Serbs (; Serbian: Срби, Srbi, pronounced [sr̩̂bi]), are a South Slavic ethnic group and nation who share a common Serbian ancestry, culture, history, and language. They live primarily in their nation-state of Serbia, and in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and Kosovo, with smaller communities in North Macedonia, Romania, and Hungary, while also constituting a significant diaspora with communities across Europe, the Americas, and Oceania.
Serbs are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians, traditionally affiliated with the Serbian Orthodox Church, and speak the Serbian language, which is official in Serbia, co-official in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, and the most widely spoken language in Montenegro.
Etymology
The origin of the ethnonym *Sŕbъ (plur. *Sŕby) is unclear. The most prominent theory holds that it is of Proto-Slavic origin, meaning "family kinship" or "alliance". Word *srъb- / *sьrb- roots in Slavic words meaning "to sip, munch", found in Polish s(i)erbać, Russian serbat', and also cognates in non-Slavic languages, such as Lithuanian suřbti, Middle German sürfen, which all derive from Indo-European onomatopoeic roots *serbh- / *sirbh- / *surbh- meaning "to sip, to breast-feed, to flow". Thus the basis of the ethnonym lies in "milk kinship" and "brotherhood in milk" which was widespread in early ethnic groups (between both relatives and non-relatives) and thus carried the secondary meanings of "those who belong to the same family, kinsman"; "member of the same kin, tribe"; and, finally, an ethnonym.
The earliest mention of the ethnonym Serb occurred in the 2nd century AD by Ptolemy describing an Illyrian tribe named Serboi (Σέρβοι) and mentions the town of Serbinum (Σέρβινον), who lived around present-day central Balkans, some authors considers it of Indo-Iranian Scytho-Sarmatian origin. The earliest mention of the Serbs in the Middle Ages are from 7th-century Chronicle of Fredegar, which describes Dervan as "the duke of the Serb people, who are of Slavic descent" (Latin: Dervanus dux gente Surbiorum, que ex genere Sclavinorum erant), and Einhard's Royal Frankish Annals, written in the 8th and 9th centuries, which mention "the Serbs, a people that is said to hold a large part of Dalmatia" (ad Sorabos, quae natio magnam Dalmatiae partem obtinere dicitur).
Genetic origins
According to a three genetic systems – paternal, maternal, and autosomal – of available data from large-scale studies on Balto-Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data place Serbs in the middle between a Western South Slavic cluster (Croats, Bosniaks and Slovenes) and Eastern South Slavic cluster (Macedonians and Bulgarians). The western cluster has an inclination toward Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks, while the eastern cluster toward Romanians and, to some extent, Greeks.
Y chromosome results show that haplogroups I2a and R1a together account for the majority of the Serb makeup. Recent studies indicate that roughly half of Serbian I2a lineages trace their recent origin to Herzegovina/Old Herzegovina, reflecting strong historical gene flow from that region.
Mitochondrial DNA studies of Serbs show a predominantly Slavic maternal gene pool, with common U haplogroups shared with other Slavic populations. At the same time, a significant presence of Balkan-specific lineages and southern European lineages points to considerable genetic continuity with pre-Slavic Balkan populations. These findings support both the impact of early medieval Slavic migrations to the Balkans and a strong autochthonous substrate.
Based on the autosomal IBD survey, the speakers of Serbian share a very high number of common ancestors dated to the migration period approximately 1,500 years ago with Poland and Romania-Bulgaria cluster among others in Eastern Europe. It is concluded to be caused by the Hunnic and Slavic expansion, which was a "relatively small population that expanded over a large geographic area", particularly "the expansion of the Slavic populations into regions of low population density beginning in the sixth century," and that it is "highly coincident with the modern distribution of Slavic languages".
According to a 2023 archaeogenetic study using autosomal qpAdm modelling, the modern-day Serbs are 58.4% of Central-Eastern European early medieval Slavic ancestry, 39.2% local Balkan pre-Slavic, and 2.3% West Anatolian ancestry.
In recent decades, several anthropometric studies have confirmed that Serbia's people are among the tallest in the world, with an average male height of 1.82 metres (6 ft 0 in).
History
Arrival of the Slavs
Early Slavs, especially Sclaveni and Antae, including the White Serbs, invaded and settled Southeastern Europe in the 6th and 7th century. Up until the late 560s, their activity consisted primarily of raiding across the Danube, although Slavic settlement remained limited and occurred mainly through Byzantine foederati colonies. The Danube and Sava frontier was overwhelmed by large-scale Slavic settlement in the late 6th and early 7th century. The area that is now central Serbia was an important geostrategic province through which the Via Militaris passed. The numerous Slavs mixed with and assimilated the descendants of the indigenous population Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, as well as Romans and Celts. The White Serbs from White Serbia settled primarily in the region between the Dinaric Alps and the Adriatic coast, although during their migration some groups temporarily reached as far as the area near Thessaloniki (modern Servia). The region of Raška was the center of Serb settlement and Serb tribes also occupied most of modern-day Herzegovina and Montenegro.
Middle Ages
The first Serb states, Serbia (c. 780–960) and Duklja (10th century–1186/9), were formed chiefly under the Vlastimirović and Vojislavljević dynasties, respectively. The other Serb-inhabited lands, or principalities, that were mentioned included the "countries" of Zachlumia, Travunia, and Pagania. As the Serbian state of Duklja declined in the late 11th century, Raška gained independence and succeeded it as the most powerful Serbian state. Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja (r. 1166–96), founder of the Nemanjić dynasty which ruled Serbia until the 14th century, conquered the neighbouring regions of Kosovo, Duklja, and Zachlumia. Nemanja's older son, Stefan Nemanjić, became Serbia's first recognized king, while his younger son, Rastko, founded the Serbian Orthodox Church in the year 1219, and became known as Saint Sava.
Over the next 140 years, Serbia expanded its borders from numerous smaller principalities into a unified Serbian Empire. Its culture remained deeply Byzantine in character, despite political and military ambitions directed against Byzantine Empire itself. The medieval power and influence of Serbia culminated in the reign of Stefan Dušan (1331–1355), who proclaimed himself Emperor in 1346. At its height under his rule, the empire’s territory included Macedonia, northern Greece, Montenegro, and almost all of modern Albania.
Ottoman Turks began their conquest of the Balkans in the 1350s, sparking a major conflict with the Serbs. The first major battle was the Battle of Maritsa (1371), in which the Serbs were defeated. The deaths of two key Serbian commanders in the battle, followed by the death of Emperor Stefan Uroš V later that year, caused the Serbian Empire to fragment into several smaller domains. These states were ruled by regional lords: Zeta by the Balšić noble family; Raška, Kosovo, and northern Macedonia by the Branković noble family; and Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, who controlled modern-day Central Serbia and parts of Kosovo. Because of his marriage to a member of the Nemanjić dynasty, Lazar was acknowledged as the titular leader of the Serbs. In 1389 the Serbs faced the Ottomans at the Battle of Kosovo on the plain of Kosovo Polje, near modern-day Pristina. Both Prince Lazar and Sultan Murad I were killed. The battle most likely ended in a stalemate, and Serbia thereafter enjoyed a period of relative prosperity under Despot Stefan Lazarević while resisting Ottoman conquest until 1459.
Early modern period
The Ottoman devshirme system was a form of slavery in which Christian boys from the Balkans, many of them Serbs, were taken from their families, forcibly converted to Islam, and trained for elite infantry units of the Ottoman army known as the Janissary corps. A number of Serbs who converted to Islam (either through the devshirme or later) rose to the highest ranks of the Ottoman Empire, including the Ottoman grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and the field marshal and war minister Omar Pasha Latas.
The Serbs had taken an active part in the wars fought in the Balkans against the Ottoman Empire and had also organized numerous uprisings. Because of this, they suffered persecution and their territories were devastated, resulting in major migrations from Serbia into Habsburg territory. After allied Christian forces had captured Buda from the Ottoman Empire in 1686 during the Great Turkish War, Serbs from the Pannonian Plain (present-day Hungary, the Slavonia region in present-day Croatia, and the Bačka and Banat regions in present-day Serbia) joined the troops of the Habsburg monarchy as separate units known as the Serbian Militia. Serbs, as volunteers, massively joined the Austrian side.
In 1688–1689 the Habsburg army, advancing deep into the Ottoman Balkans during the Great Turkish War, captured Belgrade and much of present-day Serbia, encouraging Serbs to rise against Ottoman rule. When the Habsburg offensive collapsed in 1690 and Ottoman forces began a brutal reconquest accompanied by reprisals against the rebel population, Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Crnojević feared massacres and loss of church privileges. He therefore led in 1690 tens of thousands of Serb families (estimates range from 30,000 to 70,000 people) north across the Sava and Danube rivers into Habsburg territory in what became known as the Great Serb Migration. The large Serb community concentrated in the Banat, southern Hungary, and the Military Frontier consisted of merchants and craftsmen in the cities, but mainly of peasant refugees. Smaller groups of Serbs also migrated to the Russian Empire, and settled in the newly established frontier regions of Slavo-Serbia (1753–1764) and New Serbia (1752–1764), located in present-day eastern Ukraine, where they were granted land and military privileges to defend the empire’s southern borders.
Modern period
The Serbian Revolution (1804–1817) was the first successful national uprising against Ottoman rule in Europe and consisted of two phases: the First Serbian Uprising (1804–1813) led by Karađorđe Petrović, which created an independent Serbian state for almost a decade, and the shorter but decisive Second Serbian Uprising (1815–1817) led by Miloš Obrenović. During the First Uprising, the rebels established their own government, army, and institutions, effectively ending centuries of Ottoman feudal oppression. Although the Ottomans crushed the First Uprising in 1813, the Second Uprising forced the Sublime Porte to grant Serbia substantial autonomy in 1815–1816; in the early 1830s Serbia’s autonomy and borders were formally recognised with Miloš Obrenović acknowledged as hereditary prince, the last Ottoman troops withdrew in 1867, and full international recognition of independence finally came at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The revolution not only laid the foundations of modern Serbia but also abolished feudalism early and inspired subsequent national movements across the Balkans. The revolution as a consequence also produced one of Europe’s earliest codified legal systems, the Serbian Civil Code of 1844, making Serbia the fourth modern-day European country, after France, Austria and the Netherlands, to have a codified legal system.