NI

town in Serbia, Yugoslavia, on the Niava River. The town is important for its command of the MoravaVardar and the Niava River corridors, the two principal routes from central Europe to the Aegean. The main rail line from Belgrade and the north divides at Ni for Thessalonki, in Greece, and Sofia. Ni is also the meeting point for several roads. The ancient Roman city, Naissus, which probably succeeded a Celtic settlement, was mentioned as an important place in the 2nd century by Ptolemy, in his Guide to Geography. The old fortress on the right bank of the river is believed to have been built on this site. Under its walls, in AD 269, the emperor Claudius II defeated an army of the Goths. Ni is the birthplace of Constantine the Great (c. 280). During migrations of the Huns in the 5th century, the town was destroyed, and the Bulgarians conquered it in the 9th century but ceded it in the 11th century to the Hungarians, from whom the Byzantine emperor took it in 1173. Toward the end of the 12th century, the town came under the Serbian Nemanja dynasty, but in 1375 the Turks captured it from the Serbians. Ni was recovered briefly several times, but Turkish domination lasted for 500 years, and the town became an important station on the route from Istanbul to Hungary. In the first Serbian uprising (1809), the Serbs fired their powder magazine and destroyed themselves and a large number of the enemy; in the ruins of the Turkish-built Cele Kula (Tower of Skulls) are embedded the skulls of more than 900 of the Serbians who fell at the Battle of Cegar. The Serbs' army liberated Ni in 1877, and the town was ceded to them by the Treaty of Berlin (1878). In World War I, Ni was for a period the capital of Serbia. Heavy bomb damage from World War II and consequent postwar construction erased much of the town's Turko-Byzantine style. Historical buildings include a 5th-century Byzantine crypt. Industries include textiles, beer, tobacco products, locomotives, household appliances, and electronic materials. A university was opened in 1965; a modern centre for its faculty of medicine was opened in 1977 in the Nika Banje spa just east of Ni. The spa is a centre for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Pop. (1981) 161,376.