Novipazar, Sanjak of

   A corridor of territory wedged between Montenegro and Serbia. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Austria-Hungary was authorized to keep troops in the Ottoman district ( Sanjak ) of Novipazar on a permanent basis. The territory along the Lim River was judged to be of strategic value because it connected Bosnia-Herzegovina, occupied and administered by the Habsburg Empire since 1878, to Ottoman Macedonia. The Sanjak of Novipazar also formed a buffer between the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. It was reasoned that an Austro-Hungarian military presence there would safeguard the Habsburg’s monarchy’s economic and political interests on the Balkan Peninsula. In 1908, Austria-Hungary’s foreign minister Aloys Lexa von Aehrenthal, decided to surrender the right to station troops in the Sanjak of Novipazar to mollify Ottoman and international reactions to the unilateral annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War of 1912, the Sandjak of Novipazar was annexed by Serbia and Montenegro.

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   FURTHER READING:

    Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983;

    Pavlowitch, Stevan K. A History of the Balkans, 1804–1945. New York: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1999;

    Taylor, A.J.P. The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918. Oxford: Clarendon, 1954.

   GUENTHER KRONENBITTER