They're different from Bosniaks, yes. They speak Serbo-Croatian but not as a first language. They have a completely different culture, by Balkan standards - it's still Ottoman as everything else from the outside looking in.

Hello, Djamila

What is your opinion about the wearing of yashmaks? In bulgarian "yashmak" is "feredje"(i think that this is turkic word).

What you think about the engagement of the muslims for the praying to Allah five times in the day?

Edited by The Chargemaster

I can't speak universally, but in this part of the world when the Ottoman forces were invading they would offer cities the chance of fighting or surrendering. If they fought, and lost - they lost, everything. If they surrendered, they could keep everything and simply pay taxes to the Ottoman authorities.

Several cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina fought and several others surrendered. Jajce and Soli would be the most famous. Jajce fought for decades than the rest of the country and Soli surrendered before the Ottomans even reached their region, they sent a messenger out as far as I know.

Overall, most of Bosnia - whether it fought or surrendered - fell very quickly. They still say Bosnia fell "with a whisper" here.

The conversion to Islam happened very quickly as well. Central and northeast Bosnia were almost fully Islamic by the mid 1500s. The rest of the country slowly caught up so that by 1700 a vast majority of Bosnia's people, I believe over 80%, were Muslim.

Most of the first conversions happened as a way to ensure security. The Bosnian church was constantly being attacked by Rome and the forces of Byzantium and people were eager for protection.

Most of the later conversions happened to take advantage of tax breaks and these sorts of things. Conversions for this purpose continued right up until the end of the Ottoman Empire.

There had the be forced conversions somewhere, it'd be stupid to think there weren't - but I know of no examples.

EDIT: Janissaries were forced conversions! But Muslims here insisted their children participate as well, so it wasn't always a conversion.


Edited by Mila

The title they themselves used was usually Ban, Chargemaster. It was only when complete and total separation from Hungary was achieved in the later years of the Bosnian Kingdom that King was used by these rulers at the time they ruled.

These days, most everyone says King to refer to them all. There is also a strong recognition of Croatia's Kings as well, carried over from our close relationship. One of the main streets in Old Sarajevo is King Tomislav Street.

As for resistence to the Ottoman Empire - it was certainly weak here. There was no major rebellion in the major population centers to speak of until the 1800s. In rural areas, there were certainly uprisings - especially since the 20 per cent of Bosnians who were Christian at this time were overwhelmingly rural people.

The only thing I can find as a pattern has nothing to do with the Ottoman Empire but more with local rulers. In cities such as Trebinje, where the surrounding Christians were taxed unfairly and by all accounts treated as the lowest of the Empire's subjects, there were uprisings. In cities such as Gradacac, where local leaders treated Christians fairly and in most cases well, there were none.

It was only when that very city, Gradacac, started an uprising - led by it's Muslim leaders and supported by the Christian peasantry - that the resistence spread to the towns and cities.

But I mean...

You could interview all the generations of a family from Sarajevo, or Mostar, or wherever else - and ask them if they've ever experienced any significant violence against the Ottoman Empire and they'd all tell not from their own people. Sarajevo was attacked several times by Western Europe, and completely destroyed once - so there was that kind of resistence. But it never came from within.

That's as much as I know about it.

Well, why don't you call yourself a Serb Muslim then? Since you are so concerned what serbs think. I don't know what it has to do with the fact that they call Muslims in Bosnia "poturice"., they would still do it. In the eyes of people like that Bosnia won't be less "Serbian land".

Bosniaks from Bosnia have been denied a status of a nation for a long time, they shouldn't deny others the same, and knowing a lot of Bosniaks from Sandzak, I would say that they in general have a higher (Bosniak) national consciousness than  Bosniaks from Bosnia. From what I know, many of them emmigrated to Sandzak from Hercegovina and Podrinje. I think that national conscioussness is most important here, because people on the Balkans, and especially in Bosnia, I would guess, are so mixed that talking about genetic similarities between Bosniaks today and those who lived there 500-600 years ago is ridiculous.

Personally, I don't understand why people are bothered with how others call themselves.

 

Chargemaster, Sokolovic was Serb.

Edited by zelda

Originally posted by The Chargemaster Originally posted by Zelda Chargemaster, Sokolovic was Serb. No problem. Can you post some sources with information about Mehmed Sokolovic? And if he was a serb, is interesting to me: Are living today somewhere in Yugoslavia, in Bosnia, in Croatia or in Montenegro some muslims who are serbs or croats, but not bosniaks? And what part of the medieval serbs and croats become a muslims? Because i think that all of the today`s muslims in the lands of former Yugoslavia consider themselves as "bosniaks", but not "serbs" or "croats". Your opinion is interesting to me, just like the opinion of Djamila.

He was born in the village Sokolovici near Visegrad in an Othodox family. I don't know what he called himself, but at that time people were divided by their religion, they didn't have any national conscioussness.

And yes, there are Muslims who consider themselves Serbs, Montenegrins and Croats. About 80% of the Muslims in Croatia are Bosniaks, most of them came there after the recent war. The rest are Albanians, some other minorities and insignificant number of Croats. I went to school in Croatia for a year, and in my class there was Muslim Croat girl.

You also asked me the number of medieval Serbs and Croats who converted to Islam; I don't the exact number, nobody does, but most of the Muslims from Serbia and Croatia settled in Bosnia after the decline of Ottoman empire, like many Muslim families from Hungary did. A significant number of Bosniaks can trace their origins back to Hungary.

I have also two questions for you:

1. Why are you interested in Muslim Slavs from ex-Yugoslavia?

2. I had a conversation with a Turkish guy long time ago. Some of his ancestors were Pomaks. Now, I thought that Pomaks are Islamized Bulgarians, but he said they are of Turkic origin and that his ancerstors spoke Turkish. Is he right or wrong?

Originally posted by zelda I went to school in Croatia for a year, and in my class there was Muslim Croat girl.

So you know Emina Arapovic then? Or is there two? Kidding.

I can't tell which nationality you are from your posts - which is very, very, very nice. I hope you'll stick around and share what you know!

So you know Emina Arapovic then? Or is there two? Kidding

Hehe, I've heard about her. What's her background story?

 

Originally posted by zelda I had a conversation with a Turkish guy long time ago. Some of his ancestors were Pomaks. Now, I thought that Pomaks are Islamized Bulgarians, but he said they are of Turkic origin and that his ancerstors spoke Turkish. Is he right or wrong?

Well - here you can read this about the turkish point of view about the pomaks:

Today, Turks in Bulgaria have neither  political nor religious unity. Since the 1990�s, Turks are in the zone of interest of various Christian missioners. In this regard, Pomak Turks and Muslim Gypsies compel their special interest. Moreover, the Bulgarian administration tries to organise Pomak Turks into a different religious structure; this compromises the Turkish unity in Bulgaria.

The turks always want to assimilate the other muslims: pomaks, albanians, kurds or bosniaks ===> i have relatives who consider themselves as turks!!! You can be sure that the bosniaks who are living today in Turkey will be assimilated after 2-3 generations...

 

And - the truth about the pomaks:

The British specialist in Balkan minority-studies Hugh Poulton writes: 'The Bulgarian Muslims (i.e. the Pomaks) are a religious minority. They are Slavic Bulgarians who speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue, but whose religion and customs are Islamic.' (Poulton 1994:111)

Read the full text here: http://www-gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/csbsc/ulf/pomak_identities.h tm

Yes! They are a religious minoity, but not an ethnic minority!

It is important to be marked the fact, that THE ONLY DIFFERENCE between the pomak - bulgarians and the other bulgarians is their religion. In the old historical sources are preserved many pieces of information about the time and the methods of the forcible coversion to mohammedanism of these AUTHENTIC BULGARIANS.

The older pomaks call the christian bulgarians "kaur" which comes from Turkish "gâvur" (infidel). In Pomak dialects there is no word for "Bulgarian". So - those people don't have a sense of ethnic, but just religious difference with christian bulgarians.

Pomaks--a term that loosely translates as collaborators- -were the descendants of ethnic Bulgarians who accepted the Islamic faith during Ottoman rule, mostly between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1990 about 150,000 Pomaks lived in mountain villages in southern and southwestern Bulgaria. They were chiefly employed in agriculture, forestry, and mining. Because of their relative isolation in the mountains, the Pomaks did not become mixed with the Turks during the turkish rule, and because of that, one big part of them were not assimilated from the turks, and they retained their bulgarian physical features. Because the Ottoman Turks showed little interest in Pomak lands, and because the Pomaks were converted rather late, most of their traditional Bulgarian customs remained intact. Thus, for example, the Pomaks never learned to speak Turkish.

 

AND MORE(IN ENGLISH):

 

The covercion to mohammedanism was not only "with sword". The other factor "was the economic pressure and the temptation of privileges and tax reductions received for adopting Islam" - this is one characteristic feature of the Turkish Empire.

Read more here: http://www.coronetbooks.com/books/moha8413.htm

 

Also read this:

Muslim Bulgarians

 

Muslim Bulgarians (also Bulgarian Mohammedans, bul:�������-����������; local: Pomak, Ahrian, Poganets, Marvak, Poturnak) are descendants of Christian Bulgarians who were forcibly converted to Islam by the Turks, during the 16th and the 18th century. The word pomak is derived from Bulgarian dialectal pomaka (torture) and pomacen (tortured). Those who accepted Islam voluntarily are called Poturnak, meaning "One who turned into a Turk".

Muslim Bulgarians live mostly in the Rhodopes � the Smolyan region, the Southern part of the Pazardzhik and Kurdzhali regions and the Western part of the Blagoevgrad region in Southern Bulgaria and the Xanthi and Rhodope provinces in Northeastern Greece. They also live in a group of villages in the Lovech region in Northern Bulgaria.

Muslim Bulgarians speak a variety of archaic Bulgarian dialects. Under the influence of mass media and school education, the dialects have been almost completely unified with standard Bulgarian among Muslim Bulgarians living in Bulgaria. As Greece has tended to regard its Muslim minority as only Turkish-speaking and has allowed only education in Turkish, the Muslim Bulgarian community in Greece has become largely bilingual and the mother tongue of some of its members now is Turkish. The spoken language of those members of the community who have preserved the dialect as their mother tongue has been influenced to a large extent by Turkish and Greek and shows many aberrations from formal Bulgarian.

Pomaks in Bulgaria do not represent a homogenous community. Pomaks living in the eastern part of the Rhodopes tend to be non-practising Muslims and usually have Christian names. A large number of them, especially those living in the municipalities of Zlatograd, Nedelino, Krumovgrad, and Kirkovo, converted to Christianity in the 1990s. Pomaks in the western part of the Rhodopes are, on the hand, strongly religious and have preserved the Muslim name system, customs and clothing. Whereas the majority of the Pomak community has identified itself as Bulgarian in the population censuses in 1992 and 2001, a certain minority in the western Rhodopes has opted for Turkish ethnicity although its mother tongue is also Bulgarian. The name �Pomak� is strongly pejorative in Bulgarian and is resented by most members of the community, especially by non-practising Muslims. The name adopted and used instead is Bulgarian Mohammedans (Muslim Bulgarians).

The Muslim Bulgarian community in Greece has been largely Turkified. Since the 1990s Greece has made tentative attempts to promote a separate "Pomak" identity, partly because of the advanced Turkification of the non-Turkish members of its Muslim minority (Muslim Bulgarians and Roma) and partly for fear of the growing percentage of Muslims in Thrace in the past couple of decennia. A Greek-Pomak dictionary has been issued and Muslim Bulgarians have frequently been described by Greek authorities as "an amalgamation of Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks" or even as "Muslim Slavophone Greeks".

There is also a substantial Muslim Bulgarian community in Turkey, estimated at some 120,000 people. These are not recognized by the Turkish government as an ethnic minority and have been largely Turkified. Some of them have Turkish or distinctive "Pomak" self-consciousness.

Source: http://pomaks.biography.ms/