Bosnia and Herzegovina The territories of today's Bosnia and
Herzegovina were part of Illyria and later part of the Roman
Empire (provinces Dalmatia and Pannonia). After the fall of
Rome, the area was contested by the Byzantine Empire and Rome's
successors in the West. Slavs settled the region in the 7th
century. The first mention of the term Bosnia is in De
Administrando Imperio, a book by Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
Byzantine emperor and historian. The kingdoms of Serbia and
Croatia split control of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 9th
century. The 11th and 12th centuries saw the rule of the region
by the kingdom of Hungary. The medieval banate of Bosnia gained
autonomy by the end of the 12th century, and grew into an
independent kingdom in 1377 under king Tvrtko Kotromanić. Bosnia
remained independent up until 1463, when Ottoman Turks conquered
the region and established the Ottoman province of Bosnia. In
these times there also lived a certain amount of adherents to
the so-called Bosnian Church (variously re