The Hungarians occupy Belgrade in 1064, and …

Pecheneg troops pillage Syrmia (now in Serbia) in 1071.

King Solomon and Duke Géza, suspecting that the soldiers of the imperial garrison at Belgrade had incited the marauders against Hungary, decide to attack the fortress.

The Hungarian army crosses the river Sava, although the defenders "blew sulphurous fires by means of machines" against their boats.

The Hungarians take Belgrade after a siege of three months.

However, the imperial commander, Niketas, surrenders the fortress to Duke Géza instead of the king; he knows that Solomon "was a hard man and that in all things he listened to the vile counsels of Count Vid, who was detestable in the eyes both of God and men", according to the Illuminated Chronicle.

The division of the war booty causes a new conflict between Solomon and his cousin, because the king only grants a quarter of the booty to the duke, who claims its third part.

Hereafter the duke negotiates with the Emperor's envoys and sets all the imperial captives free without the king's consent.

The conflict is further sharpened by Count Vid: the Illuminated Chronicle narrates how he incited the young monarch against his cousins by saying that as "two sharp swords cannot be kept in the same scabbard", so the king and the duke "cannot reign together in the same kingdom".

…Belgrade and …

Emperor Conrad, accompanied by many German nobles, the Kings of Poland and Bohemia, and Frederick of Swabia, his nephew and heir, had departed Germany in May 1147.

On leaving Hungary and entering imperial Greek territory, he agrees to an oath of noninjury.

The Hungarian kingdom has occupied the Bulgarian province of Belgrade.

King Stephen Dragutin of Serbia receives from Ladislaus IV of Hungary Belgrade, Syrmia, and other territories from Hungary, when his son Vladislav marries a cousin of the Hungarian king.

Dragutin will rule the area of Macva with Belgrade, and the Bosnian areas Soli and Usora, until 1316, establishing family relations with Bosnian ban Stephen I Kotromanić.

His new state is named the Kingdom of Srem.

The first capital of his state is Debrc (between Belgrade and Šabac); he soon moves his residence to Belgrade, to become the first of the Serb rulers to rule from this capital.

Disputes had begun between Stefan Uroš II Milutin of Serbia and his brother Stefan Dragutin, King of Syrmia, after a peace treaty with the Empire was signed in 1299.

Dragutin in the meantime has expanded, holding lands from Braničevo in the east to the Bosna river in the west.

His capital is Belgrade.

War had broken out between the brothers and, though clergy had calmed by the clergy in 1313, lasts, with sporadic cease-fires, until Dragutin's death.

During this war Milutin had appointed Stefan Dečanski as regent in Zeta, modern Montenegro.

This means that Stefan Dečanski is to inherit the throne in Serbia and not Dragutin's son Stefan Vladislav II.

Dragutin separates from his Hungarian friends and strengthened his connections in Serbia near the end of his life, later becoming a monk and changing his name to Teoktist.

He dies in 1316 and is buried in the Đurđevi Stupovi monastery near Novi Pazar.

His son Stefan Vladislav II becomes the new ruler of the Kingdom of Srem, but Milutin, his uncle, defeats him and imprisons him.

Charles I of Hungary regains control over Belgrade and ...

Serbia, controlled by Hungary earlier in the fourteenth century, extends its control northward after 1331 to the Sava and Danube rivers.

…that of Serbia.

Stefan Lazarević, the son and successor of the slain prince Lazar, had participated in the Battle of Angora in 1402 when the Ottomans were defeated and sultan Bayezid was captured.

On his return to Serbia, Stefan had visited Constantinople where emperor Manuel II Palaiologos had granted him the title of despot.

In previous years, the title would mean that the despot would rule some vassal state, but as the Roman Empire is too weak to assert such a rule and Serbia is not its, Stefan takes this title as the personal style of the Serbian monarchs.

Thus has the shattered Principality of Serbia been revived as the Serbian Despotate.

Counting on the unrest in the Ottoman empire, in early 1404 Stefan accepts vassalage to the Hungarian king Sigismund, who awards him with Belgrade, until this time in Hungarian possession.

As all the former capitals of Serbia (Skopje, Priština, Prilep and Kruševac) had already been taken by the Ottomans, Belgrade becomes the capital of Serbia for the first time in history; it remains so today.