Karl Tersztyánszky von Nádas to stop, leading to him being court-martialed and convicted for murder after the war in 1920. World War I is also remembered for the battle on nearby Cer mountain where the Serbian army under general Stepa Stepanović won an early victory against Austria-Hungary in August 1914, the first Allied victory in the war. After the war, Šabac was decorated with the French War Cross with Palm (1920), the Czechoslovak War Cross (1925), and the Order of the Karađorđe's Star with Swords (1934).

In 1918, the town became a part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed to Yugoslavia). From 1918 to 1922, it was the administrative seat of Podrinje District, from 1922 to 1929 the administrative seat of Podrinje Oblast, and from 1929 to 1941 it was a part of the Drina Banovina. An early milestone in the Yugoslav era of the town's history was the opening of the Zorka chemical plant in 1938. The city's renewal was interrupted by World War II and occupation by German troops (from 1941 to 1944). During the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, Šabac was part of the area governed by the Military Administration in Serbia. Its population of 1,200 Jews were arrested and ended in the ill-fated Kladovo transport.^[2] During the Uprising in Serbia the united rebel forces of the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, forces of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and Pećanac Chetniks attacked German garrison in Šabac in an event known as Attack on Šabac, but failed to capture the town. In the German and Croatian Ustaše retributions 1,130 civilians were executed, 21,500 imprisoned and most of the populated places in Mačva were completely burned down. Eventually, 7,000 inmates were killed. The city was liberated from occupation by the Yugoslav Partisans in 1944. After the war, it was included into People's Republic of Serbia within the new socialist Yugoslavia. Since then, it grew into a modern industrial city with the aforementioned Zorka chemical plant and an expanded population. The 1970s saw the construction of the first modern sports hall. The swamp at the city's outskirts, Benska Bara, was drained and turned into a residential neighborhood, and a new bridge was built over the Sava river. By 2010, the population of the city and its suburbs had risen to 75,000.

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