Srb

Srb ( Srb lies in the Una River valley, on the road from Donji Lapac to Knin, and is east of Gračac. It is currently part of the Gračac municipality and the Zadar County.

According to Croatian linguist and academic Petar Šimunović, etymologically it is a hydronym that derives from the old Croatian verb "serbati" denoting the "spring" of the river Una. Because Serbs (Sorabos) are mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals in the context of Ljudevit Posavski fleeing to them, there is a theory that a Serbian tribe could have existed in the area of Srb at some point in the 9th century, and that Srb was named after them, but the scarcity of historical records made various historians differ in the interpretations of this mention. That account most probably refers to somewhere in central or eastern Bosnia.

In the medieval period, the settlement was the centre of small župa of Srb which was part of a larger župa of Pset of the Duchy and Kingdom of Croatia. In the 13th and 14th century the župa was ruled by Paul I Šubić of Bribir and Nelipić family. In the 14th century is mentioned as a town because a document from the year 1345 mentions it belonging to the Hungary Croatian king as a royal fortress citadel, castra nostra regalia, videlicet Tininium castrum Szereb castrum Unach vocata cum Corum supatibus et pertinensiis. Due to the Ottoman conquest in 1520, most of the old population fled to Northern Croatia and was replaced by pastoral Vlachs. Some of the descendants of the new population also emigrated to Žumberak, while others moved to Northern Dalmatia or converted to Islam. On July 25, 1990 an assembly of approximately 100,000 Croatian Serbs was held in Srb. A declaration was released which established a Serbian Assembly, with its seat in Srb, as the political representative of the Serbian nation in Croatia, and the Serbian National Council
as the executive body of the Assembly. During the Croatian War for Independence it was occupied by forces of self proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina until 1995, when most of the Serb population fled in the face of Operation Storm in 1995. For detailed population data for the last Yugoslav 1991 census and last Austro Hungarian 1910 census see former settlements of Donji Srb and Gornji Srb.