Nikola Musulin, son of a Serbian merchant, was born at Shkodër in 1830, and educated there and afterwards at the Clerical High School of Saint Arsenije. Musulin was brought up in a neighbourhood bordering on the open country that was the Military Frontier between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, and from his earliest years he found a companion in nature; he was also early initiated into the reading of poetry, hearing Njegoš and Branko Radičević in his youth. Musulin had trained to be a teacher at St. Arsenius instead of becoming a priest. While studying for the profession, however, he contributed poems and prose articles to various magazines, periodicals and newspapers. Upon graduation in 1856 Musulin arrived in Prizren, where he opened the first modern secular school. Prizren had an elementary school for girls, founded by Anastasija Ajnadžina in 1836. The work of Ajnadžina and Musulin inspired other fellow teachers to follow their footsteps: Milan Kovačević went on to open a secular school in Pristina in 1859 while Sava Dečanac founded a school in Peja. Musulin left Old Serbia to teach in Cetinje, Montenegro, in 1862.
