Jatagan Mala

Jatagan Mala (Serbian Cyrillic: Јатаган Мала) is the former urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It was located in Belgrade's municipality of Savski Venac.

Location

Jatagan Mala was located some 5 kilometers south of downtown Belgrade, east of the Sava river, on the northern slopes of Topčidersko Brdo. It occupied roughly the area between present neighborhoods of Mostar and Prokop. The name of the neighborhood comes from Turkish words yatagan and mahalle, meaning "sword neighborhood".

Romani

It was a poor, neglected neighborhood inhabited by the Romani people and by today's standards it would probably be classified as an informal settlement. Ironically, it bordered two wealthiest neighborhoods of Belgrade, Senjak and Dedinje.

When construction of new highway through Belgrade began in 1960s, population of Jatagan Mala was dislocated into the newly constructed residential blocks of Novi Beograd across the Sava and the neighborhood was demolished to make way for the modern interchange of Mostar and the future (though still unfinished) central railway station of Belgrade, Prokop.

The case of Jatagan Mala is today often cited as a successful way of handling informal settlements problems (regarding today existing similar settlements like Kartonsko naselje, Deponija, etc.), but no proper study was ever made how fully the Romani population was really integrated.