History of Stip

Stip was the largest cultural and trade center in eastern Macedonia since ancient times. Some historians says that Stip was formed in 2500 year B.C. Firstly it was a small town that with small nubmer of houses beneath the forest Isar. Historians believe that Stip was founded from the people that leaved nearby anciant city Bargala. Bargala was ancient city of closed type, surrounded by walls and this people built Astibo, that was first town of open type. Houses were built arount the hill Isar, and in the time of danger and wars, people were hidding in the forest on the top of the hill. Town was called Astibo while it was in jurisdiction of Paeonia. Paeonia was that time state which in the north from Macedonia. It is beleaved that the border with Ancient Macedonia was on the south, somewhere nearby ancient city Stobi. Astibo was important place because it layed on the crossroad to south and further east travelling.

There are some historical beleives, that Alexander Macedonian on the road to middle East, has visited and stayed a little in Stip.

In the time of Roman impery, they changed the name of the city. The roman name of Stip is Stipion. Stipion was still the cultural center of the Eastern Macedonia, but it was still a small town with few houses on the easter side of Isar hill.

Stip started to grow while it was under the Ottoman impery. It is important that Ottomans Turks change the name of the town again. They called it Ishtip. The documents of that time, were the first writen documents about the structure of the town and its parts, which Otomant called them - maala. According to that documents, there was Macedonian maala beneath the Isar and Tuzlia, Jewish maala beneath the Macedonian and close to river Otinja, and Turkish maala on the oposite side of the River near the Mosque, that still exsists in Stip. It is important to say that Ottoman Turks built their maala separately, with no connection to other maala. Later western from the first turkish maala, were built other two maala, which were not conneced each other also. Every turkish maala had its own Mosque. One of that Mosque in the newest Turkish maala, Husamedin Pasha Mosque still stays unfinised.

There are not trusted written documents about popularity in Stip since 1790s. First documents of that time described Stip with popularity of 3000 to 4000. Seems that Stip had rapid grow later on, because in the documents from 1900 is written that Stip had 20.900 citizens, 10.900 Macedonians, 8.700 Turks, 800 Jews and 500 Roma.
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