Mostar

Mostar , city (1991 pop. 75,613), in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the Neretva River. Its name means "Old Bridge," referring to the 16th-century stone bridge built by Ottoman sultan Sulayman the Magnificent, which, along with numerous Turkish mosques and old houses, was destroyed in the 1993-94 siege of the city during the Bosnian civil war; the bridge was rebuilt in 2004. Prior to the war, Mostar had been the chief city of Herzegovina. It produced tobacco, wine, and aluminum products, with bauxite mines and a hydroelectric plant operating nearby.

Known in 1442, Mostar became (16th cent.) the chief Turkish administrative and commercial center in Herzegovina. It passed to Austria in 1878 and to Yugoslavia in 1918. In 1993, as Bosnia and Herzegovina was torn by civil war after declaring independence from Yugoslavia, Croats and Muslims began a nine-month-long struggle for control of Mostar. Bosnian Croats relentlessly bombarded the eastern, Muslim section of the city, reducing most of it to ruins. Since a cease-fire in 1994, attempts to restore civic unity to Mostar have proceeded fitfully.

Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina Narona, Andetrium, Mosdar, Köprülü Hisār The Serbo‐Croat Stari Most means ‘Old Bridge’ and the town was at times simply called Most ‘(Place of) the Bridge’. However, Mostar is probably derived from mostari ‘keepers of the bridge’. The earliest mention of the name is in 1468, although the stone bridge itself was only built in 1566 by the Ottoman Turks in honour of Suleiman the Magnificent (c.1495–1566), the Ottoman Sultan (1520–66), to replace a wooden suspension bridge over the Neretva River. The stone bridge was destroyed by Croatian shelling in 1993, but rebuilt and reopened in 2004. The town is the capital of Herzegovina.