[11] From the 12th century onwards exist realistic topographic description of the surroundings of the Church of St. Peter (Caldanae is Novopazarska Banja; Bello is Podbijelje; the town could be identified with near fort Gradina-Postenje).

[11] Gradina-Pazarište is deemed the capital with the main fortress and Gradina-Postenje as the fort closer to the bishopric church of St.

[12] Archaeological findings of fortified structures and early churches from the area of Stari Ras, dated from fourth to the sixth century, correspond to the testimony of Byzantine historian Procopius who wrote that the Roman castellum of Arsa in the province of Dardania was refortified during the reign of the emperor Justinian I (527-565).

[19][20] They were re-settled and renovated in the mid-9th century by the Bulgarians (with the pottery findings typical of Pliska and Preslav, and other material, also with Bulgar runic inscriptions).

[26] There is no consensus in scholarship as to whether Ras was located on the Serbian,[27][28] or Bulgarian side of the border,[22][29][30] and whether it referred to a town or an area.

[32][33][30][23] The lack of material of Bulgarian origin in Vrsjenice (assumed to be Serbian city Destinikon), indicates that the border between Serbs/Serbia and Bulgarians/Bulgaria in the 9th and 10th century was at Pešter plateau (and to the north at Čačak).

[26][36] The imperial charter of Basil II from 1020 to the Archbishopric of Ohrid, in which the rights and jurisdictions were established, mentions that the Episcopy of Ras belonged to the Bulgarian autocephal church during the time of Peter I (927–969) and Samuel of Bulgaria (977–1014).

[50][51] By 976, the Bulgarian state had regained Ras (according to Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja it would have been the Serbs who freed themselves and defeated the Byzantines),[52] but Basil II recaptured it about 40 years later in 1016–1018.

[57] Recent archaeological research supports the notion that the Byzantines held control of Ras during Alexios I Komnenos's reign (1048–1118), but possibly not continuously.

He even got as far as Lipjan, which he deliberately burnt down", but when Alexios came close, Vukan escaped to Zvečan and started peace negotiations.

[65] The Serbian Uprising of 1149 caused Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos to penetrate "Dalmatia", destroying the Ras fortress and devastate everything along the way, "the countless multitudes that he made slaves, he left there with the army of sebastohypertatos Constantine Angelos".

The emperor headed through the country, since there was no one to stop him at all, devastated it, and after burning the buildings there intended for the archizoupanos as the ruling centre, left".

[69][70] Although not recorded in historical sources, somewhere in the second half of the 12th century, Ras would have been finally conquered and controlled by the Serbs, greatly renovating it and becoming the centre of defence and residency for the Grand Principality of Serbia.

[71] Stefan Nemanja, who previously received the land of Dendra west of Niš, was the one who usurped the throne and expanded his territories in the late 1160s.

The full independence of Serbia including the region of Raška was recognized by the Byzantines in 1190 after an indecisive win by Isaac II Angelos over Nemanja.

[75][76] The cave monastery of St. Michael (where Monk Simeon was later active and wrote Vukan's Gospel dated to c. 1202) was constructed beneath the Podgrađe of the Gradina-Pazarište on a rocky cliff of the hill.

[81] Somewhere in the early 13th century, it became damaged amid civil war,[82] but extensively renovated again by the time of the second Serbian king Stefan Radoslav (1228–1233).

However, there is not much archaeological evidence that it was burnt and became desolated around the 1230s, probably being the scene of noble battles in which Radoslav lost and Stefan Vladislav (1234–1243) came to the throne.