Besi

The source connects the name Besi with ancient Besiana and with a pre-Roman fortification on Mount Kulina, around three kilometres north of the village. This is an interpretation presented by the author. At localities such as Arat e Sarajit, fragments of roof tiles, building stone and sections of old fired-clay water pipes were found. In the Kallugjerica area the source mentions church foundations and place-names associated with an earlier Christian presence. It also describes traces of what is said to have been an urbanised area with a water system, a cobbled road and an inn beside the Prishtina–Podujeva route.

In written records, Besi appears in the 1455 register with 76 households. The 1566–1574 register records 41 households. The settlement also appears on an Austrian map based on information from 1689 and in Kosovo Vilayet yearbooks from 1893, 1896 and 1900.

Following the expulsion of Albanians from the Sanjak of Niš in 1877–1878, several Albanian muhajir families settled in Besi. The source also records emigration to Turkey after 1913. Two Serbian colonist families were settled here in 1927 and 1932.

These layers of evidence, from archaeological traces and Ottoman documentation to population movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, make Besi one of the settlements around Prishtina with a long documented history.