1  

 

The   special   identity   of   Is lam   in   the   Balkans.  Religious   interactions  and  syncretism  outl ine  the  profi le  of  Islamic  communities   in  the  Balkan  Peninsula  

By  Eirini  Kakoulidou  

Clifford Geertz stated that a major feature of Islamιsation is the "effort to adapt a

universal, in theory standardised and essentially unchangeable, and a well-integrated

system of ritual and belief to the realities of local, even individual, moral and

metaphysical perception."1 John Renard described this phenomenon as an

"indigenisation" or a "process by which a culture, ethnic group, or region puts its own

stamp on Islam, and it accounts at least in part for the diversity within Islamdom." 2

The plurinational mixture of the Balkans gives us the opportunity to examine this

opinion. Islam acquired a special identity in the Balkans, since it was permeated with

the practices of culturally and religiously heterogeneous communities, which had

been for more than 600 years members of one of the largest Islamic empires, the

Ottoman Empire.

Nonetheless, even though the history of Ottoman invasion and rule in the

Balkans, and the role of nationalist criticism by the inhabitants of the Balkan regions

in the movement that led to the dissolution of the Empire are well-known issues

under the general course of Ottoman history, Western research on Balkan-Ottoman

Islam has been sparse. Comparatively, only a few researchers explored the Islamic

identity in the Balkans, over the last century. They have documented, however,

significant evidence verifying the special Muslim identity in this region. This historical                                                                                                                          1 Geertz, Clifford. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia.

University of Chicago Press, 1971, p. 15. 2  Renard, John. Islam and the Heroic Image: Themes in Literature and the Visual Arts.

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993, p 14.  

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material is valuable, since after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the

beginning of the 20th century, the need of the new Balkan states for national

“legends” and religious purity led to the depreciation and destruction of a great part of

historical proof about the Ottoman period.

Two  periods   in  Ottoman  history  |  Religious   interactions  

Despite the different approaches, most researchers agree that the Ottoman

history must be divided into two main historical eras, in order to appreciate the

historical course and the nature of Islam in the Balkans:

a. The early period, which is until the mid-16th century, when the main focus of

the Empire were the Balkans and the Anatolia region. Historical research

proves that the Ottoman Empire for political reasons absorbed its Muslim and

Christian citizens, enhancing their cultural interaction and creating deep

religious relations. Tijana Krstic states that Ottomans began to express what

was considered orthodoxy and heresy just in the early 1500s, and this

practice has to be historicised within the wider structure of confessional

progress in early modern Islamdom and Christendom.3

b. The late period, after the conquest of the Arab Lands, the centre of Islam, by

sultan Selim I. The Ottoman conquest during the Ottoman-Mamluk

War of 1516–1517 and the Ottoman invasion in the Arab territories led to

profound ideological and political consequences. With his victories, sultan

Selim I took control over Mecca and Medina, as well as the cities of

Damascus and Cairo, former places of settlement for the caliphs, who

believed to be the descendants of Prophet Muhammad. As expected, Sultan

Selim and his followers were granted the title of “Servant of the Holy Cities of

                                                                                                                          3 Krstic, Tijana, Contested Conversions to Islam. Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, Stanford University Press 2011, pp. 19-20

  3  

Mecca and Medina”, as well as the protection and organisation of the annual

pilgrimage to Mecca, and thus, the Ottomans were accorded

immense prestige and authority in the Muslim communities.4 After this period,

the Ottoman Empire obtained several features of a classical Islamic dynasty,

having among others the responsibility to face at its borders a powerful

opponent, the Persian “heretic” Shia Safavid dynasty.

In this context, Heath Lowry observes that during the first period, Ottoman culture

became a mixture of classical Islamic administrative practices (distinct from the

beginning), inherited from Seljuk, Ilhanid5 and neighbouring Turkish principalities,

which, combined with the Muslim community, created a new society.6

Consequently, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Christians and Muslims

(many of whom were converts) joined forces in order to spread the Ottoman banner,

initially to the Balkans and then, to the heartlands of Islam. Lowry mentions that the

centralised empire, emerging from the mid-sixteenth century (radically reformed after

the conquest of the older Islamic states), was one, which bore an ever decreasing

relationship to the “frontier society”7 it had been of the fourteenth and early fifteenth

centuries.

                                                                                                                         

4 Ágoston, Gábor, Masters Bruce Alan, Encyclopaedia of the Ottoman Empire, Facts on File 2008, p. 30

5 Ilkhanids: Mongol dynasty which ruled much of the eastern Islamic world from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century.

6 Lowry, Heath, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, State University of New York Press 2003, p.p 133-134

7 Frontier society: The society living in the region of the borders between two countries or in a region with a line, barrier, etc. In these areas, religious, political, economic and geographical conditions that determine different style of life are called frontier/uc culture by modern scholarship.

  4  

As Heath Lowry argues:

There is an ironic twist to this interpretation; it would suggest that the real

secret of Ottoman success might have stemmed from the failure of its early

rulers to adhere to the traditional Islamic concept of the gaza8. The founders

of the Ottoman Empire, Osman and Orhan, rather than attempting to

pressure the local Christians9 into accepting Islam, simply left the issue of

religion open. One joined their banner as either a Christian or a Muslim and

made their mark on the basis of ability. What eventually was to emerge as a

classical Islamic dynasty did so, less as a result of developments during its

formative period, than due to the impact of its having annexed the traditional

Arab heartland of the Islamic world at the end of the second decade of the

sixteenth century. Thereafter, we see the implantation of a centuries’ old

Islamic bureaucratic tradition to a body which had theretofore been a vibrant,

syncretic, multi-ethnic, multicultural entity. In this sense, the question of who

conquered whom is debatable.10

                                                                                                                         8 Military expeditions or raiding after the emergence of Islam 9 Of Anatolia and the Balkans

10 Lowry, Heath, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, State University of New York Press 2003, pp. 95-96

  5  

The  Ottoman  Empire:  Acquisit ions

Historical  map.  Source:  Wikimedia  commons  

The early Ottomans are often portrayed as gazis, who were making gazas (holy

wars) against the “infidels”. Nonetheless, some scholars have recently proved that

the early Ottoman military activity presented as gaza in Ottoman history were more

intricate missions; occasionally, easy invasions in which Muslims and Christians

joined forces and shared the treasure and other times, they were “holy wars”. In

addition, the Ottomans also fought several “untraditional” battles against fellow

  6  

Muslim Turks, overpowering and annexing the bordering Turkoman kingdoms.11

Furthermore, the war against the Mamluks of Egypt, in the 16th century, was an

equally unconventional war.

This does not mean that the Ottomans did not adopt the ideology of the “holy

war”. During the 13th century, the ideology of the holy war was present in the Turco-

Byzantine border. The Ottomans were deliberately situated to wage such wars; they

had settled in Byzantium, which was the seat of eastern Christianity, and these wars

served as an attraction for the mighty soldiers of the Anatolian Ottoman-Muslim

emirates, or kingdoms. By subjugating recurring campaigns, conquering

Constantinople, and defeating the Balkan Christian countries, the Ottomans became

champions of anti-Christian wars. Their victories against the Venetians in the Aegean

and the western Balkan states under Mehmed II and Bayezid II, and against the

Habsburgs in the Mediterranean and Hungary under Süleyman I enhanced even

more the Ottomans’ reputation as holy warriors and protectors of Islam.

Nevertheless, motivated both by Islamic theology and by methodical and structured

use of political pragmatism, the Ottomans did not hesitate to diverge from the

officially homogeneous approach toward its non-Muslim people, who, acknowledging

the power-game of pragmatism, also adopted pragmatic approaches and reactions.12

The Ottomans were flexible and realistic from the beginning. Settling in an

extremely heterogeneous area with Christian, Muslim, Turkish, Greek, Slavic, and

Albanian residents, the Ottomans' victory in western Anatolia and subsequently in the

Balkans in the 1400s and 1500s, was the product of their willingness and ability to                                                                                                                          11 Ágoston, Gábor, Masters Bruce Alan, Encyclopaedia of the Ottoman Empire, Facts on

File 2008, p.30 12 Ibid

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adapt, to exploit talent and accept loyalty from various sources, and to make

numerous appeals for support. Therefore, they managed to attract not only soldiers

to confront Christians when necessary, but also Muslims and Christians to join forces

for treasures and authority when available. After their spread, if they could not take

control of a land, they would negotiate for the loyalty of local elites. They were also

eager and capable to borrow organisations. The early Ottoman state was primarily a

pragmatic state in the making, not a religious one. Because of this, the Ottomans

managed to maintain power until the modern times, whereas many other Muslim

dynasties, such as Mongols and Safavids, could not do that, even though it will also

become obvious that, from time to time, their flexibility and pragmatism were

expected to collapse.13

Regarding Christianity, Prophet Muhammad’s contract with the Christians from

Yemen proved to be the basis of Ottoman incorporating strategies towards Christians

in the Balkans and the Empire in general,14 as long as Christians pay a fixed poll tax

as a sign of submission. It was, thus, an aspect in Islamic legal practice that the

Christian subjects of a Muslim state could keep their own religious institutions and

customs. The millet15 system, which concerned the non-Muslim communities within a

Muslim state, owed its Islamic legal bases to the facts of Prophet Muhammad’s years

                                                                                                                         13 Kafadar, Cemal, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State

(Berkeley, 1995); Lowry, Heath W., The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany, 2003); Quataert, Donald, The Ottoman Empire, New York, 2000, pp13-36.

14 Montgomery, William, Muhammad in Medina, Oxford 1956, pp. 359-360; Gradeva, Rossitsa, Ottoman Policy towards Christian Church Buildings, Études Balkaniques 4, 1994, pp. 14-36, especially p. 16.

15 The Qur’anic Arabic word milla, commonly known as “millet”, has an Aramaic origin, and initially meant “a word”, referring to a group of people who agreed to a specific word or revealed book. It is also refers to other religious groups, and some unusual groups of the Islamic world (Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, p. 38).

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in Medina 16. In the Ottoman Empire, “millet” was a technical word, and was

employed for the structured, accepted, religio-political communities having certain

rights of independence under their own leaders.17 This system required that the

sultan accept the existence and limited power of a non-Muslim community. Although

non-Muslims were always considered dhimmi,18 residents of the Islamic state

exercising the privilege of dealing with their own communal matters in certain defined

spheres of life, in this case, within the Church society.19

Naturally, this policy was implemented in the entire Ottoman Empire. The

Balkans, though, had another special feature which designated the political

pragmatism of the Ottomans and the institution of Muslim-Christian coexistence as a

catalyst for a religious syncretism which determined the identity of Islam in the

region. At least until the mid 15th century, they constituted a “frontier society”, an

environment favouring cultural exchange/ mixture and syncretism. As Abdullah Ulker

states:

Frontiers have been seen to be a reflection of political history and as the

ideal framework for the indication of military power. But, frontiers have much

more meaning than that. They are mechanism for economic, social, cultural,

religious and artistic exchanges between social groups, whether they are

friend or foe. As regions distant from centres of governmental control and

                                                                                                                         16 Bosworth, C.E., The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam, in B. Braude−B. Lewis,

Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, vol. I, Holmes & Meier Publishers, London-New York 1982, p. 37.

17 Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 38-39.

18 For what this meant to non-Muslims’ lifestyle in an Islamic country, see Schacht, Joseph, An Introduction to Islamic Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982, pp. 130-133.

19 Inalcik, Halil., The Status of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Under the Ottomans, Turcica, Revue d'études turques, Tome 21-23, Sous la direction de Gilles Veinstein, Paul Dumont, Louvain, Peeters, 1991, p. 420.

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ideological orthodoxy, groups with different political and social affiliations

could live in together. Society in the marches included highly mobile nomads,

refugees from central authority, heterodox elements, adventurers, and jobless

immigrants. In contrast to the highly developed conservative civilization of the

hinterland, frontier regions are the centre of mysticism, tolerance, flexibility,

heterodox beliefs, and romantic legends. The society living in frontier regions

usually acquire a special idiosyncrasy within the frontier. Thus, in these

areas, religious, political, economic and geographical conditions that

determine different style of life, called frontier/uc culture by modern

scholarship.20

Speros Vryonis, a specialist in Byzantine history, describes the first period of the

spread of Islam in the Balkans, under Ottoman rule, with the following conclusions21:

a. During the first Turkish invasions of the Balkan territories, paganism was an

extremely distinctive trait of folk Christianity in the Balkans, and shamanism of

nomadic Islam.

b. Even though the majority of the Anatolian Christians was incorporated in the

Muslim community, their conversion to Islam was still an insignificant

phenomenon in the Balkan lands. The opposing circumstances of the Turkish

conquests in the two peninsulas lead to the conflicting fate of Christianity and

                                                                                                                         

20 Ulker, Abdullah, Interaction, Flexibility and Pragmatism in the Uc/Frontier Societies: The Ottoman-Byzantine Example (1277-1402), Introduction. https://www.academia.edu/4065112/

21 Vryonis, Speros Jr., Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans, 14th-16th Centuries, in Henrik Birnbaum and Speros Vryonis, Jr., editors, Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change, The Hague, Mouton Press, 1972, pp. 151-176.

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Islam in the two areas.

c. Even though the Islam emerging in the Balkans was officially 'orthodox',

unofficially, it was profoundly influenced by the Ancient Paganism and

Christian elements retained by converted believers. As a result, despite the

fact that the invasion of the Turks and their long-lasting rule constitute a real

era in the history of the Balkan masses, the changes which they forced in the

religious life of the Balkan peoples were limited. Most of the Balkanites did

not convert, but even those who did so retained beliefs and practices from

their previous religions. Therefore, in spite of the religious change which was

introduced under Ottoman rule, the prominent feature of Balkan religious life

during this period was continuity.

The  transfer  of  Islamic  heritage  in  Anatolia  to  the  Balkans  

Authors who had portrayed the Ottomans during the years of the first conquest as

horrifying plunderers, with the passage of time started to flatter the Seljuk sultans to

a surprising degree; this was a natural outcome of their righteous and effective

administration, as well as their sympathetic protection of their Christian subjects. The

religious tolerance of the Seljuks, and the freedom of Christians, made the latter

more devoted to the Seljuks, and enhanced their hatred for Byzantium, which was

stirred up by the heavy taxation and the Byzantine persecutions of the numerous

“heretics”, mainly monophysitic Christian groups, mostly in Anatolia region, but in the

Balkans as well.

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Sufi mystics like Jalal al-Din Rumi and Yunus Emre reflect this social

environment. The great mystic Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-'Arabi came as well to Anatolia22,

and settled in Konya, with the purpose of enjoying intellectual liberty. Believers who

initially belonged to different religions and cults were united and supported Jalal al-

Din Rumi and his successors. Muslims and Christians joined forces, under the

supervision of the Syrian patriarch, with an oath of fidelity, when the Mongol invaded

Malatya, which had been left without administration. Despite the censorious efforts of

Muslim scholars, dancing and music were used to encourage religious joy, and, thus,

could not be abolished. The Seljuk sovereigns frequently invited theologians, jurists,

physicians, artists and poets from the older Muslim world, and erected schools,

madrassas, hospitals and religious institutions for the improvement and progress of

Islamic culture.23

The Ottoman supremacy in the Anatolia region after the Mongol wars and the

surrender of Seljuks, brought very few changes in this governance model they had

inherited. The reason for this was simple: Even though the Ottoman Turks had

accepted Islam a century before their arrival in Anatolia, their conversion, due to their

nomadic lifestyle, remained very superficial; under the facade of Islam, their old

shamanistic traditions and principles survived. Baba Ishaq, Barak Baba, Sari-Saltuk

and other Turcoman babas24 were the continuance of the ancient Turkish shamans,

rather than Muslim sheikhs25. Consequently, shamanism profoundly influenced

                                                                                                                         22 The Asian part of Turkey 23 Pre-Ottoman Anatolia, Cambridge Histories Online, Cambridge University Press, 2008,

pp 255-257 24 “Saints” 25 Religious officials

  12  

Muslim Turkish religious orders and cults, by participating in their religious

ceremonies.26

According to Vryonis, the strength and perseverance of nomadic life indicated

that Islam remained a shallow religious group among the Turkic tribesmen, for many

years.27

After the Ottoman conquest, these traditions were passed on to the Balkans,

where a similar religious background existed.

Vryonis has observed that the religious lifestyle of the non-Muslim people in the

Balkans resided on a foundation heavily influenced by their pagan roots”.28 Even

though most of the Balkan populations had turned to Orthodox Christianity by the

10th century, this conversion had only been accomplished by accepting the

incorporation of several pagan beliefs, superstitions and practices into the official

doctrine of the Church. Hence, Balkan Christians continued to examine their

traditional practices, such as the use of marriage crowns, the contribution of

professional mourners during funerals, the placing of money in the grave, the

preparation of a special meal for the funerals, the official observance of a one-year

mourning period etc. Many of the feast days in the Orthodox calendar were actually

Christian only on the surface. In their essence, these feasts were associated with

agrarian and pastoral life and therefore, the old magical practices to guarantee

fertility were persevered. According to Vryonis, the extensive hagiolatry and

iconolatry originated in the pagan past as well.29 The former, relying mostly on the

worship of local saints, had many of the features of the ancient hero cult and

                                                                                                                         26 Vryonis, Speros Jr., editors, Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans : 14th-16th

Centuries Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change, The Hague, Mouton Press 1972, pp. 151-176.

27 Vryonis, Speros,Jr., Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans : 14th-16th Centuries , Mouton 1972, p. 161.

28 Ibid p. 154. 29 Ibid p. 159.

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polytheism. The icon, however, was equally associated with miracles and magic, as

were the pagan statues of the past.

Vryonis states that, “Balkan folk Christianity in the late medieval period

represents a syncretism of magic, animism, monotheistic dogma, polytheistic

practices, monism and dualism. Christianity succeeded in destroying or effacing the

major gods and in replacing them with a triune surface. But underneath this surface

the old spirits and forces retained their grip on the masses”.

He rejects the stereotype that the Greeks of the classical period did not believe in

superstition, arguing that, “There was a great deal of superstition in Greece, even

when Greek culture was at its height and even in the center of that culture, Athens.”30

A similar ambience of syncretism dominated the religious beliefs of the Muslim

settlers in the Balkans, too. For instance, the conversion of the Ogüz tribes from

paganism to Islam had only started during the ninth century.31 That is to say, Islam

had had even less time than had Christianity to put down roots among the Muslim

conquerors and the Balkan population respectively.

With the gradual sedentism32 of the nomads, pagan-shamanistic elements

infiltrated popular Islam. In Asia Minor, Christians who turned to Islam, from the

eleventh until the fifteenth century, also contributed to the mix with additional layers

of religious beliefs. Another scholar, Anton Minkov, claims that some of the Muslim

                                                                                                                         30 Ibid p. 162. 31 Norris, Harry, Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society Between Europe and the Arab

World, Columbia 1993, University of South Carolina Press 1994, p.86. 32 Sedentism (sometimes called sedentariness), is a term applied to the transition from

nomadic lifestyle to a society which remains in one place permanently. Essentially, sedentism means living in groups permanently in one place.

  14  

inhabitants in the Balkans had converted or were descendants of converted people

from Asia Minor, many of whom had preserved some elements of their former

religious lifestyle, in their idea of Islam.33 Put differently, the Muslim and Christian

communities shared many common methods of comprehending religion, which

stemmed from their quite recent pagan or former Christian past. For these two

strands of belief to be brought together, all that was needed was a motivation for

interaction and a means of some sort to trigger this interaction.

The interaction, as Franz Babinger points out, became unavoidable with the

Ottoman conquest. The means was apparently the “cult of saints”, typical

characteristic of the Islamic mystical orders (tarikat) mixed with the local preference

for hagiolatry as its Christian equivalent.34 Essentially, the tarikats influenced the

integration of similar pagan and local non-Muslim principles into popular Islam,

consequently making the conversion process more pleasant to the new Muslims. In

the Balkans as well, the involvement of the orders in the spread of Islam was equally

important. The dervishes, the followers of the different tariqats, usually founded their

tekkes (dervish lodges) and zaviyes (monasteries) around the turbe (grave) of a

religious person, who was almost immediately proclaimed as a saint. Also, the

dervishes often used the already existing local cult of a saint in order to promote a

new one, whose miracles were made to be similar to those of the superseded holy

person.35 The construction of a common ritual site led to the gathering of people of

                                                                                                                         33 Minkov, Anton, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans - Kisve Bahası Petitions and

Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730, Brill 2004, pp. 108-109 34 Babinger, Franz, Der Islam in Südosteuropa, In Völker und Kulturen Südosteuropas,

Schriften der Südosteuropa Gesellschaft. Munich, 1959, pp. 206-207. 35 For both religions, the most famous saint was Sarı Saltuk, who was respected in the

Balkans, the Middle East and possibly even in Sinkiang. See Norris Harry, Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society Between Europe and the Arab World, University of South Carolina Press 1994, p.p 146-160.

  15  

both religious groups on particular dates. The rituals performed were often similar.36

Some of these rituals were the animal sacrifice (kurban) and bringing gifts to the

saint.

Despite the fact that the Bektashi, per se, had no connection with the first

Ottoman leaders, other dervishes did.37 Taken to a great extent, the dervishes during

the early Ottoman period, wanted to reunite Christianity and Islam. They put aside

their religious and cultural differences. Some were downright missioners in their

purposes, like the Ishaqi38, who are believed to have converted to Islam thousands of

Jews and fire worshipers in Persia, India, and China before they arrived in Anatolia.

Both Christians and Muslims frequented indiscriminately several holy places in

Anatolia.39 Actually, it is difficult to make any essential distinction between the

Turkish dervishes on the one hand and on the other, the numerous zealots, pilgrims,

beggar monks, travellers and insane people who swarmed through Byzantine during

the Palaeologan dynasty (1261-1453). H.A Gibbons is probably right in assuming

that there was widespread apostasy on the part of the Greeks, who found the change

of religion a not considerable one and discovered that it was a useful expedient.

Many accepted Islam outwardly, while still remaining Christian in faith and feeling40.

                                                                                                                         36 Vryonis, Speros Jr., Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans : 14th-16th

Centuries Mouton 1972, p.174. 37 Langer, William L. and Blake, Robert P., Τhe Rise of the Ottoman Turks and Its

Historical Background, The American Historical Review, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Apr., 1932), pp. 468-505 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association.

38 Isaqi or Qaradaglik order was founded by Khwaja Isaq-i-Wali in Khurasan, Central Asia.

39 Vryonis, Speros Jr., Islam and Cultural Change in Middle Ages, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1975, p 139.

40 Gibbons, Herbert Adams, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Osmanlis Up to the Death of Bayezid I (1300-1403), Clarendon, 1916.

  16  

The proof of religious syncretism concerning Balkan Christianity and Islam

appears to be conclusive. For instance, Vakarelski examines the survival among the

Pomaks in the Rhodopes, where old magical practices were linked with harvesting

and sowing, and where the Kukeri41 dances were linked with Dionysian fertility

rituals.42 Many people who had converted to Islam in Bosnia, Serbia and Northern

Greece, maintained some traditions from their former religion, such as dyeing eggs

during Easter, seeking the blessing of a priest on feast days, and keeping church

books and icons in their houses. They also preserved the ritual of animal sacrifices in

the yards of churches and monasteries.43 Several of these traditions still exist.

There is evidence that the Muslims in the Balkans have always been visiting

Christian healing temples, even nowadays, and this fact may have been a significant

stage in the conversion of many holy places from Christianity to Islam.

According to the Greek theologian Ef. Zegkinis,44 even in the present day,

Muslims of Western Thrace retain several practices which are similar to Christian

ones.

Some of these practices are the following:

                                                                                                                         41 Kukeri is a traditional Bulgarian ritual to scare away evil spirits, with costumed men

performing the ritual. Closely related traditions are found throughout the Balkans and Greece. 42 Vakarelski, Christo, Altertümliche Elemente in Lebensweise und Kultur der

bulgarischen Mohammedaner, Zeitschrift fu ̈r Balkanologie 4, 1966, pp 149–172. 43 Vryonis, Speros Jr., Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans, 14th-16th

Centuries, in Henrik Birnbaum and Speros Vryonis, Jr., editors, Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change, The Hague, Mouton Press, 1972, pp.175–176 and Norris, H.T, Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society Between Europe and the Arab World, University of South Carolina Press, 1993, p. 48. In the work of Hasluck, Frederick William, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, Oxford University Press, 1929, there can be found examples of Crypto-Christianity.

44 Zegkinis, Efstratios Ch., Bektashism in Western Thrace, Institute for Balkan Studies, Pournara Editions 2001, Second edition, p. 232. Ζεγκίνης, Ευστράτιος Χ., Ο µπεκτασισµός στη Δυτική Θράκη, Ινστιτούτο Βαλκανικών Σπουδών, Εκδόσεις Πουρνάρα 2001, Δεύτερη έκδοση, σελ. 232.

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a. They visit Christian chapels, especially the chapel of Agios Georgios (Aya

Yiorgi), in order to pray or to perform animal sacrifices (kurban), on the name

day of the Greek Saint according to the Old Calendar (before the Julian).

b. They worship Christian saints whom they regard as Muslim saints. They

follow the Greek Orthodox Calendar, which contains elements from

Christianity.

c. They visit the sacred springs, wash themselves or drink holy water, in the

same way Christians do.

d. They perform animal sacrifices similar to the ones performed by Christians of

Thrace.

What is more, we should probably add some cases of Muslim sanctuaries

frequented by Christians to these conversions.

Furthermore, as L.S Stavrianos45 states, during the Islamisation of the Albanian

regions, dual religious traditions made their appearance: the converts continued on

worshiping the Holy Mary and the Saints, and making a pilgrimage to the Holy

Places. On the other hand, Christians visited the tombs of Muslim saints so that they

could have their wishes fulfilled.46 Converted Muslims secretly remained Christians,

even though, in most cases, their children would turn into genuine converts.47 This

fact is called “crypto-Christianity” (laramanë in Albanian)48.

Also, Stavrianos states that, “The Albanians never have been fanatics in religious

matters. Most Moslem Albanians belonged to the Bektashi sect, an extremely                                                                                                                          

45 Stavrianos, Leften, Stavros, The Balkans Since 1453, C., Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000, p. 500

46  Arnold, T.W, The Preaching of Islam, A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith, Lahore, Pakistan, 1976, p 188.  

47 Ibid 48 On laramanë, see the contribution of Duijzings, Ger, (Duijizings, 2000: 86-105)

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unorthodox and tolerant order that preached a pantheistic universalist creed.

Moslems and Christian Albanians lived side by side for centuries, and, although

quarrels between tribes and individuals were only too common, religion was rarely

the issue in dispute. Tolerance went so far that members of the same family not

infrequently professed different religions. More than one traveller reported that

infants were both baptized as Christians and circumcised as Moslems, and that

adults who had begun life in that fashion used two names, one Christian and the

other Moslem, depending upon the circle in which they happened to be moving at the

time.” 49

The  role  of   interfaith  marriages   in  rel igious   interaction    

Mixed marriages between a Muslim man and a Christian strongly favoured the

religious interaction. Vryonis states that women, through extensive intermarriage,

were another medium by which popular Christianity and Islam were mixed. A well-

known example of this case is Sheikh Bedreddin Simavi, whose family tree indicates

a long history of intermarriages and religious syncretism.50 Another example is Balim

Sultan, possibly the real creator of the Bektashi order, who is also considered to

have been the child of a mixed marriage.51 An illustrative example of this attitude is

the fact that even the mothers of some sultans were not only Christians converted to

Islam, but even practicing Christians, as well.

Even though Christianity and Judaism did not accept intermarriages, Muslim law

allowed Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women, or more correctly, women of the

                                                                                                                         49  Stavrianos, Leften, Stavros, The Balkans Since 1453, C., Hurst & Co. Publishers,

2000, p. 500.  50 Vryonis, Speros Jr., Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans : 14th-16th

Centuries Mouton 1972, p.173 51 Birge, John Kingsley,The Bektashi Order of Dervishes, Luzak, London 1937, p.56.

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Book.52 Nevertheless, Muslim women could not marry non-Muslim men. Off course,

the practice of marrying Christian women or taking them as slaves was rarely looked

upon favourably by the Christian community. The discrepancy in authority and in

sexual economy, which was a typical characteristic of the Ottoman Empire, provoked

the anxiety of mixed marriage, which left an indelible trace on popular Christian

descriptions from the Ottoman period. It posed a considerable challenge to the

protectors of the Christian moral community's limits, and women who disobeyed the

religious divide through permanent or temporary (kebin) marriages, even without

openly converting to Islam, immediately found themselves excluded from the bounds

of "orthodoxy". Nonetheless, it does not mean that they automatically stopped

considering themselves Christian, and it is important to take their role under

consideration in the context of the debate on syncretism and conversion.

After marriage, a non-Muslim woman had the same rights as a Muslim wife, and

she was allowed to observe the principles of her religion. According to laws, the

husband could forbid his wife from drinking wine or bringing the cross into their

residence, but he could not legally prohibit her from doing so.53 She had the right to

read the Bible, provided that she was reading it in a low voice. Even though the

children of an interfaith marriage were Muslim by law, through their mother, they

could learn another language, be exposed to the principles of the New and Old

Testaments, and possibly even be secretly baptised. A few sources even imply that

in some cases where the mother was Christian, daughters would be baptised and

                                                                                                                         52 Vryonis, Speros Jr., Decline of Medieval Hellenism, and Religious Changes and

Patterns in the Balkans, pp.151-76. See also Melikoff, Irene, Les voies de penetration de l’heterodoxie islamique en Thrace et dans les Balkans aux XIVe-Xve siècles, Halcyon Days in Crete, Rethymno, January 1994, pp. 9-11, Norris, Islam in the Balkans pp. 159-170; Balivet, Michel, Romanie Byzantine et pays de Rûm Turc: Histoire d'un Espace d'Imbrication Gréco-Turque, The Isis Press, 1994.

53 Balivet, Michel, Byzantins et Ottomans, Gorgias Press & The Isis Press, 1999, p.156.

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sons circumcised, despite this being a clear violation of the Sharia.54 Similar cultural

incidents are documented even in cases where the wives actually adopt the religion

of Islam upon marriage.55 Interfaith marriages were thus significant circumstances of

religious change in which non-Muslim women were important agents of religious

mixture. In these conditions, anti-syncretic tactics could become part of family politics

and could be employed by wives, husbands, and children.

The  pioneering  f ield  research  of  Frederic  Hasluck  

Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Frederic

Hasluck, a pioneer historian, conducted a remarkable field research on the Muslim-

Christian relations and their places of worship, in the Anatolia region and in the

Balkans. This research offers, even at the present time, valuable information

regarding religious syncretism in this area, since many monuments and historical

elements have disappeared with the surfacing of nationalistic behaviours.

According to Hasluck56 the popular religious thinking, and still more the ritual

practice, of Oriental Christendom and Islam have many similarities despite the deep

theoretical prejudices. As he states, on the topic of saints, the attraction of healing

miracles goes far to dispel any doubts, and Turk no less than Greek in his age (early

20th c.) admitted the idea that, if his own saints disappointed him, an alien might be

summoned.

                                                                                                                         54 Lindner, Rudi, Paul, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Uralic and Altaic), The

Uralic and Altaic Series, Curzon Press, London, 1997; Kafadar Kemal, Between Two Worlds The Construction of the Ottoman State, University of California Press, 1995 ; and Lowry Heath, Nature of the Early Ottoman State, State University of New York Press, 2003.

55 Kafadar, Kemal, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State, University of California Press, 1995, p.76.

56 Hasluck, Frederick William, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, edited by Margaret Hasluck, Oxford University Press, 1929, pp. 76-77

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Hasluck mentions some traditions between Muslims which Orthodox Sunni Islam

would categorically reject. The baptism of Muslims, as mentioned above, was one of

these traditions.57 We are going to focus on this special feature, since it fuels, even

nowadays, speculations about the existence of crypto-Christians, mostly in Turkey,

but in other Muslim countries of Middle East, as well.

Hasluck states that, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Busbecq58 knew quite

a few Ottoman Muslims who had had their children secretly baptised, because they

were persuaded that the ceremony contained some good in itself and they were sure

that it had not been randomly introduced. Quoting from Casalius59, he mentions that

the Patriarch of Constantinople noticed that some of those who wanted to get

baptised from Christians requested it because they considered this ceremony as

some kind of incantation by which they would be able to acquire physical cleanliness;

they did not want to receive baptism for the orthodox reason, which is the purification

of their souls and sanctification. Therefore, in the same way and for the same

reason, the Agerini (Muslims) wanted to be baptised, as a Balsamum says in his

commentary on the nineteenth canon of the ' Concilium Sardicense ', and at another

part on the forty-ninth canon (Synod VI in Trullo), where he states that these

Agerini60 were convinced that their children would be disturbed by demons, and smell

like dogs, if they were not baptised as Christians.

                                                                                                                         57 A person is immersed in water. It is a purifying ceremony. 58 De Busbecq, Ogier, Ghiselin (1522–1592) was a Flemish writer, herbalist and diplomat

in the 16th century, employed by three generations of Austrian emperors. He was an Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople and published the book Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum in 1581, writing about his time there. It was re-published in 1595 under the title "Turkish Letters"(Turcicae epistolae).

59 Casalius, Joannes, Baptista, De Veteribus Sacris Christianorum Ritibus Sive Apud Occidentales, Sive Orientales Catholica in Ecclesia Probatis, first published in 1647.

60 Alteration of Algerians, synonymous with Muslims

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Then, there is the case of Muslim mothers (especially Albanian) who baptised

their children because they considered baptism as a charm against leprosy,

witchcraft, and wolves. According to a Venetian Relazione61 of 1579, Turkish

mothers generally used baptism as a protection against leprosy, and another of 1585

says that Sultan Murat III was baptised so that he would never get sick.

Hasluck agrees with Vryonis that, at a certain degree, this participation in

Christian superstition definitely arises from the imposed intimacy of Christian and

Muslim women, and mainly from mixed marriages and the introduction of Christian

women to harems. It does not necessarily mean that Muslims who use the Cross or

even baptism as charms are converted Christians, though in some regions (for

instance, in Albania and Crete), this is a vital contributory cause of the abnormality.

In his research, Hasluck often mentions the Muslim tradition of invoking Christian

saints who were considered as miracle workers. In fact, Hasluck recounts a story

narrated to him in 1916 by a Greek resident of Ürgüp in Cappadocia62.

For instance, Hasluck mentions, “this town possesses the mummified body of an

Orthodox neo-saint, S. John ' the Russian ', who is supposed to have lived and died

in the eighteenth century. The body enjoys considerable respect both from Christians

and Mussulmans. On the occasion of an epidemic of cholera in 1908 among the

children of the Turks, the latter begged and obtained as a favour from the Greeks

that the saint should be paraded through their quarters. During the procession the

Turkish women threw costly embroidered handkerchiefs on the bier as offerings to

the saint, who in answer to their faith immediately put an end to the epidemic”.

                                                                                                                         61 The famed final reports, or “Relazioni”, of the Venetian ambassadors in Constantinople. 62 Hasluck, Frederick, William, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, edited by

Margaret Hasluck, Oxford University Press, 1929, p 65

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Also, according to Hasluck, “in a strongly Moslem village in Albania Miss Durham

saw two men and four women, all Mohammedans, and three of the women with

ailing infants, crawl under the altar during mass and stay there until it was over.

Afterwards the priest blessed them: Moslem charms had not succeeded, so they

were trying Christian ones ' for their sickness”.

The syncretism of popular beliefs indicates that, at least until the sixteenth

century, the process of religious conversion did not necessarily mean that the

converted people abandoned their previous religious beliefs or lifestyle. For a long

time, all that was needed for someone to convert to Islam was to adopt a Muslim

name; therefore, it mainly symbolised an acceptance of Ottoman rule, rather than the

actual adoption of a foreign religion.