Kingdom of Bosnia

The Kingdom of Bosnia was a medieval kingdom of the western Balkans that lasted from 1377 to 1463, growing out of the older Banate of Bosnia, which itself dated from at least 1154. Under Tvrtko I, who ruled from 1353 to 1391 and took the crown at the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Mileseva, Bosnia acquired lands in western Serbia and most of the Adriatic coast south of the Neretva, becoming one of the strongest states of the Balkan peninsula. Feudal fragmentation remained strong, and the nobility held real power through the Stanak, the assembly that chose and crowned the king or queen and decided foreign policy, war and the sale of territory. Kings stayed nominally under the Hungarian crown while behaving as independent rulers, and the population was overwhelmingly rural, with silver mining as a chief source of income. The Ottoman Empire annexed eastern Bosnia in the 1440s and 1450s and conquered Hum, by then called Herzegovina, though the last fortress of Novi held out until December 1481. Stephen Tomasevic, the last king, was lured back to Jajce with a promise of safety and beheaded behind the citadel in 1463, after which the kingdom became the westernmost province of the Ottoman empire.