Skradin

History

During Antiquity, the city was known as Scardon and Scardona, a name attested in the writings of Strabo and Procopius (), Pliny the Elder () and Ptolemy (). Before the Roman conquest, the settlement was Illyrian, with the particularity of having the locally recurring suffix -ona. The prevailing theory links the root of the Illyrian toponym to a term meaning "steep", as a derivation of *sko/ard(h)-, and it has been compared with the Scardus mountains in southern Illyria. After an initial development in Vulgar Latin in the form -una, the Illyrian suffix was reflected in South Slavic as -in. The survival of several of such toponyms in the area (e.g. Solin from Salona, Labin from Albona etc) points to the continuation of Illyrian settlements since ancient times. Though initially located in present-day Eastern Slavonia and Syrmia, the Scordisci might have been allied with the local tribe of the Dalmatae, as mercenaries, which would explain their presence in Dalmatia. After the Roman conquest, Skradin became an administrative and military centre of the region, and was mentioned as a municipium in 530. During the 10th century, it was one of the fortified towns in Croatia, as the centre of the Skradin županija. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Skradin flourished as the capital of the Šubić bans, Paul I and Mladen II. The Šubić's built the Turina fortress on the hill overlooking the Skradin harbor. They elevated the settlement below the fortress to a free city, at which point it also became a commune, and was granted its own statute and administration. They further enriched the city by constructing several richly-endowed monasteries which housed the Dominicans, Franciscans and other Christian orders. Skradin was conquered by the Ottomans in 1522 and remain part…