Incursions by Ottoman Turks began in late 14th century, following the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the creation of the Turkish frontier march (Serbo-Croatian: krajište) of Skopje in 1392.

The final conquest of the Raška region occurred in 1455, when Isa-Beg Isaković, the Ottoman Bosnian governor of Skopje, captured the south-western parts of the Serbian Despotate.

The seat of the kadı was subsequently transferred from Jeleč to Novi Pazar not long before 1485, and from that time the city became the most important centre in the southeastern parts of the Bosnian Sanjak.

The Sanjak continued to separate Serbia from Montenegro, and it was envisaged that the Austro-Hungarian garrisons there would open the way for a dash to Salonika aimed at "bring[ing] the western half of the Balkans under permanent Austrian influence.

"[6] On 28 September 1878 the Finance Minister, Koloman von Zell, threatened to resign if the army, behind which stood the Archduke Albert, were allowed to advance to Salonika.

In the session of the Hungarian Parliament held on 5 November 1878 the Opposition proposed that the Foreign Minister should be impeached for violating the constitution by his policy during the Near East Crisis and by the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

[6]On 10 October 1878 the French diplomat Melchior de Vogüé described the situation as follows: Particularly in Hungary the dissatisfaction caused by this "adventure" has reached the gravest proportions, prompted by that strong conservative instinct which animates the Magyar race and is the secret of its destinies.

This vigorous and exclusive instinct explains the historical phenomenon of an isolated group, small in numbers yet dominating a country inhabited by a majority of peoples of different races and conflicting aspirations, and playing a role in European affairs out of all proportions to its numerical importance or intellectual culture.

This instinct is to-day awakened and gives warning that it feels the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina to be a menace which, by introducing fresh Slav elements into the Hungarian political organism and providing a wider field and further recruitment of the Croat opposition, would upset the unstable equilibrium in which the Magyar domination is poised.

[7]This Austro-Hungarian expansion southward at the expense of the Ottoman Empire was designed to prevent the extension of Russian influence and the union of Serbia and Montenegro.

[8] This move was not welcomed by the Slavic Muslims of Novi Pazar, since they saw it as a demonstration of disrespect and mistrust on the part of the central Ottoman authorities.

[citation needed] In the aftermath of the Ottoman defeat during the First Balkan War of 1912–1913, the territory of the Ottoman sanjaks of Pljevlja, Sjenica and Pristina were divided between Serbia and Montenegro under the terms of the Treaty of London (1913), with the region of Pljevlja becoming part of Montenegro and those of Sjenica and Novi Pazar, together with the rest of the Priština Sanjak, becoming parts of Serbia.

[citation needed] Carlo Papa di Castiglione d'Asti (1869-1955), an Italian major and military attaché in Belgrade and Bucharest from 1908 to 1913, observed the advancing Serbian army.

[12] The Ibar Army under General Mihailo Živković entered the sanjak and pacified the Albanian population with "soletudinem faciunt pacem appelant" ("They make a desert and call it peace").

In the Saki short story "The Lost Sanjak" (1910), the plot turns on the protagonist's ability to remember the location of Novi Pazar.