Knin (pronounced [knîːn]) is a city in the Šibenik-Knin County of Croatia, located in the Dalmatian hinterland near the source of the river Krka, an important traffic junction on the rail and road routes between Zagreb and Split.

[3] According to an alternative explanation, offered by Franz Miklosich and Petar Skok, the name - derived from a Slavic root *tьn- ("to cut", "to chop") - means "cleared forest".

The first church, a monastery dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, was built during the time of Trpimir I in the 9th century in Kapitul (south-east from Knin Castle, where the later bishopric was located).

[10] In the following decade, during the succession crisis, the city was the permanent residence of a local lord Petar Snačić, who contested the crown of Croatia until his defeat by king Coloman of Hungary in 1096.

At that point, it came into possession of the Hungarian Arpad dynasty, and since then, it ceased to be a permanent royal residence but remained as a political and administrative center of the kingdom.

The city was visited by Queen Maria Laskarina, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor and wife of king Béla IV of Hungary, together with her retinue of nobles and a great number of soldiers in 1261 in order to introduce her son to the Croatian nobility and to negotiate their oath in recognizing him as the designated duke (herceg).

According to the 19th century Franciscan friar and historian Donato Fabianich, the monastery of Saint Catherine was founded around this time by the Knin nobility which were first settled there by Mladen Šubić.

[19] Their rule over Knin came to an end at the Battle of Bliska in 1322, after which the Angevin king Charles Robert arrived in the city and imprisoned the former lord Mladen II Šubić of Bribir.

During this time it became known that the castle consisted of two major parts, administered by two castellans and which was populated by houses and baths, a palace with a main hall used previously by the Nelipić's to sign an alliance with the Republic of Venice and to enforce customs on imports to the city.

An annual trade fair, on Saint Bartholomew's day is known to have taken place in the settlement below since at least the 1360s and was regularly attended by the merchants from the Dalmatian cities.

Upon his return from the disastrous battle of Nicopolis in 1396, the king spent a month in Knin to consolidate his holdings and state affairs of Dalmatia and Croatia, issuing various decrees together with his ban Nikola Gorjanski.

[28] In 1401, the city was besieged by the Bosnian king Stephen Ostoja, who encamped in the adjacent Knin field (Kninsko polje), and remained there until the following year.

Because of frequent harassment, the citizens of Knin had to pay tribute to the duke Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, and for a short while, the city seemed to have been directly under his rule.

[32] In 1454 an attempt between the Bosnian king and the Venetians was made to acquire the city, which was referenced as "capital and foremost place of Croatia" in their letters.

Baltazar Baćan (Hungarian: Boldizsár Batthyány), viceban of Slavonia, together with forces from the Zagreb Bishopry, managed to lift the siege of Knin in January 1513.

Next year in February the Ottomans laid siege on Knin with 10,000 men from the Sanjak of Bosnia, but were unable to take the city and lost 500 troops.

Local population was decimated by war, hunger, plague and migration to safer places, and its economy was hindered by the seizure of crops and livestock.

By the end of the 19th century, as a part of the Habsburg domain of Dalmatia, Knin grew steadily, becoming an important commercial as well as road and railway center.

The Italians also relied heavily on local ethnic Serb militias (Chetniks) to maintain order and suppress partisan resistance.

In April 1943, Đujić's Chetniks set up a prison and execution site in the village of Kosovo (today Biskupija), near Knin.

On 8 July 1989, a large Serb nationalist rally was held in Knin, during which banners threatening Yugoslav People's Army intervention in Croatia, as well as Chetnik iconography was displayed.

These abuses, which continued on a large scale even months after Operation Storm, included summary executions of elderly and infirm Serbs who remained behind and the wholesale burning and destruction of Serbian villages and property.

[68] In 2015, Amnesty International report that Croatian Serbs continued to face discrimination in public sector employment and the restitution of tenancy rights to social housing vacated during the war.

Knin has a modified Mediterranean climate (Cfa, nearing the border with Csa) with hot dry summers and cool winters.

Although the city is only some 50 km (31 mi) from the Adriatic Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean, the proximity of the Dinaric Alps to the north alters its climate.

[75] Knin has recently seen a steep population decline, not least due to high emigration rates, especially since Croatia joined the EU in 2013 and its citizens consequently face few to no work and immigration restrictions.

[65][66][78] In February 2015, during the Croatia–Serbia genocide case, the judgment of the International Court of Justice stated that it is not disputed that a substantial part of the Serb population fled that region as a direct consequence of the military actions.

Intermarriages and a desire to straddle the divide between the communities resulted at one point in a substantial part of the population declaring themselves as Yugoslavs rather than either Croats or Serbs (22% in 1981 census).

[87] The nearby villages Biskupija and Kapitul are extremely interesting archeological sites from the 10th century where many remains of medieval Croatian culture are found including churches, graves, decorations, and epigraphs.

In 2007 the Croatia national rugby union team beat an Irish Barbarians side to win their first ever trophy, the St. Patrick's Day Cup organised by Alan Moore in Knin.