Lazar of Serbia

Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovi was a medieval Serbian ruler, who created the largest and most powerful state on the territory of the disintegrated Serbian Empire. Lazars state, known in historiography as Moravian Serbia, comprised the basins of the Great Morava, West Morava, and South Morava Rivers. Lazar ruled it from 1373 until his death in 1389. Lazars political programme was the reunification of the disintegrated Serbian state under him as the direct successor of the Nemanji dynasty, which ended in 1371 after two centuries of rule over Serbia. Lazar had a full support from the Serbian Church for this programme, but powerful Serbian nobles did not recognize him as their supreme ruler.

Lazar was born in around 1329 in the fortress of Prilepac, 13160kilometres southeast of the town of Novo Brdo, which was an important mining centre of the medieval Serbian state. Lazars family hereditarily held Prilepac, which together with the nearby fortress of Prizrenac protected the mines and settlements around Novo Brdo. Lazars father, Pribac, was a logothete at the court of Stefan Uro Duan, a member of the Nemanji dynasty who was the Serbian king from 1331 to 1346, and the Serbian tsar from 1346 to 1355. The rank of logothete was relatively modest in the hierarchy of the Serbian court. Duan became the ruler of Serbia by dethroning his father, King Stefan Uro III. Duan then awarded petty nobles who supported him in his rebellion, by elevating them to higher positions in the feudal hierarchy. In this way Pribac became a logothete. According to Mavro Orbin, 16thcentury Ragusan historian, the family name of Pribac and Lazar was Hrebeljanovi. Though Orbins source for this claim is un

Source: Wikipedia