Negotin (, ; ) is a town and municipality located in the Bor District of eastern Serbia. It is situated near the borders between Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. It is the judicial center of the Bor District. The population of the town is 16,882, while the municipality has a population of 35,000.
History
Name
The etymology of the town's name is unclear, and there are a few possibilities as to its background:
The Romance name origin thesis, such as the merchant place (cf. Romanian "negoț" or Spanish "negocios"), and the fact that Negotin is in a region with the presence of a significant Romanian minority, similar to its namesake Negotino in North Macedonia with an Aromanian presence. There is also the Slavonic origin hypothesis:, Proto-Slavonic "něga" (нѣгa) means "care" and the suffix "-ota//-otina" means "the action undergone or carried out", thus rendering Negotin as "a place of retreat for healing", and the city historically being located secluded amidst marshes would support the Slavonic hypothesis. The book O Perevode Manassijnoj letopisi na slovenskij jazyk. (De versione Chronicorum Manassis in linguam slovenicam secundum duo apographa: Vaticanum et patriarchalis bibliothecae, cum primis lineis historiae Bulgarorum.), Semen [sic], 1842, gives Něgotinъ (to wit: Нѣготинъ) as a Serbian-Slavonic variant of Latin Antigonia thus changed after the Slavs arrived to Roman Moesia. "Negotin" may yet have been derived from Celtic words "neges" and "tin", meaning "The fortress of war".
Negotin is first mentioned in 1530 as a settlement.
Early
The Thracians dominated the region with the Celtic Scordisci advancing after 279 BC. The Roman conquest in the 1st century BC weakened the Paleo-Balkan tribes. The Moesi, a Thracio-Dacian tribe, were defeated by the Roman army under the Marcus Licinius Crassus who was Roman consul in 30 BC. The region was organized into Moesia Inferior in 87 AD by Emperor Domitian. Later was included in the province of Dacia Remesiana.
Hellenistic religious influence is attested through archeological findings in Rovine and Tamnič where Heracles was worshipped: a relief of Zeus, Herakles and Dionysos found in Bukovo.
The Roman site of Selište with necropolis has been excavated in the village of Rogljevo. Silver and gold fibulae from 250 to 320 AD have been found at sites in Negotin.
Middle Ages
In the early Middle Ages, the first Slavonic tribe to settle here were the Timočani.
During the 9th-11th centuries and in the 13th century the territory of modern-day North-Eastern Serbia was a part of the Bulgarian Empire.
Ottoman Empire
Until the beginning of the 18th century, Negotin was a small town, with no strategic and little cultural importance, within the Ottoman territory of Rûm, in the nahi of Krajina, which along with some other parts of Sanjak of Vidin had a certain degree of autonomy as a vaqf of Valide sultan (each reigning sultan's mother), in that all tax was collected by the local Orthodox Christian Serbian or Vlach Knez and not by a Moslem state officer.
At the beginning of the 18th century Austrians conducted a major build-up as a fortified town and their stronghold in their south-eastern territories (i.e., while they held it, in 1717–1739, when it was a part of the newly established territorial unit of the Banat of Temeswar). After a period of renewed Turkish occupation, Negotin was temporary occupied in 1804 by Hajduk Veljko's rebels during the First Serbian Uprising.
The Serbian Revolutions of 1804–33
After being liberated in 1804–10, Negotin quickly gained importance and size. The civilized life thrived and the government, as in the most parts of then-liberated Serbia, achieved much in matters of education and modernization. However, these great days were short lived: In 1813, after Napoleon had successfully taken Russia and Austria out of the game and therefore helping Serbia, the Turks crushed the ill-fated state of the Serbs. The defenders of Negotin chose not to evacuate and became besieged in the then-fortified town. Eventually, a Turkish gunman sighted Hajduk Veljko and shot his cannon. Veljko was hit in the chest by a cannonball and died immediately. His co-fighters buried him in an unmarked grave, so that the Turks couldn't exhume and decapitate him, as they used to do with all fallen Christian fighters. Once again, Negotin was conquered.