Matija Ban (Serbian Cyrillic: Матија Бан; 6 December 1818 – 14 March 1903) was a Serbo-Croatian poet, dramatist, and playwright.

Ban was born in Petrovo Selo near Dubrovnik, then in the Kingdom of Dalmatia in the Austrian Empire, now in Croatia.

[1] After working as a language teacher in Greek schools in Constantinople and Bursa,[2] Matija Ban settled in Serbia in 1844.

[3] In 1848 he came from Serbia to Dalmatia to study the state of national sentiment there.

[4] His best known literary works include 14 dramas and tragedies related to Slavic history (Miljenko i Dobrila, 1850; Mejrima ili Bošnjaci, 1851; Car Lazar, 1858; Marta Posadnica, 1871; 1880; Jan Hus, 1884, etc).