, also known as "
Zmaj od Bosne" (
Dragon of Bosnia) is one of the most important Bosniak national heroes. The earliest vestige of a
Bosnian identity initially emerged in
medieval Bosnia and lacked any religious connotation. The situation remained largely unchanged throughout the
Ottoman period with terms such as "Boşnaklar", "Boşnak taifesi", "Bosnalı takımı", "Bosnalı kavmi" (all meaning, roughly, "the Bosniak people") being used to describe Bosniaks in a regional sense. After the
Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the
Austrian administration officially endorsed
Bošnjaštvo ('Bosniakhood') as the basis of a continued
multi-confessional Bosnian nation. The policy aspired to isolate Bosnia and Herzegovina from its
irredentist neighbors (
Orthodox Serbia,
Catholic Croatia, and the
Muslims of the
Ottoman Empire) and to negate the concept of
Croatian and
Serbian nationhood which had already begun to make headway among Bosnia and Herzegovina's
Catholic and
Orthodox communities, respectively. Nevertheless, in part due to the dominant standing held in the previous centuries by the native
Muslim population in Ottoman Bosnia, a sense of Bosniak nationhood was cherished mainly by Muslim Bosnians, while fiercely opposed by nationalists from Serbia and Croatia who were instead opting to claim the Bosnian Muslim population as their own, a move that was rejected by most Bosnian Muslims.
Austro-Hungarian period witnessed the emergence of Bosniak nationalism. It was in this period that the Bosnian Muslims made political demands in a modern sense. After 1906, the Muslims established several political parties and many institutions and associations which reflected their ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. In an article of the journal
Bošnjak ("The Bosniak"), Bosniak author and
mayor of Sarajevo Mehmed Kapetanović declared that Bosnian Muslims were neither
Croats nor
Serbs but a distinct, though related, people: Upon
the founding of
Yugoslavia in 1918,
Yugoslav unitarists claimed that there was only one single
Yugoslav nation and that the
Croats,
Serbs, and
Slovenes were recognized as the "tribes" of the Yugoslavs, this excluded recognition of Bosniaks as a
distinct people of Yugoslavia and provoked frustration amongst Bosniaks. In response to a lack of recognition, the
Yugoslav Muslim Organization (JMO) was founded in 1919 with support of most Bosniaks and other
Slavic Muslims in entire region, including the Muslim
intelligentsia and social elite, that sought to defend Bosniak and Muslim identity - including religious, social, and economic rights within
Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The JMO took part in
government briefly in 1928 and then longer from 1935 to 1938 in which it participated in government with the goal of preserving the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina in opposition to plans to
create an autonomous Croatia that held territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The JMO's efforts to prevent the
partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina failed and the
Banovina of Croatia was created in 1939. Bosniak nationalism received a severe setback during
World War II when
Yugoslavia was invaded by the
Axis powers and Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed by the
Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that regarded the Bosniaks as "
Muslim Croats". By late 1941, much of the Bosniak elite openly criticized the
NDH regime for
its policy toward its minorities, and demanded autonomy for Bosnia and Herzegovina. With the creation of
Socialist Yugoslavia in 1945,
Bosnia and Herzegovina was restored as a territorial entity and as one of the six constituent republics of the federal state of Yugoslavia. To resolve the Serb-Croat dispute over Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
Yugoslav government in 1971 recognized
Bosnian Muslims as a nationality. Bosniak nationalism rose in strength since the 1980s, especially following
Alija Izetbegović's publishing of the
Islamic Declaration that called for an
Islamic renewal amongst Bosniaks, Izetbegović was arrested by Yugoslav state authorities in 1983 on allegations that he was promoting a purely Muslim Bosnia, and served five years in prison. In 1990, Izetbegović and others founded the
Party of Democratic Action, that became the main Bosniak party in the
Bosnian parliament. The eruption of the
Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995 strengthened Bosnian Muslim identity. In 1993, "Bosniak" was officially revived as the ethnic or national designation to replace the "Muslim" designation, employed by the Yugoslav authorities. ==See also==