Mostar (môˈstär) [key], city (1991 pop. 75,613), in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, on the Neretva River. Its name means "Old Bridge,"
referring to the 16th-century stone bridge built by Ottoman
sultan Sulayman the Magnificent, which, along with numerous
Turkish mosques and old houses, was destroyed in the 1993–94
siege of the city during the Bosnian civil war; the bridge was
rebuilt in 2004. Prior to the war, Mostar had been the chief
city of Herzegovina. It produced tobacco, wine, and aluminum
products, with bauxite mines and a hydroelectric plant operating
nearby. Known in 1442, Mostar became (16th cent.) the chief
Turkish administrative and commercial center in Herzegovina. It
passed to Austria in 1878 and to Yugoslavia in 1918. In 1993, as
Bosnia and Herzegovina was torn by civil war after declaring
independence from Yugoslavia, Croats and Muslims began a nine-
month-long struggle for control of Mostar. Bosnian Croats
relentlessly bombarded the eastern, Muslim section of the city,
reducing most of it to ruins. Si