The reason for the forced migration was the Kanlıca Conference, according to which all Muslims living on the territory of the Principality of Serbia had to be evicted.

[1] Since the Romani people were exempt from this, some of the Muslims began to call themselves Roma, in order to stay in their hometowns.

The exodus changed not only the ethno-religious composition of the Principality of Serbia but also of the Ottoman Empire.

[1] Towards the beginning of the Great Eastern Crisis, the number of Muslims in the Serbian Principality had dropped to 6,000.

[5] The Muslims of Serbia were not an ethnic monolith, most of them were native speakers of South-Slavic, but there were Turkish-speaking or Albanian-speaking ones.

In the end, the Sublime Porte agreed to accept the Muslim population but refused migration from the six newly annexed nahiyas.

The second Hatsherif of 1830 regulated the Muslim problem in Serbia: only the Muslims living in the garrison towns (Belgrade, Šabac, Sokol, Užice, Kladovo, and Smederevo) had the right to hold Ottoman citizenship, while the others were to be designated as citizens of Serbia.

As such, in the same 1830 decree which recognized Serbia as an autonomous principality, the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II also ordered the eviction of Muslim civilians from six Serbian towns.

[9] In 1862, Ottoman-Serbian tensions were sparked following a confrontation between Ottoman police and a Serb at a fountain, which led to the death of the latter.

It soon turned into an ethnic clash as parts of Belgrade were bombed by the Ottoman garrison, causing damage to the city.

[10] Because of these events, the Great Powers requested the Ottoman Empire to organize a peace conference.

Muslims, however, prevented Serbs from entering the town as they worried they would be robbed during the firefight as had happened earlier in Belgrade.

The Serbian writer Branislav Nušič mentions the exodus of Belgrade's Muslims in his work "The Sixth of April".The people were very impatient for the Turks to leave because everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible to enter the city, which throughout the last century had caused so much fear to the citizens of the capital.

Around April 20, the Belgrade newspapers brought this pleasant news: 'We hear that on St. George's Day, as the day of the departure of the last company of Turks from the city here, 5,000 Serb men and women will play Serbian games in the city.

The second group left Belgrade at the end of October and numbered 550 people who settled in Vidin.

[14] The last group left the city with Ali Rıza Pasha, and the sending off of the citizens became an official ceremony with farewell marches being played.

When the ship left Belgrade with Ali Rıza Paşa and the Muslims, the Serbian cannons fired a farewell shot.

Almost all of them left for Bosnia, but a small unknown number settled in Albania and Macedonia.

[19] They maintained a local identity and even after 100 years still refer to themselves as Užičani (those from Užice), Šapčani (those from Šabac), Sokoljani (those from Sokol) and Beograđani (those from Belgrade)[20] A large number of Belgrade's Muslims settled in Niš, totalling 2,100.

The Commission held its first meeting in Belgrade on 21 September 1863, at Mehmed Ali Bey's house.

Although Ali and Mehmed Ali Bey proposed to establish a mixed committee of experts to conclude the compensation issue in the commission meetings, the Serbian representatives did not accept this and intended to put the provisions of the Kanlıca Conference at the command of the Serbian knez.