Origins The
Early Slavs, a people from northeastern Europe, settled the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina (and neighboring regions) after the sixth century (amid the
Migration Period), and were composed of small tribal units drawn from a single Slavic confederation known to the
Byzantines as the
Sclaveni (whilst the related
Antes, roughly speaking, colonized the eastern portions of the Balkans). Recent Anglophone scholarship has tended to downplay the role of migrations. For example, Timothy Gregory conjectures that "It is now generally agreed that the people who lived in the Balkans after the Slavic "invasions" were probably, for the most part, the same as those who had lived there earlier, although the creation of new political groups and the arrival of small numbers of immigrants caused people to look at themselves as distinct from their neighbours, including the Byzantines." However, the archaeological evidence paints a picture of widespread depopulation, perhaps a tactical re-settlement of Byzantine populations from provincial hinterlands to Coastal towns after 620 CE. In former Yugoslav historiography, a second migration of "Serb" and "Croat" tribes (variously placed in the 7th to 9th century) is viewed as that of elites imposing themselves on a more numerous and 'amorphous' Slavic populace, however such a paradigm needs to be clarified empirically. Eighth-century sources mention early Slavophone polities, such as the
Guduscani in northern Dalmatia, the principality of
Slavs in Lower Pannonia, and that of Serbs (
Sorabos) who were 'said to hold much of Dalmatia'. The earliest reference to Bosnia as such is the
De Administrando Imperio, written by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–959). At the end of chapter 32 ("Of the Serbs and of the country they now dwell in"), after a detailed political history, Porphyrogenitus asserts that the prince of Serbia has always submitted himself to Rome, in preference to Rome's regional rivals, the Bulgarians. He then gives two lists of
kastra oikoumena (inhabited cities), the first being those "
en tē baptismenē serbia" (in baptized Serbia; six listed), the second being "
εἱς τὸ χορίον Βόσονα, τὸ Κάτερα καί τὸ Δεσνήκ /
eis to chorion Bosona, to Katera kai to Desnēk" (in the territory of Bosona, [the cities of] Katera and Desnik). To Tibor Zivkovic, this suggests that from a tenth-century Byzantine viewpoint, Bosnia was a territory within the principality of Serbia. The implicit distinction made by Porphyrogenitus between "baptised Serbia" and the territory of Bosona is noteworthy. Subsequently, Bosnia might have been nominally vassal to various rulers from Croatia and Duklja, but by the end of the twelfth century, it came to form an independent unit under an autonomous ruler,
Ban Kulin, who called himself Bosnian. In the 14th century, a Bosnian kingdom centred on the river Bosna emerged. Its people, when not using local (county, regional) names, called themselves Bosnians. In addition, a smaller number of converts from outside Bosnia were in time assimilated into the common Bosniak unit. These included
Croats (mainly from
Turkish Croatia), the Muslims of
Slavonia who fled to Bosnia following the
Austro-Turkish war), Serbian and Montenegrin
Muhacirs (in
Sandžak particularly Islamicized descendants of the
Old Herzegovinian and highlander tribes from
Brda region, such as
Rovčani,
Moračani,
Drobnjaci and
Kuči), and slavicized
Vlachs,
Albanians For the duration of
Ottoman rule, the multiconfessional community of Bosnia was delineated primarily by faith rather than ethnic or national conceptualisation, and "Bosniak" came to refer to all inhabitants of Bosnia as a territorial designation. When
Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, national identification in the modern sense had been a largely foreign concept to Bosnians of both the Christian and Muslim faiths, substantially lagging behind the
Romantic nationalism of Europe at the time. In this regard, Christian Bosnians had not described themselves as either Serbs or Croats before the 19th century, particularly before the Austrian occupation, when the current tri-ethnic reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina was configured based on religious affiliation. For the Muslim Bosnians, this process was further delayed not least by the wish to retain local privileges bestowed upon them by the social structure of Ottoman Bosnia.
Arrival of the Slavs The western Balkans had been reconquered from "
barbarians" by the Byzantine Emperor
Justinian (r. 527–565).
Sclaveni (Slavs) raided the western Balkans, including Bosnia, in the 6th century. The
De Administrando Imperio (DAI; ca. 960) mentions Bosnia (/Bosona) as a "small/little land" (or "small country", /horion Bosona) part of Byzantium, having been settled by Slavic groups along with the
river Bosna,
Zahumlje and
Travunija (both with territory in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina); This is the first mention of a Bosnian entity; it was not a national entity, but a geographical one, mentioned strictly as an integral part of Byzantium. Some scholars assert that the inclusion of Bosnia in Serbia merely reflects the status in DAI's time. In the Early Middle Ages, Fine, Jr. claims that what is today western Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of
Croatia, while the rest was divided between Croatia and
Serbia. After the death of Serbian ruler
Časlav (r. ca. 927–960), Bosnia seems to have broken away from the Serbian state and became politically independent. Bulgaria briefly subjugated Bosnia at the turn of the 10th century, after which it became part of the Byzantine Empire. In the 11th century, Bosnia was part of the Serbian state of
Duklja. In 1137, the Kingdom of Hungary annexed most of the
Bosnia region, then briefly lost it in 1167 to Byzantium before regaining her in the 1180s. Before 1180 (the reign of
Ban Kulin) parts of Bosnia were briefly found in Serb or Croat units. Anto Babić notes that "Bosnia is mentioned on several occasions as a land of equal importance and on the same footing as all other [South Slavic] lands of this area."
Medieval Bosnia that lie scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina are historically associated with the Bosnian Church movement Christian missions emanating from Rome and Constantinople had since the ninth century pushed into the Balkans and firmly established Catholicism in Croatia, while Orthodoxy came to prevail in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and eventually most of Serbia. Bosnia, lying in between, remained a no-man's land due to its mountainous terrain and poor communications. By the twelfth century, most Bosnians were probably influenced by a nominal form of Catholicism characterized by widespread illiteracy and, not least, lack of knowledge in Latin amongst Bosnian clergymen. Around this period, Bosnian independence from
Hungarian overlordship was effected during the reign (1180–1204) of
Kulin Ban whose rule marked the start of a religiopolitical controversy involving the native
Bosnian Church. The Hungarians, frustrated by Bosnia's assertion of independence, successfully denigrated its patchy Christianity as
heresy; in turn rendering a pretext to reassert their authority in Bosnia. Hungarian efforts to gain the loyalty and cooperation of the Bosnians by attempting to establish religious jurisdiction over Bosnia failed however, inciting the Hungarians to persuade the papacy to declare a crusade: finally invading Bosnia and warring there between 1235 and 1241. Experiencing various gradual successes against stubborn Bosnian resistance, the Hungarians eventually withdrew weakened by a
Mongol attack on Hungary. On the request of the Hungarians, Bosnia was subordinated to a Hungarian archbishop by the pope, and though rejected by the Bosnians, the Hungarian-appointed bishop was driven out of Bosnia. The Bosnians, rejecting ties with international Catholicism came to consolidate their independent church, known as the
Bosnian Church, condemned as heretical by both the
Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox churches. Though scholars have traditionally claimed the church to be of a
dualist, or neo-
Manichaean or
Bogomil nature (characterized by the rejection of an omnipotent God, the Trinity, church buildings, the cross, the cult of saints, and religious art), some, such as John Fine, have stressed domestic evidence indicating the retention of basic Catholic theology throughout the Middle Ages. Most scholars agree that adherents of the church referred to themselves by several names;
dobri Bošnjani or
Bošnjani ("good Bosnians" or simply "Bosnians"),
Krstjani (Christians),
dobri mužje (good men),
dobri ljudi (good people) and
boni homines (following the example of a dualist group in Italy). Catholic sources refer to them as
patarini (
patarenes), while the Serbs called them
Babuni (after Babuna Mountain), the Serb term for Bogomils. The Ottomans referred to them as
kristianlar while the Orthodox and Catholics were called
gebir or
kafir, meaning "unbeliever". The Bosnian state was significantly strengthened under the rule (ca. 1318–1353) of Ban
Stephen II of Bosnia who patched up Bosnia's relations with the Hungarian kingdom and expanded the Bosnian state, in turn incorporating Catholic and Orthodox domains to the west and south; the latter following the conquer of
Zahumlje (roughly modern-day Herzegovina) from the Serbian
Nemanjić dynasty. In the 1340s,
Franciscan missions were launched against alleged "heresy" in Bosnia; before this, there had been no Catholics – or at least no Catholic clergy or organization – in Bosnia proper for nearly a century. By the year 1347, Stephen II was the first Bosnian ruler to accept Catholicism, which from then on came to be – at least nominally – the religion of all of Bosnia's medieval rulers, except for possibly
Stephen Ostoja of Bosnia (1398–1404, 1409–18) who continued to maintain close relations with the Bosnian Church. The Bosnian nobility would subsequently often undertake nominal oaths to quell "heretical movements" – in reality, however, the Bosnian state was characterized by a religious plurality and tolerance up until the Ottoman invasion of Bosnia in 1463. By the 1370s, the Banate of Bosnia had evolved into the powerful
Kingdom of Bosnia following the coronation of
Tvrtko I of Bosnia as the first Bosnian king in 1377, further expanding into neighbouring Serb and Croat dominions. However, even with the emergence of a kingdom, no concrete Bosnian identity emerged; religious plurality, independent-minded nobility, and a rugged, mountainous terrain precluded cultural and political unity. As Noel Malcolm stated: "All that one can sensibly say about the ethnic identity of the Bosnians is this: they were the Slavs who lived in Bosnia."
Ottoman Empire After the
Ottoman conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the population was subjected to the process of
Islamisation. The mass Islamisation didn't occur in the first years of the conquest, but in the 1480s in central Bosnia, and in other regions even later as the Ottoman administration stabilised. The full intensity of conversions occurred in the 16th century. After that, the numbers of conversions stagnated. The Western reporters of the 16th and 17th centuries spoke of the Muslim absolute majority in Bosnia and a relative majority in Herzegovina. The slowdown was also due to the cessation of only declarative conversion, as the conversions became the full initiation in the Islamic religion, which could last for several months. Reports from the 17th and 18th centuries, and 18th-century chronicles, reported only individual conversions and very seldom group conversions. At first, this Islamisation was mostly nominal. In reality, it was an attempt at reconciling the two faiths. It was a lengthy, halting progress towards the final abandonment of their beliefs. For centuries, they were not considered full-fledged Muslims, and they even paid taxes like Christians. This process of Islamisation was not yet finished in the 17th century, as is witnessed by
Paul Rycaut in 1670: "But those of this Sect who strangely mix Christianity and Mahometanism [...] The Potures [Muslims] of Bosna are of this Sect, but pay taxes as Christians do; they abhor Images and the sign of the Cross; they circumcise, bringing the Authority of Christ's example for it." The ethnic recomposition started to occur some time before and simultaneously with the process of Islamisation. The multiethnic structure of the Islamicised Slavic population in Bosnia and Herzegovina is evident from the linguistic changes as the southeastern dialects of
Serbo-Croatian language started to push out the northwestern ones. Additionally, the Ottoman rule affected the ethnic and religious makeup of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A large number of Bosnian Catholics retreated to the still unconquered Catholic regions of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia, at the time controlled by the
Republic of Venice and the
Habsburg Monarchy, respectively. To fill depopulated areas in the northern and western
Eyalet of Bosnia, the Ottomans encouraged the migration of large numbers of hardy, skilled settlers from Serbia and Herzegovina. Many of these settlers were Latin-speaking
Vlachs that would come to adopt Slavic speech. Most of them were members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before the Ottoman conquest, that church had very few members in the Bosnian lands outside Herzegovina and the eastern strip of the
Drina valley; there is no definite evidence of any Orthodox church buildings in central, northern, or western Bosnia before 1463. With time, most of the Vlach population adopted a Serb identity. The majority of the converts adopted Islam through a regular conversion process. Generally, historians agree that the Islamization of the Bosnian population was not the result of violent methods of conversion but was, for the most part, peaceful and voluntary. Drawing on the work of Bosnian scholar Adem Handžić who showed that not only old-stock Bosnians contributed to the Islamic conversions but also the settled Vlachs,
Srećko Matko Džaja argues that while their number was lower than that of the native Bosnians it was still high enough to call into question the well-known thesis of a perfect continuity of the emerging Bosnian Muslim population with a supposed medieval Bosnian "Bogomil" past. Dzaja however stops short of offering any quantitative data as to the Vlach admixture. The early converts through the
devshirme system in the first decades after the Ottoman conquest were the sons of the Bosnian medieval nobility. However, as the Ottoman frontier moved north and west and the privileges of the Vlachs were abolished, they, too, were subjected to the devshirme. The regular converts, however, had a much greater share in the total Bosnian Muslim population. Ottoman records show that on many occasions, the devshirme practice was voluntary in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For example, the 1603–4 levies from Bosnia and Albania imply that such youths and their families attempted to include themselves amongst those selected. Of the groups sent from Bosnia, unusually, 410 children were Muslims, and only 82 were Christians. This was due to the so-called "special permission" granted in response to the request by
Mehmed II, which made Bosnia the only area from which Muslim boys were taken. These children were called "poturoğulları" (Bosnian Muslim boys conscripted for the janissary army). They were taken only into service under
bostancıbaşı, in the
palace gardens. Slovene observer
Benedikt Kuripečič compiled the first reports of the religious communities in the 1530s. According to the records for 1528 and 1529, there were a total of 42,319 Christian and 26,666 Muslim households in the
sanjaks (Ottoman administrative units) of
Bosnia,
Zvornik and
Herzegovina. In a 1624 report on Bosnia (excluding Herzegovina) by
Peter Masarechi, an early-seventeenth-century
apostolic visitor of the Catholic Church to Bosnia, the population figures are given as 450,000 Muslims, 150,000 Catholics and 75,000 Orthodox Christians. Demographically, the Bosnian Muslims were impacted by epidemics from the mid-17th century, and especially during the 18th century. The Muslim population was more affected than the rest, as they lived densely in towns and villages, unlike the rural Christians. The demographic blow was also caused by the
Great Turkish War (1683–1699) and wars on the Persian and Russian fronts in the 18th century. However, these demographic losses were compensated by Muslim refugees during the Great Turkish War, who arrived from
Hungary,
Syrmia,
Slavonia,
Croatia and
Dalmatia. Some 130,000 Muslims left the mentioned regions to settle in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These included people who arrived there from Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Ottoman conquest, but also native converts from those regions. Additionally, around 2,200 Muslims settled from
Herceg-Novi in present-day
Montenegro to the areas of
Konjic,
Rogatica and
Sarajevo after Herceg Novi was taken by the Venetians in 1687. Thanks to these refugees, the Bosnian Muslims remained an absolute majority until the second half of the 18th century. There were also immigrations of Slavic Muslims from present-day Serbia. These Slavic Muslims were descendants of converts from the local Slavic population as well as immigrants from the East and other ethnic groups. These immigrations begun after the
Austro-Turkish War (1735–1739). Also, there was a larger number of Bosnian Muslim immigrants to Serbia in 1741. The second wave of emmigration of Slavic Muslims from Serbia occurred in 1788. A large influx of Muslim refugees from Serbia arrived to Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1860s, a trend which continued until the 1880s. Serbia completely lost its Muslim population by 1867, while the emigration from southeastern Serbia ended in 1882. These were the result of efforts of the Serbian authorities to remove their Muslim population. Between 1867 and 1868, around 30,000 Muslims moved from Serbia to Bosnia and Herzegovina. This last wave of immigrants settled the areas in and around of
Bijeljina,
Janja,
Kozluk,
Zvornik,
Srebrenica,
Vlasenica,
Brčko,
Kladanj,
Tuzla and
Gračanica. They also established new setllements:
Brezovačko Polje,
Šamac and
Orašje. Also, after the
Congress of Berlin in 1878, when former Ottoman territory was awarded to
Montenegro, some 20,000 Slavic Muslims and Albanians emigrated, half of whom went to Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Novi Pazar. These Montenegrin Muslims were mostly from the towns of
Nikšić and
Kolašin. During the Ottoman Empire, the Bosnian Muslims didn't express their collective identity toward other Bosnians through Bosniak identity. At the time, the Bosnian population differentiated between the Turks, which included the Muslims in general, and the Christians (
hrišćani for the Eastern Orthodox Christians and
kršćani for the Catholics), also called the Vlachs. This was a key distinction among the Bosnian population at the time. In the late Ottoman period, Bosnian Muslim public discourse sometimes invoked Bosnia as a distinct historical and political land. The clearest example is
Mehmed Šakir Kurtćehajić, editor of
Sarajevski cvjetnik, whose writing defended Bosnia against Serbian and Croatian national claims and presented Bosnian Muslims within a Bosnian historical-political framework. According to
Džaja, the Bosnian Muslim population lacked any cultural tradition with medieval Bosnia. Several authors and traditions show a continuing attachment to Bosnia as a land of origin, language and communal belonging, although this should not be equated with modern nationalism. The seventeenth-century writer
Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi used the designation
Bosnevi and compiled a Bosnian–Turkish dictionary in 1631, while
Hasan Kafi Pruščak, whose full scholarly name included
al-Bosnevi, was likewise identified through a Bosnian
nisba. Other Ottoman Bosnian Muslim figures, such as
Mula Mustafa Bašeskija, were rooted in Bosnian urban and provincial settings, while
Bosniak epic poetry repeatedly represented Bosnia as homeland, region and political whole. The
Ottoman military reform efforts, which called for further expansion of the centrally controlled army (
nizam), new taxes and more Ottoman bureaucracy, would have important consequences in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These reforms weakened the special status and privileges of the Bosnian aristocracy, while the formation of a modern army endangered the privileges of the Bosnian Muslim military men and local lords, who demanded greater independence from Constantinople.
Barbara Jelavich states: "The Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina [...] were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Ottoman government. The centralising reforms cut directly into their privileges and seemed to offer no compensating benefits. [...]"
Austria-Hungary was the leading proponent of the Bosniak identity The
Austro-Hungarian administration of the joint Finance Minister
Béni Kállay promoted the idea of a non-confessional unitary "Bosniak" identity that would encompass all inhabitants (more akin to "Bosnism"), going even as far as prohibiting Bosnian cultural associations from using the terms "Serb" and "Croat" in their names in the 1880s. In 1883, they officially called the vernacular language "Bosnian". The policy placed its hopes mainly in the Catholic community (which was not yet as deeply entrenched in Croat nationalism as the Orthodox were in the Serb one) and the Muslim community (which sought to distance itself from the Ottoman Empire). In reality, only a small circle of Muslim notables at the time favoured such a unitary nation. The movement's foremost proponent was
Mehmed Kapetanović. Although it failed, the Bosniak ideology promoted by the Austrian-Hungarian authorities laid the foundation for the modern Bosniak identity. By emphasising the pre-Ottoman past, it created a founding myth —a theory of the massive conversion of medieval
Bogumils to Islam upon the Ottoman conquest —offering a historical continuity and rationale for their presence in Europe. Before this, Bosnian Muslims lacked any cultural ties to medieval Bosnia. The idea of continuity between the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian medieval period through the supposed conversion of the Bosnian Muslim nobility from Bogomilism was first put forth by
Nicholas of Modruš, a papal legate, in the late 15th century. The idea survived in literary circles and was used by the forgers of the 16th and 17th centuries for the needs of certain upstart individuals. In the end, the idea was presented to the Bosnian Muslims. The literary work of the Bosnian Muslims lacks any tradition of identity with the medieval Bosnian period, indicating the discontinuity of Bosnian Muslim society with medieval Bosnian society.
Stephan Burián von Rajecz became the Finance Minister in 1903, marking a turning point in Austrian-Hungarian national policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina. They abandoned the failed Bosniak project and promoted a communitarian identity for the various groups within Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1907, they changed the vernacular language's name to Serbo-Croatian. The Serbo-Croatian Muslims were referred to as "Mohammedans" until the early 1900s, when the term "Muslims" gained wider acceptance. The term gained official recognition during the 1910 census. While the communitarisation of the socio-political life of the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic communities was harmonised with Serb and Croat nationalist sentiment, such a process was absent in the Muslim community. In the Austrian-Hungarian period and after it, the majority of Bosnian Muslims lacked national identity, while those who did often changed it through their lifetime. Historian
Robert Donia wrote that "the declarations [of nationality] were mostly tactical and political; some Muslims changed from one camp to the other on several occasions. Simply stated, a separate Muslim identity was too advanced to be easily renounced by any significant number of Bosnian Muslims". Despite the low school attendance, the Muslim community produced a small portion of
intelligentsia. The intelligentsia clashed with traditional Muslim elites, urging them to abandon Ottoman nostalgia and embrace European modernity. The intellectuals refused a national identity limited to Bosnian Muslims, instead opting to join the two existing camps: the Serbian or the Croatian. The division between the two camps further weakened the Muslim intelligentsia. According to Donia, "more Muslims declared themselves as Croats prior to the turn of the [twentieth] century. They tended to be young intellectuals schooled in Zagreb, Vienna, or elsewhere in the Monarchy. After 1900, more declared themselves Serbs, probably drawn by the magnetic military and political successes of independent Serbia". The traditional representatives of the Bosnian Muslims were indifferent towards the idea of a national identity or deeply reserved about being included in one. During a parliamentary discussion about the name of the vernacular language, the Bosnian Muslim representative
Derviš Bey Miralem stated that: In 1875, a
revolt by Orthodox Serb peasants in Herzegovina sparked a significant geopolitical shift in the Balkans. By 1876, Serbia and Montenegro used the uprising as a pretext to declare war on the Ottoman Empire, with the Russian Empire following suit a year later. The subsequent Ottoman defeat led to the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which reshaped the political landscape of the region.
Serbia and
Montenegro gained official independence and expanded their territories, while
Bulgaria achieved
de facto independence, marking a crucial step in the formation of Balkan nation-states. Bosnia, however, transitioned from one imperial rule to another. Except for the
Sanjak of Novi Pazar, the Bosnian Vilayet was placed under Austrian-Hungarian military occupation while formally remaining under Ottoman sovereignty. The Novi Pazar Agreement, signed in 1879 between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, reaffirmed Ottoman sovereignty in principle while outlining the framework for Austro-Hungarian administration. The agreement also secured certain religious rights for Muslims in the newly designated Province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, allowing them to maintain ties with Ottoman religious authorities, fly Ottoman flags at mosques during religious holidays, and hold khutbas (Friday sermons) in the name of the Sultan. Austrian-Hungarian troops initially encountered armed resistance from segments of the Muslim population upon entering the province. While Sarajevo fell within a few days, it took three months for Austrian-Hungarian forces to establish full control over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This resistance stemmed largely from Muslim opposition to becoming subjects of a non-Muslim power. However, the secular and religious Muslim elites generally viewed Austro-Hungarian rule as the lesser of two evils and prioritised the protection of their material interests. Consequently, they opposed armed resistance and quickly pledged allegiance to the new imperial authority. Nonetheless, many among them harboured a deep nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire and even secretly hoped for its return. s (emigrants) left for the Ottoman Empire as a form of resistance to Austrian-Hungarian rule Rather than armed revolt, emigration became the primary means through which some Bosnian Muslims expressed their refusal to submit to Austro-Hungarian rule. This emigration continued throughout the Austro-Hungarian period, intensifying during moments of political tension, particularly following the formal annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, which ended the façade of Ottoman sovereignty. Austro-Hungarian records document approximately 65,000 departures to the Ottoman Empire between 1878 and 1914, suggesting that higher estimates of 100,000 to 150,000 emigrants are likely exaggerated. The issue of emigration sparked the first major doctrinal debate of the post-Ottoman era. Some members of the ulama (Islamic scholars) framed emigration as hijra (religious migration) and, therefore, a religious duty. This interpretation was reinforced by a fatwa issued in 1887 by the Şeyh-ül-Islam of Istanbul, the highest religious authority in the Ottoman Empire. However, several Bosnian ulama rejected this view, arguing that submission to a non-Muslim power was permissible. In 1884, the Mufti of Tuzla, Teufik Azapagić, asserted that Bosnia and Herzegovina had not become part of dar al-kufr (the realm of unbelief) but remained within dar al-Islam (the realm of Islam), as Muslims were still able to practice their religion freely. According to Azapagić, Bosnian Muslims were therefore not obligated to emigrate to Ottoman territory. During the 20th century, Bosnian Muslims founded several cultural and welfare associations to promote and preserve their cultural identity. The most prominent associations were
Gajret,
Merhamet,
Narodna Uzdanica and later
Preporod. The Bosnian Muslim intelligentsia also gathered around the magazine
Bosnia in the 1860s to promote the idea of a unified
Bosniak nation. This Bosniak group would remain active for several decades, with the continuity of ideas and the use of the
Bosniak name. From 1891 until 1910, they published a Latin-script magazine titled
Bošnjak (Bosniak), which promoted the concept of
Bosniakism (Bošnjaštvo) and openness toward European culture. Since that time the Bosniaks adopted European culture under the broader influence of the Habsburg Monarchy. At the same time they kept the peculiar characteristics of their Bosnian Islamic lifestyle. These initial, but important initiatives were followed by a new magazine named
Behar whose founders were
Safvet-beg Bašagić (1870–1934),
Edhem Mulabdić (1862–1954) and
Osman Nuri Hadžić (1869–1937). of the
Austro-Hungarian Army. BHI was commended for their bravery in service of the Austrian emperor in WWI, winning more medals than any other unit. After the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the Austrian administration of
Benjamin Kallay, the Austro-Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, officially endorsed "Bosniakhood" as the basis of a multi-confessional Bosnian nation that would include Christians as well as Muslims. The policy attempted to isolate Bosnia and Herzegovina from its neighbours (Orthodox Serbia and Catholic Croatia, but also the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire) and to negate the concepts of Serbian and Croatian nationhood which had already begun to take ground among the country's Orthodox and Catholic communities, respectively. The notion of Bosnian nationhood was, however, was rejected even by Bosnian Muslims and fiercely opposed by Serb and Croat nationalists who were instead seeking to claim Bosnian Muslims as their own, a move that was rejected by most of them. After Kallay died in 1903, the official policy slowly drifted towards accepting the three-ethnic reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ultimately, the failure of Austro-Hungarian ambitions to nurture a Bosniak identity amongst the Catholic and Orthodox led to almost exclusively Bosnian Muslims adhering to it, with 'Bosniakhood' consequently adopted as a Bosnian Muslim ethnic ideology by nationalist figures. In November 1881, upon introducing the
Bosnian-Herzegovinian Infantry, the Austro-Hungarian government passed a Military Law (
Wehrgesetz) imposing an obligation upon all Bosnian Muslims to serve in the
Imperial Army, which led to widespread riots in December 1881 and throughout 1882; the Austrians appealed to the
Mufti of
Sarajevo,
Mustafa Hilmi Hadžiomerović (born 1816) and he soon issued a
Fatwa "calling on the Bosniaks to obey military Law." Other important Muslim community leaders such as Mehmed-beg Kapetanović Ljubušak, later Mayor of
Sarajevo, also appealed to young Muslim men to serve in the Habsburg military. In 1903, the
Gajret cultural society was established; it promoted
Serb identity among the Slavic Muslims of
Austria-Hungary (today's
Bosnia and Herzegovina) and viewed that the
Muslims were Serbs lacking ethnic consciousness. The view that Muslims were Serbs is probably the oldest of three ethnic theories among the
Bosnian Muslims themselves. At the outbreak of World War I, Bosnian Muslims were conscripted to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army, some chose to desert rather than fight against fellow Slavs, whilst some Bosniaks attacked Bosnian Serbs in apparent anger after the
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500 prominent Serbs, 700–2,200 of whom died in prison. 460 Serbs were sentenced to death and a predominantly Bosniak special militia known as the
Schutzkorps was established and carried out the persecution of Serbs. Neven Anđelić writes
One can only guess what kind of feeling was dominant in Bosnia at the time. Both animosity and tolerance existed at the same time.
Yugoslavia was one of the most important members of the Bosnian Muslim community during the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia). After World War I, the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was formed. In it, Bosnian Muslims alongside Macedonians and Montenegrins were not acknowledged as a distinct ethnic group. However; the first provisional cabinet included a Muslim. Politically, Bosnia and Herzegovina was split into four
banovinas with Muslims being the minority in each. After the
Cvetković-Maček Agreement 13 counties of Bosnia and Herzegovina were incorporated into the
Banovina of Croatia and 38 counties into the projected Serbian portion of Yugoslavia. Moreover, land reforms proclaimed in the February 1919 affected 66.9 per cent of the land in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Given that the old landowning was predominantly Bosnian Muslim, the land reforms were resisted. Violence against Muslims and the enforced seizure of their lands shortly ensued. Bosnian Muslims were offered compensation but it was never fully materialized. The regime sought to pay 255,000,000 dinars in compensation per a period of 40 years with an interest rate of 6%. Payments began in 1936 and were expected to be completed in 1975; however, in 1941 World War Two erupted and only 10% of the projected remittances were made. Until 1968, the Bosnian Muslims were given no official recognition as a distinct ethnicity in the former Yugoslavia. In 1968, the Constitution of Yugoslavia was thus amended to introduce a "
Muslim nationality" that would define native Slavic Serbo-Croatian speaking Muslims on the territory of the former Yugoslavia; effectively recognizing a constitutive Yugoslav nation alongside Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins and Macedonians. Prior to this, the great majority of Bosnian Muslims had declared either "Ethnically Undecided Muslim" or – to a lesser extent – "Undecided Yugoslav" in Yugoslav censuses as the other available options were "Serb-Muslim" and "Croat-Muslim". Albeit achieving national recognition, the novel use of "Muslim" as an ethnic rather than religious denomination was met with scepticism by leading Bosnian Muslim political figures such as
Hamdija Pozderac who remarked "they are not giving us Bosnianhood, they are offering Muslimness. Let us take what they are offering, even if it is the wrong name, but we will open a process". reading a
Nazi propaganda book,
Islam und Judentum, in
Nazi-occupied Southern France (
Bundesarchiv, 21 June 1943) cross the
Drinjača river during the
Kugelblitz / Schneesturm operations againts Axis forces, December 1943 During World War II, Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the
Independent State of Croatia (NDH), and the majority of Bosnian Muslims considered themselves to be ethnic Croats. A large number of the Bosnian Muslim population sided with the Ustaše. Muslims composed approximately 12 per cent of the civil service and armed forces of the
Independent State of Croatia. Some of them also participated in
Ustaše atrocities, while Bosnian Muslims in Nazi
Waffen-SS units were responsible for massacres of Serbs in northwest and eastern Bosnia, most notably in
Vlasenica. At this time
several massacres against Bosnian Muslims were carried out by Serb and Montenegrin
Chetniks. Some Bosnian Muslim elite and notables issued resolutions or memorandums in various cities that publicly denounced Nazi collaborationist measures, laws and violence against Serbs:
Prijedor (23 September), Sarajevo (the
Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims of 12 October),
Mostar (21 October),
Banja Luka (12 November),
Bijeljina (2 December) and
Tuzla (11 December). The resolutions condemned the
Ustaše in Bosnia and Herzegovina, both for their mistreatment of Muslims and for their attempts at turning Muslims and Serbs against one another. One memorandum declared that since the beginning of the Ustaše regime, that Muslims dreaded the lawless activities that some Ustaše, some Croatian government authorities, and various illegal groups perpetrated against the Serbs. Many Muslims joined the
Yugoslav Partisan forces, "making it a truly multi-ethnic force". Year 1943 marked a turning point in the attitude of Bosnian Muslims toward the Partisans, as Chetnik violence, the weakening of the NDH, encouraged a significant section of the Muslim population, and the involvement of prominent figures such as
Nurija Pozderac,
Vahida Maglajlić,
Hasan Brkić,
Avdo Humo and others. This process was reflected in the formation of Muslim Partisan units, most notably the
16th Muslim Brigade, while
Hoare also notes the later influx of former members of the
Green Cadres into Partisan ranks during 1944. Even so, Serb-dominated Yugoslav Partisans would often enter Bosnian Muslim villages, killing Bosnian Muslim intellectuals and other potential opponents. In February 1943, the Germans approved the
13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) and began recruitment. It is estimated that 75,000 Muslims died in the war, although the number may have been as high as 86,000 or 6.8 per cent of their pre-war population. In the 1948 census, Bosnia and Herzegovina's Muslims had three options in the census: "Serb-Muslim", "Croat-Muslim", and "ethnically undeclared Muslim". In the 1953 census the category "Yugoslav, ethnically undeclared" was introduced and the overwhelming majority of those who declared themselves as such were Muslims. Muslim members of the communist party continued in their efforts to get Tito to support their position for recognition. Following the downfall of Ranković, Tito changed his view and stated that recognition of Muslims and their national identity should occur. In 1971, the Muslims were fully recognized as a nationality and in the census the option "
Muslims by nationality" was added. near Srebrenica. Around 8,000+ Bosniak men and boys were killed by the units of the
Army of the Republika Srpska during the
Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. During the war, the Bosniaks were subject to
ethnic cleansing and
genocide. The war caused hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks to flee the nation. The war also caused many drastic demographic changes in Bosnia. Bosniaks were prevalent throughout almost all of Bosnia in 1991, a year before the war officially broke out. As a result of the war, Bosniaks in Bosnia were concentrated mostly in areas that were held by the Bosnian government during the war for independence. Today Bosniaks make up the absolute majority in
Sarajevo and its
canton, most of northwestern Bosnia around
Bihać, as well as central Bosnia,
Brčko District,
Goražde,
Podrinje and parts of Herzegovina. At the outset of the Bosnian war, forces of the
Army of Republika Srpska attacked the Bosnian Muslim civilian population in eastern Bosnia. Once towns and villages were securely in their hands, the Bosnian Serb forces – military, police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Bosnian Serb villagers – applied the same pattern: houses and apartments were systematically ransacked or burnt down, civilians were rounded up or captured, and sometimes beaten or killed in the process. Men and women were separated, with many of the men massacred or detained in the camps. The women were kept in various detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions, where they were mistreated in many ways including being raped repeatedly. Bosnian Serb soldiers or policemen would come to these detention centres, select one or more women, take them out and rape them. The Bosnian Serbs had the upper hand due to heavier weaponry (despite less manpower) that was given to them by the Yugoslav People's Army and established control over most areas where Serbs had a relative majority but also in areas where they were a significant minority in both rural and urban regions excluding the larger towns of Sarajevo and
Mostar. Bosnian Serb military and political leadership received the most accusations of
war crimes by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) many of which have been confirmed after the war in ICTY trials. Most of the capital
Sarajevo was predominantly held by the Bosniaks. In the 44 months of the siege, terror against Sarajevo residents varied in intensity, but the purpose remained the same: inflict suffering on civilians to force the Bosnian authorities to accept Bosnian Serb demands. Bosniaks accounted for roughly half of all deaths which took place during the Yugoslav Wars (approximately 65,000 of 130,000 total fatalities).
Modern identity located in the city of
Sarajevo. By the early 1990s, a vast majority of Bosnian Muslims identified as
ethnic Muslims. According to a poll from 1990, only 1.8% of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina supported the idea of a "Bosniak" national identity (by then already an essentially
archaic term), while 17% considered the name to encompass all of the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their main political party, the
Party of Democratic Action, rejected the idea of Bosniak identity and managed to expel those who promoted it. The supporters of the Bosniak nationhood established their political party, the
Muslim Bosniak Organisation, and received only 1.1% of the votes during the 1990 general election. At the 1991 census, 1,496 people identified as Muslims-Bosniaks, 1,285 as Bosniaks and 876 as Bosniaks-Muslims, totalling to 3,657 or 0.08% of the total population. On 27 September 1993, however, after the leading political, cultural, and religious representatives of Bosnian Muslims held an assembly and at the same time when they rejected the
Owen–Stoltenberg peace plan adopted the Bosniak name deciding to "return to our people their historical and national name of Bosniaks, to tie ourselves in this way for our country of Bosnia and its state-legal tradition, for our Bosnian language and all spiritual tradition of our history". The main reason for the SDA to adopt the Bosniak identity, only three years after expelling the supporters of the idea from their party ranks, was due to foreign policy considerations. One of the leading SDA figures
Džemaludin Latić, the editor of the official gazette of the party, commented on the decision stating that: "In Europe, he who doesn't have a national name, doesn't have a country" and that "we must be Bosniaks, that what we are, to survive in our country". The decision to adopt the Bosniak identity was primarily influenced by the change of opinion of the former communist intellectuals such as
Atif Purivatra,
Alija Isaković and those who were a part of the pan-Islamists such as
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić (who was a staunch opponent of Bosniak identity), all of whom saw the changing of the name to Bosniak as a way to connect the Bosnian Muslims to the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In other ex-Yugoslav countries with significant Slavic Muslim populations, adoption of the Bosniak name has been less consistent. The effects of this phenomenon are most evident in the censuses. For instance, the 2003 Montenegrin census recorded 48,184 people who registered as Bosniaks and 28,714 who registered as Muslim by nationality. Although Montenegro's Slavic Muslims form one ethnic community with a shared culture and history, this community is divided on whether to register as Bosniaks (
i.e. adopt Bosniak national identity) or as Muslims by nationality. Similarly, the 2002 Slovenian census recorded 8,062 people who registered as Bosnians, presumably highlighting (in large part) the decision of many secular Bosniaks to primarily identify themselves in that way (a situation somewhat comparable to the "
Yugoslav" option during the
socialist period). However, such people comprise a minority (even in countries such as
Montenegro where it is a significant political issue) while the great majority of Slavic Muslims in the
former Yugoslavia have adopted the Bosniak national name. September 28 is marked as Bosniaks' Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the 2nd Bosniak Assembly of 1993, when the national name "Bosniak" was reinstated. == Relation to Bosnian nationalism ==