Šar mountain and its župas in South Serbia's Kosovo-Metohia region

Abstract

Sar Mountain is a vast and complex morphotectonic structure stretching between the south part of the Kosovo basin, the Crnoljeva and Crna Gora Mountains (Skopska Crna Gora and Kumanovo-Presevo Karadrag), the Tetovo (Gornji Polog and Donji Polog) and Metohia-Prizren basins, Mt. Korab (2,764m), Koritnik and the Ljuma region in northeast Albania. Sar Mountain marks the beginning of a separate morphotectonic massif of the Dinaric Alps, known in classical geological and geomorphological literature as the Shar-Pindus mountain system. Its tectonic lines and ranges curve from the south-north direction to southwest-northeast, looming over a deep tectonic depression between the Zeta-Skadar-Medovo littoral and the Metohia-Prizren basin in the Beli Drim river valley, just as on the opposite, northwest side, the Dinaric Alps in the area of the Komovo, Mokra and Prokletija mountains swing over the Zeta plain, the Drim and Metohia from the dominant "Dinaric direction" of northwest-southeast to the "Metohia direction" of southwest-northeast. This creates "the most important transversal valley of the western half of Sar Mountain through which used to run the Zeta Road, the ancient Via de Zenta, the chief transversal route of the Nemanjic state "between the Dinaric and the Sar-Pindus mountain systems, with influences and functions that helped towards diversification of the ethnographic and historical development of the population."