Kosovo Vilayet - Demographics

Demographics

There have been a number of estimates about the ethnicity and the religious affiliation of the local population.

The population of the province was ethnically heterogeneous. Many were Albanians.

An Austrian statistics published in 1899 estimated:

182,650 Albanians (47.88%)
166,700 Serbs (43.7%)

According to Ottoman yearbooks, in 1901, the Kosovo vilayet which encompassed five sanjaks: Skopje, Priština, Prizren, Novi Pazar, and Pljevlja had 964,657 inhabitants; two thirds were Muslims and one third was Christian. The Muslims were primarily Albanians and the Christians were mostly Serbs. The yearbooks, however, are deemed unreliable sources as they, in some districts, did not register the female population, but balanced the numbers against the male population, though it is a well known fact that the number of male heads exceeded the number of female heads throughout this period not only in those lands but in Serbia Proper as well.

British journalist H. Brailsford estimated in 1906 that two-thirds of the population of Kosovo was Albanian and one-third Serbian. The most populous western districts of Đakovica and Peć were said to have between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanian households, as against some 5,000 Serbian ones. A map of Alfred Stead, published in 1909, shows that similar numbers of Serbs and Albanians were living in the territory.

A publication from December 21, 1912 in the Belgian magazine Ons Volk Ontwaakt (Our Nation Awakes) estimated 827,100 inhabitants: