Tuzla

Tuzla, city in Bosnia, in the northeastern part of the country. At the time of the 1991 census, it was populated by 131,000 inhabitants.

First mentioned in 950 as a county under Hungarian rule, the town was later refered to by historians as Soli. Soli means salt in Bosnian, and the city's present name means "place of salt" in Turkish. However, there is enough archaeologic evidence to suggest that Tuzla was a rich neolithic settlement, and hence inhabited continuously for more than 6,000 years.

On October 2, 1943, Tuzla became the largest liberated town in Europe to the time. It developed into a major industrial and cultural centre during the communist period in former Yugoslavia. During the Bosnian war, 1992 to 1995, Tuzla was the only non-nationalist governed municipality in Bosnia. The town itself, however, was not spared of the attrocities of war, on May 25, 1995, a mortar killed 80 youngsters in the single most deadly incident in the Bosnian war.

The city has Europe's only salt lake as part of its central park; more than 100,000 people visits its shores every year. From Tuzla hails one of the most influential writers in the Balkans, Mesa Selimovic.