Sanjak of Smederevo in the context of "Serbian Revolution"

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. According to the 2022 census, the population of Belgrade city proper stands at 1,197,114, its contiguous urban area has 1,298,661 inhabitants, while population of city's administrative area (which roughly corresponds to its metro area) totals 1,681,405 people. It is one of the major cities of Southeast Europe and the third-most populous city on the river Danube.

Belgrade is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe and the world. One of the most important prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved within the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, Thraco-Dacians inhabited the region and, after 279 BC, Celts settled the city, naming it Singidūn. It was conquered by the Romans under the reign of Augustus and awarded Roman city rights in the mid-2nd century. It was settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times between the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary before it became the seat of the Serbian king Stefan Dragutin in 1284. Belgrade served as capital of the Serbian Despotate during the reign of Stefan Lazarević, and then his successor Đurađ Branković returned it to the Hungarian king in 1427. Noon bells in support of the Hungarian army against the Ottoman Empire during the siege in 1456 have remained a widespread church tradition to this day. In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans and became the seat of the Sanjak of Smederevo. It frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Ottoman–Habsburg wars.

Revolutionary Serbia, or Karađorđe's Serbia, was the state established by the Serbian revolutionaries in Ottoman Serbia (Sanjak of Smederevo) after the start of the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1804. The Sublime Porte first officially recognized the state as autonomous in January 1807, however, the Serbian revolutionaries rejected the treaty and continued fighting the Ottomans until 1813. Although the first uprising was crushed, it was followed by the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, which resulted in the creation of the Principality of Serbia, as it gained semi-independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1817.

The Sanjak of Prizren (Turkish: Prizren Sancağı, Albanian: Sanxhaku i Prizrenit, Serbian: Призренски санџак / Prizrenski sandžak) was one of the sanjaks in the Ottoman Empire with Prizren as its administrative centre. It was founded immediately after Ottoman Empire captured Prizren from the Serbian Despotate in 1455. The rest of the territory of Serbian Despotate was conquered after the fall of Smederevo in 1459, and divided into following sanjaks: Sanjak of Viçitrina, Sanjak of Kruševac and Sanjak of Smederevo. At the beginning of the First Balkan War in 1912, the territory of Sanjak of Prizren was occupied by the army of the Kingdom of Serbia. Based on Treaty of London signed on 30 May 1913, the territory of Sanjak of Prizren became part of Serbia.

The Slaughter of the Knezes (Serbian: Сеча кнезова, romanized: Seča knezova) was a campaign of organized murders and assaults of notable Serbs in the Pashalik of Belgrade (Sanjak of Smederevo) by the renegade Janissaries who had seized power in a coup against the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II. Fearing Serbian plans of rebellion, they decided to execute leading Serbs throughout the Sanjak. At least 95 notable Serbs were murdered, many whose decapitated heads were put on public display. Notable victims were Aleksa Nenadović and Ilija Birčanin. The event triggered the First Serbian Uprising, aimed at putting an end to the centuries of Ottoman occupation.

Marashli Ali Pasha (Turkish: Maraşlı Ali Paşa, Serbian: Marašli Ali-paša) was an Ottoman governor, serving as the Vizier of Belgrade (Sanjak of Smederevo) in c. 1815. He was from the city of Marash (now Kahramanmaraş) and he succeeded the previous Ottoman governor Sulejman-paša Skopljak.

The nahiye or nahiya (Ottoman Turkish: ناحیه, from Arabic: nāḥiya) was an administrative division in the Ottoman Empire, a sub-district including several villages, being the smallest administrative unit of a sanjak, below that of the kaza. The governor of the nahiye was titled mütesellim, until its abolishment in 1842.

The Serbian Free Corps (German: Serbische Freikorps), known simply as frajkori (Serbian Cyrillic: фрајкори), was a volunteer militia composed of ethnic Serbs, established by the Habsburg monarchy, to fight the Ottoman Empire during the Austro-Turkish War (1787–1791). The rebellion in the Sanjak of Smederevo and militia's operations resulted in the period of Habsburg-occupied Serbia, which took place from 1788 to 1791. Ultimately, the Serbian volunteer corps had the legacy of promoting the creation of future paramilitaries, such as during the First Serbian Uprising.

Osman Pazvantoğlu (Ottoman Turkish: عثمان; 1758 – January 27, 1807 in Vidin) was an Ottoman mercenary, the de facto Vizier of the Sanjak of Vidin after 1794 as a rebel against Ottoman rule, amnestied and recognized in 1799 as pasha by the sultan, continuing rebellion the next year. Initially serving as a mercenary in Wallachia, he wrested the Sanjak of Vidin and ruled in defiance of the Ottoman sultan, and fought other Ottoman pashas and made incursions into the Sanjak of Smederevo, Wallachia, and Revolutionary Serbia during the Serbs' rebellion.