Srbinje
Srbinje (Србиње) known prior to 1992 as Foča (Фоча), , a town in the Herzegovina region of Republika Srpska. It is now populated mostly by Serbs, however the 1991 census data shows that 40% of the town's population (52% in the Municipality) were Muslims. In 1991, it was populated by 12570 people (census data).
The town was known as Hvoča (Хвоча) during medieval times. It was then known as a trading centre on route between Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). The Ottomans left Srbinje a marvel of architecture, the Aladza Mosque, claimedly one of Europe's most beautiful, that was burned by the Bosnian Serb Army on April 22, 1992. Eight more mosques, from the 16th and 17th centuries, were also damaged or fully destroyed. All of the city's Bosniak inhabitants were forced to leave, and it was renamed Srbinje, literally place of the Serbs (from Srbi Serbs and -nje which is a Slavic locative suffix). In 2004, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared the name unconstitutional, and reverted it to Foča, until the National Assembly of Republika srpska passes an appropriate law.
It houses some faculties (including the Medical faculty) from the Srpsko Sarajevo University. It is also home to one of five Serb Orthodox seminaries in the Balkans, the Duhovna Akademija Svetog Vasilija Ostroskog and was until 1992 the home of one of Bosnia's most important islamic high schools, the Madrassa of Mehmed-Pasa Kukavica.
