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Bulgaria |Turkish Invasion |Medieval Ages |14th Century |15th Century |Ottoman Empire

Streszczenie

In the 12th–14th century the Bulgarian Tsardom was one of the largest and most prosperous states in the European Southeast. The Bulgarian culture reached its climax and a showing example, that could be seen even today, is the image of sebastocrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava in the Boyana church near Sofia. The Ottoman invasion ended the existence of the Medieval Bulgarian state—the famous Bulgarian historian Ivan Tyutyundzhiev defined it as follows: “The Ottoman invasion cut off the hand of the Boyana painter.” The article explores the struggle of the Bulgarians against the Turkish invasion from the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the 15th century. The main points related to these crucial times are marked. Different hypotheses and theories about the stages of the conquering of the Bulgarian lands are dealt upon.

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Ottomans |Ottoman State |Fetret Devri |Rumeli |Balkans |Frontier Lords

Streszczenie

As Peter Mentzel states, the Balkans (Rumeli) were not only a borderland but also the core province of the early Ottoman state. The Rumelian military aristocracy played one of the most important roles in the internal policy. It constituted an important factor, which was powerful enough to create the Ottoman policy. That is why Murad I forbade the Ottoman princes to lead the akıncı warriors in order to avoid the risk of a dynastic war. He also started devshirme among Christian families in the Balkans so as to build trustworthy groups of servants for the dynasty. Obviously, the province gained importance in the difficult times after the defeat at Ankara (1402). During the civil war (1402–1413, fetret devri) Rumeli was governed by one of the brothers who claimed power over the whole Ottoman territory. The deciding struggles between the sons of Bayezid I took place in the Balkans and their result depended mainly on the attitudes shown by the Rumelian warriors and their frontier lords. The rulers who lost the support of the Rumelian military class quickly lost the throne of Rumeli as well. It happened in the cases of Emir Süleyman, prince Musa, and Düzme Mustafa.

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19th century |Ottoman Empire |Michał Czajkowski (Sadık Paşa) |Slavic Regiment |Polish in Balkans

Streszczenie

In the mid-19th century, a Polish writer, political agent and renegade, called Michał Czajkowski (Sadık Paşa), managed to do something remarkable in the Ottoman Empire. After the beginning of the Crimean War in 1853, in that complex international and geopolitical situation on the Balkans and amidst the triangle of the great empires—the British, French and Russian—he created the first official regular Christian military unit within the Ottoman Empire. That “Christian army” was composed almost entirely by Christians. The official Christian character of that Ottoman military unit made them an unique instrument and representative of the modernization processes during the Tanzimat era. As an Ottoman general Michał Czajkowski (Sadık Paşa) commanded his Slavic Regiment for nearly 20 years from 1853 to 1870 throughout the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

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islam |Bosnia and Herzegovina |Croatia |Croatian Non-Fiction Literature of 19th-Century Travelogues |Modernisation Currents |nationalism |nation-building

Streszczenie

During the so-called Croatian National Revival and decades which follows, intellectuals involved in various variations of this movement considered Bosnia and Herzegovina to be part of the Croatian national space. As a consequence, Bosnians were seen as part of the Croatian nation. In particular, this concerned the Catholic and Muslim population. However, the main problem in the perception of Bosnia and Herzegovina was an encounter with its oriental shaped culture. The biggest challenge was contact with Bosnian Muslims, whose identity was shaped by Islam, the religion which was connoted in Croatia with the loss of control over many Croatian lands including Bosnia as well as backwardness. The testimonies of these problems are present in the travelogues from journeys to Bosnia and Herzegovina by Croatian intellectuals in the 19th century. On the one hand, they concerned Muslims as Croatians who converted to Islam, as representatives of exotic culture, burdened with many stereotypes. In the Croatian nationalists’ attempts to recruit Bosnian Muslims, local intermediaries, members of the Muslim elite, were needed. For the Croats, the optimal partners were the activists from the pro-modernization circles of local elites. If such persons would accept Croatian identity they were seen as valuable allies who capable to enrich Croatian culture, but also help to Europeanise their fatherland. Croatian travellers from the second half of 19th century found such persons and especially appreciated such persons as Savfet-beg Bašagić and Osman Nuri Hadžić, one of the main Bosnian Muslim modernists of that time. However, Croatian intellectuals were also unwilling to get in touch with autonomist pro-modernization circles of Bosnian Muslims elite and prefer to conceal their existence. In case of the conservative part of Bosnian Muslims elites Croats would rather accept a critique originated from Croatianleaning, pro-modernization groups because they perceived them as a threat to assimilation actions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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19th century |Balkans |Muslims Minority in Bulgaria |Agrarian Revolution in Bulgaria |Bulgarian History

Streszczenie

The turn of the 19th and 20th c. brought about deep changes in the Bulgarian ownership structure: what the Russians labeled the Agrarian Revolution, related to all processes of land changing hands from Muslim to Bulgarian ones. The basis for most activities related to seizures of Muslim estates were migrations and the abandonment of property during the war in 1877–1878. During the period of the Provisional Russian Administration in Bulgaria (March 1878–June 1879) the Agrarian Revolution was one of the most important tasks that the Tsar’s representatives addressed in Bulgaria. Bulgarian control over land was to be the foundation of Christian domination in the state, which the Russians also saw as a guarantee of their continued influence in the Eastern Balkans. This involved both dispossessions and lotting out chiftliks among the agrarian workers who cultivated the land, as well as taking control over properties abandoned by war refugees (so-called muhajirs). The article is focused on the Muslim medium and small peasants, the cases of owners of chiftliks will not be considered, according to a large range of the topic.

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islam |Turks |poturice |poturica gori od Tučina |Serb Muslims |Muslims

Streszczenie

The article aims to show the issue of the influence of Islam on “our Muslims,” as one of the most important heritage of the Ottoman Empire in the Balcan Peninsula, in the Serbian nationalistic discourse. The analysis includes the discourse from the period of the national revival (Vuk Karadžić and Ilija Garašanin), the Austro-Hungarian administrative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Milenko M. Vukićević and Serbian magazines), travelogues (Georgije Magarašević and Spiridon Gopčević) and geography, ethnographic and ethnopsychological research (Jovan Cvijić, Jovan Hadži Vasiljević and Čedomil Mitrinović) which considers the case of poturice—Serbian converts. The text shows how the stereotypical influence of Islam was duplicated and altered from the second part of the 19th century to the first years of the 20th century.

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Turkish Music |Ottoman Music |Turkish Five |Milli Musiki

Streszczenie

The Turkish Five (Türk Beşleri) is a name given to a group of composers whose works set out the direction for modern Western-style Turkish art music. After the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the new generation of musicians trained in Europe had been given the task to establish a new musical tradition for the modern Turkish society. It was supposed to replace the Ottoman musical tradition. According to outlines given by the Turkish government, the new “National Music” (Millî Musiki) should encompass elements of Western-style art music and melodies of Turkish folk music. Five composers were especially successful in fulfilling this task, Necil Kâzım Akses, Hasan Ferit Alnar, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Ahmet Adnan Saygun and Cemal Reşit Rey. By their compositions, they brought to live music that was appreciated by Kemal Atatürk himself. Although they were supposed to avoid any elements of the Ottoman musical tradition, even in the most popular works of this period, one can hear influences that were not to be heard in the Millî Musiki. In this paper, the author presents the main guidelines and historical overview of the “musical revolution” which took place in Turkey of the early-republican period (1923–1938). Next, provides a list of compositions which prove her thesis that composers born in 1904–1908, as the youngest generation of the Ottoman Empire’s elite, did not completely reject the Ottoman musical heritage in which they were raised and brought some of its elements into 20th-century Western-style Turkish classical music.

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Yugoslavia |Turkey |King Aleksandar Karađorđević |interwar period |Turkish-Yugoslavian Relations

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Bearing in mind the Ottoman burden in relations between Turkey and other Balkan states, it seems interesting to look at the process of creating the image of Turkey in the public discourse of inter-war Yugoslavia according to the newspaper “Politika,” the largest, and the most popular newspaper in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (since 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). It should be remembered that the modern Serbian state, on the basis of which Yugoslavia was founded, was born in the struggle to shed Turkish yoke. The narrative about dropping this yoke has become one of the cornerstones for building the prestige and the position of the Karađorđević dynasty. On the one hand, the government narrative did not forget about the Ottoman yoke; on the other, there were made attempts to present Kemalist Turkey as a potentially important partner, almost an ally in the Balkans, which parted from the Ottoman heritage.

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Western Balkans |Yugoslavia |Spatial Semiotics |Ivo Andrić |Ottoman Architecture |Orientalism

Streszczenie

One of the persisting motives in the Southeastern European cultures is a bridge. This metaphor occurs since at least 19th century, when it became used in political projects aiming to unite Southern Slavs (e.g. J. J. Strossmayer). In most of the cases, it symbolizes bridging the gap between the West and the East. However, it was the Ottoman stone bridges that were filled with a plethora of metaphorical meanings, mostly thanks to the Yugoslavian novelist Ivo Andrić. Stone bridges, a part of the Ottoman heritage in the Balkan, started to be perceived as symbols of humanist values and durability of edifices among the contingency of human existence.

Słowa kluczowe

memory |Dzhumaya Mosque |Tomb of Bali Efendi |Sofia |Plovdiv |the Ottoman Heritage |Post- Ottoman Edifices of Worship |public space |Bulgarian Cities

Streszczenie

The Ottoman rule in Bulgaria brought a visible change in the way of organizing urban spaces expressed by i.a. architectural elements and public facilities making up new infrastructure which provided for the needs of Muslim culture. A vital element of this infrastructure is objects related to religious worship which the author of the text considers palimpsest-places. In a diachronic view, one can observe for example practice of transforming sacred buildings—churches into mosques and, after regaining independence, mosques into churches, as a result of transitioning of the same territories between Islamic and Eastern Christian cultural spheres. Other Bulgarian locations related to the Islamic culture became multilayer spaces utilized by representatives of various cultural and religious universes at the same time. The author’s considerations of the problematic status of these places are illustrated by the cases of Dzhumaya Mosque in Plovdiv and the Tomb of Bali Efendi in Sofia. The study of the meanings inscribed into city iconospheres by the discussed objects shows a huge role of the visual sphere in the creation of appropriated, regained or shared spaces. Therefore the purpose of this article is to consider the status of the post-Ottoman cultural objects in modern Bulgaria and their position on the mental maps of Bulgarian cities. It allows us to compare often extreme social reactions to their presence in the public space which exposes the multilayered ontology of these buildings. The inclusion of the issue of the collective memory of traumatic past into the analysis justifies regarding the discussed locations as transmitters of contentious memories which provoke a discussion on tolerance, nationalism and creation of historical narrative.