Encyclopedia of Islam

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Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a predominantly Mus-
lim country in the southern Balkan mountains.
With an area of nearly 20,000 square miles (the
size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined),
it is bordered on the north and west by Croatia (a
predominantly Catholic country), on the east by
Serbia (a predominantly Eastern Orthodox Chris-
tian country), and on the south by Montenegro
(also a predominantly Orthodox land). It has a
small outlet to the Adriatic Sea providing it with
less than 15 miles of coastline.
Ethnically, Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to
three main groups: Bosniaks (a modern designa-
tion for South Slovaks who are mostly Muslim, 48
percent), Serbians (14.3 percent), and Croatians
(14.3 percent). In addition to Islam (40 percent),
the chief religions are Eastern Orthodoxy (31
percent) and Roman Catholicism (15 percent).
The Bosnians and Herzegovinans do not form
separate groups ethnically so much as religiously,
being defined by their religious affiliation since
the 15th century. There is no separate language for
the country; its 4.6 million residents speak either
Serbian or Croatian.
At the end of the 12th century, Bosnia gained
its independence from its neighbors, the Hungar-
ians (including the Croatians) to the north and
the Serbians to the east. The Kingdom of Bosnia
was a religiously divided land. Its people were
partly Catholic and partly Orthodox, but many
were adherents of an independent third religion,
the Bosnian Church, which held to an esoteric
religion called Bogomilism, with roots in Mani-
cheanism. Originating in Macedonia, Bogomilism
had appeared in the 10th century and spread
across the southern Balkans. In Bosnia, where its
had its greatest support, it became identified with
the Bosnian national spirit and came to define the
people in contrast to the Eastern Orthodox faith
radiating from Constantinople and the Catholic
faith of the Hungarian.
Then at the end of the 15th century, Turkish
forces swept over the southern Balkans, and Islam


was introduced into Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Because of the use of the Inquisition by the
Catholic Church against the Bogomils, it appears
that given the choice, the Bogomils supported
the Turks over their former Catholic rulers and
assisted their conquest. Many Bogomils saw them-
selves as closer to Islam in belief than Christianity
and rather quickly converted to Islam, while the
remainder made the conversion through the next
decades. As Bosnian elites affirmed their Islamic
beliefs, many of their number rose to positions of
prominence in the empire, several serving as the
grand vizer in the sultan’s court in Constantinople
(istanbUl) in the late 16th century. Under Turk-
ish rule, a governor (pasha) was appointed who
made his headquarters in Sarajevo. The land was
divided into eight districts (sanjaks). Islam in the
land adhered to the hanaFi legal school, the
school favored by Ottoman rulers.
In the 19th century, the Bosnians became
critical of what they saw as corruption coming to
dominate the Ottoman Empire, and a new spirit
of independence swept the land. A half century of
conflict resulted in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
pushing the Ottomans out of the area. Rather
than achieving independence, however, Bosnia
and Herzegovina came under Habsburg rule. At
the end of the 19th century, Bosnian Muslims
made a new effort to mobilize in the cause of
national independence with a focus for a time
in the Muslim National Organization. In 1909,
the Austrian authorities created a new office of
Reis-ul-ilema, the supreme leader of the Muslim
community. Austria continued to exercise its
hegemony throughout World War I, after which
Serbia came to control Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Through the 20th century, Muslims existed as
the largest group in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but
the land was successively incorporated into larger
political structures—Serbian, Nazi, and Yugo-
slavian Communist—that repeatedly forced the
Muslims into a minority status. Successive govern-
ments also continued policies that set different eth-
nic and religious communities against each other,

K (^114) Bosnia and Herzegovina

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