Thread: BOSNIA

Originally Posted by Jeff

You make many good points (and I certainly did not advocate war or even chauvinism). However, I don't think my notions have been contradicted. Viewing B-H as an inverted triangle, many of the districts on all three sides have Serb majorities as do some in the center of B-H. One can surmise that Serbs once formed the majority throughout the country and that the Croats and Muslims immigrated later, the Croats mainly from Dalmatia and the Muslims from the southeast (the direction of Turkey).

I suppose it's true that the map I posted would not in itself contradict your notions. It's important to know that at least on one of those sides the presence of Serb communities is a more recent development (if I'm permitted to call about 500 years recent ). I'm talking about the north west of Bosnia. That region did not have a significant Serb population before the Turkish conquest and was certainly not part of the medieval Serbian state. The Ottoman authorities encouraged settlement of these areas by Orthodox communities (which included both Serbs and Vlachs) after they had become depopulated due to wars and plagues. This type of thing happened repeatedly over the years resulting in quite a mixing of populations throughout the country so even the more detailed map above can't really be used to say who were the 'original inhabitants'. I don't think it's a particularly helpful notion anyway.

I would recommend this book if you're interested in Bosnian history. I bought it when it was originally published in 1994 while the war was still ongoing. I think it was updated some years after but I haven't seen that version. I think it gives a fair account of the history but some Serbian and Croatian nationalists might disagree because it doesn't support their view that Bosnia was an entirely artifical creation of Tito's Yugoslavia.

Originally Posted by Jeff

...and that the Croats and Muslims immigrated later, the Croats mainly from Dalmatia and the Muslims from the southeast (the direction of Turkey).

Bosnian Muslims didn't just migrate from Turkey. They were overwhelmingly Christian Slavs who converted to Islam. Many from both the Orthodox and Catholic communities. There was also an independent Bosnian church estranged from Rome before the Turkish conquest and it may be that members of this former church formed the nucleus of those new converts to Islam.

Many strongly nationalistic Serbs and Croats like to contemptuously dismiss the Bosnians as not being a real nation, saying things like "Bosnians don't exist". I was told recently by a Croatian girl that all Bosnian Muslims were either Turks or the descendants of Slav women raped by Turks, but then she also believed that the Illuminati were running the world so I treated her comments with the contempt they deserved.

Originally Posted by Jeff

This has become an fascinating topic to me. I'm also interested in the origin of the Muslim majorities of the districts surrounding Bihać. But nearly all the materials I have on hand are in Serbo-Croat, a language I can read only with difficulty, unfortunately.

It certainly is a fascinating topic. The history of the Bihać area is something I'm interested in as well and I don't know if its origin was adequately explained in the book I mentioned. I can't remember anyway. It does seem strange that such a distinctively Muslim area finds itself so far removed from the rest of the Muslim populated lands and surrounded by Serb and Croat settlements. I can only guess it was another result of a deliberate settlement policy by the Ottoman rulers of the day.

Originally Posted by Cyphyr

I suppose it's true that the map I posted would not in itself contradict your notions. It's important to know that at least on one of those sides the presence of Serb communities is a more recent development (if I'm permitted to call about 500 years recent ). I'm talking about the north west of Bosnia. That region did not have a significant Serb population before the Turkish conquest and was certainly not part of the medieval Serbian state. The Ottoman authorities encouraged settlement of these areas by Orthodox communities (which included both Serbs and Vlachs) after they had become depopulated due to wars and plagues. This type of thing happened repeatedly over the years resulting in quite a mixing of populations throughout the country so even the more detailed map above can't really be used to say who were the 'original inhabitants'. I don't think it's a particularly helpful notion anyway.

Original Slav inhabitans of Balkan peninsula are Serbs and Croats. Serbs had 7 it's states including Bosnia. Croats were settled west from Bosnia. But in Bosnia there were three sides Serb side, Croat side and Heretical side... Heretics had it's own church independent both from Constantinopole and Rome. The main cause of this situation is that there were no bishopric neither Orthodox nor Catholic in Bosnia, which resolved a good base for heretical beliefs... There were three sides in Bosnia but only Serbs were rulers of Bosnia, and the last Bosnian king was Serb, Tomasevic is his surname I can't exactly remember his name. After the Turks came Catholic Slavs in Bosnia kept close with Croats, Orthodox Slavs kept close with Serbs, and heretics since they didn't have strong suport from some church converted to islam. Although throug many years of Turkish ocupation of Bosnia many Serbs because of the hard position converted to islam, and that's a fact.
Saying that a Bosnian muslims are Turkish origin is a notorious lie. They speak Serbo-Croatian, they even have Serbian tipes of surname all ending -ić. You can't find any Turkish surname in Bosnia.

Turkish population colonised Bosnia but they migrated from Bosnia when Bosnia fell under Austro-Ugric ocupation.

That account seems to more or less coincide with my understanding of Bosnian history. However, as far as I can recall, the book I mentioned would not have described the Bosnian state as being a "Serbian state". Certainly, Serbs lived there and have always been an important component of the Bosnian population but I understood that the medieval Bosnian state followed a more independent course and was not always ruled by followers of the Orthodox church. The book also referred to Bosnia (not including Hercegovina) as being more under the influence of the Roman church than the Orthodox church before the Turkish conquest. In any case it was sort of on the 'fault line' between the Eastern and Western churches and, because of its mountainous terrain, somewhat out of the reach of both at times. This probably explains why Islam was better able to take root here than elsewhere in the Balkans.

I suppose it's a sensitive topic given the recent tragic history in the region. If someone says that the medieval Bosnian state was independent of Serbia then that may be interpreted as a justification for a modern unitary Bosnian state. Likewise, if someone says that the Bosnian state was actually Serbian, then it can be used to justifiy the claim that all of Bosnia rightfully belongs to Serbia. Historians may differ but their conclusions are always likely to be influenced by the modern political situation.

Originally Posted by Vlacko

they even have Serbian tipes of surname all ending -ić. You can't find any Turkish surname in Bosnia.

I'm confused. Aren't Izetbegović (izzet = 'glory'; bey/beğ = honorific title) and Šaćirbegović (şakirt = 'pupil,' 'disciple'), among others, Ottoman names ?

The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia occured before the slavic patrynomic became a surname, so many Bosniaks have surnames which reflect ancestors who lived after islamization had already begun. Many names are derived from Turkish or Persian words/names, but they developed through exactly the same process that Serbian names did. Just as someone with the surname Jovanović who is Serbian can conclude that he had an ancestor named Jovan, an Osmanović from Bosnia can conclude that he had an ancestor named Osman. The names indicate that the founder of the family name may have come from outside Bosnia, but they were absorbed into the slavic population.

Turks on the other hand did not use surnames. In actuality, they were only introduced in Turkey by a surname law which was part of Kemal Ataturk's reforming measures after the Republic of Turkey was established.

Originally Posted by Jeff

Originally Posted by Vlacko

they even have Serbian tipes of surname all ending -ić. You can't find any Turkish surname in Bosnia.

I'm confused. Aren't Izetbegović (izzet = 'glory'; bey/beğ = honorific title) and Šaćirbegović (şakirt = 'pupil,' 'disciple'), among others, Ottoman names ?

Yes, but they kept there original Christian surname ending -ić. Took Turkish words ending Serbian -ić. Weird mixture...

I didn't mean to imply that Bosnians are ethnically different from Serbs and Croats on the basis of genetics. (Such a hypothesis is better left untested—I think most of the world considers ethnicity a cultural, not a genetic trait, anyway.)

What do Serbs and Croats believe about the origins of their ethnonyms Srb- and Hrvat- ? Most in the West have concluded that they're derived from Scythic (Iranian) languages. This seems far-fetched to me, although there were сіверяни and білі хорвати in early medieval Ukraine.

Originally Posted by Jeff

I didn't mean to imply that Bosnians are ethnically different from Serbs and Croats on the basis of genetics. (Such a hypothesis is better left untested—I think most of the world considers ethnicity a cultural, not a genetic trait, anyway.)

What do Serbs and Croats believe about the origins of their ethnonyms Srb- and Hrvat- ? Most in the West have concluded that they're derived from Scythic (Iranian) languages. This seems far-fetched to me, although there were сіверяни and білі хорвати in early medieval Ukraine.

That is an interesting question. I don't know origin of a word Srbin?

Stjepan wrote:

"The "original inhabitants" of the country - the Illyrian tribes present in Roman times - don't exist anymore."

I spoke with an Albanian man years ago who was of the view that Albanians and the modern day descendants of the Illyrians. He told me that their language was related to the Latin languages (although distantly) making this sound credible to me. This would mean that the Illyrians were forced out of Bosnia by Slavic tribes, further south into present day Albania.

I personally doubt that the words "Srb" or "Hrvat" have any direct Iranian derivation (although, like most European languages, the Shtokavian and Cekavian dialects that gave rise to these terms can trace their origins through time to central/middle asia). I can't speak for the word "Hrvat" but I am aware of other words sounding like "Srb" being used to describe Slavic people/languages. Aside from Jeff's examples, consider the "Sorbians" of central Europe. Jeff's Ukrainian examples are interesting given that it is thought that the ancestral Slavic language originated somewhere between Ukraine and Poland.

[Edited] Sorry, I stand corrected. There seems to be at least a plausible argument that the terms "Srb" and "Hrvat" are non-Slavic in origin. See: http://www.geocities.com/protoillyrian/serb.html. The central thesis of this argument is that both terms are derived from the shores of the Caspian sea and relate to the Avar ancestors of the Serbs and Croats.

I spoke with an Albanian man years ago who was of the view that Albanians and the modern day descendants of the Illyrians. He told me that their language was related to the Latin languages (although distantly) making this sound credible to me. This would mean that the Illyrians were forced out of Bosnia by Slavic tribes, further south into present day Albania.

Yes, it's generally believed that Albanians are the descendents of the Illyrians, or at least one branch of them. I meant more to say that the Illyrians no longer exist in BiH, although to the best of my knowledge they weren't forced out so much as they mixed with and became assimilated with the Croats and Serbs.

Also, the person who told you that Albanian is distantly related to Latin is quite correct. However, Croatian, Serbian, Russian, French, German, Persian, and the languages of India are also distantly related to Latin. Most of the languages of Europe, Iran, and India belong to the Indo-European family of languages and are all related to each other.

Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks,and some Bosnian serbs are the real descendants od Illyrians.

Read this files in Adobe Acrobat:

http://www.geocities.com/marik_8666/bosnia.pdf

http://www.geocities.com/marik_8666/bosnian2.pdf