Taurunum area
originate from the 3rd century BC when the Scordisci occupied several
Thracian and Dacian areas of the Danube. The Romans came in the 1st century
BC,Taurunum became part of the Roman province of Pannonia around
15 AD. It had a fortress and served as a harbour for the Pannonian (Roman)
fleet of Singidunum (Belgrade). The pen of Roman poet PubliusOvidiusNaso (Ovid)
was said to be found in Taurunum. After the Great Migrations the
area was under the authority of various peoples and states, including theByzantine
Empire, the Kingdom of the Gepids and the Bulgarian Empire. The
town was conquered by the Kingdom of Hungary in the 12th century and
in the 15th century it was given as a personal possession to the Serbian
despot ĐurađBranković. After the nearby Serbian Despotate fell to the Ottoman
Empire in 1459, Zemun became an important military outpost. It was then
conquered by the Ottomans on July 12, 1521. In 1541, Zemun was integrated into
the Syrmia sanjak of the Budin pashaluk.
Zemun and the southeastern Syrmia were conquered by the Austrian Habsburgs in
1717, after the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Peterwardein (5 August
1716) and through the Treaty of Požarevac (German: Passarowitz)
became a property of the Schönborn family. In 1736, Zemun was the
site of a peasant revolt. Its strategic location near the confluence of the
Sava and the Danube placed it in the center of the continued border wars
between the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires
