Banja, Skenderaj
Village in Mitrovicë, Kosovo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Banja (Banje; Serbian Cyrillic: Бања, Бање, Albanian: Bajë or Baja), or Banja Rudnička (Serbian Cyrillic: Бања Рудничка), is a settlement in the Skenderaj municipality in Kosovo. The rural settlement lies on a cadastral area with the same name, of 1033 hectares. The village has an Albanian majority.
Geography
History
Banja was mentioned for the first time in a charter of Serbian King Stefan Uroš I (r. 1243–1276), dating to the mid-13th century, granted (metochion) to the Gračanica monastery.[2] It was then granted by King Stefan Milutin (r. 1282–1321) to the Banjska Monastery.[2] The village church, dedicated to St. Nicholas, as founded by nobleman Rodop who served Serbian Despot Đurađ Branković (r. 1427–1456), and was buried here in 1436.[3] Two bells found in its ruins are preserved in the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć and National Museum in Belgrade.[3] Between 1936 and 1941 the church was renovated, but destroyed during World War II by Albanians.[3][4][5][6][7] The village was among those in North Kosovo that was burned down by Albanian paramilitaries and the Serb population expelled.[8] In 1971 the church was reconstructed.[3] The church was used as a model for an Orthodox church in Norway.[9]
On the night of 21 May 1998 a large number of Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army members of Drenica attacked the villages of Banja and Suvo Grlo (which are inhabited by Serbs) and a military station in Rudnik, above Skenderaj. Serbs and Serbian police answered the fire, no deaths or injuries were reported by them.[10]