Islamization and Identity on the Balkans During the 16th century– between the Christianity and Islam

Authors:

Pages: 333-345
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/VNPK2919

Abstract:

The issue of the religious identity, sharply raised during the Ottoman conquest, keeps its vital importance even when the Bulgarians and the otherBalkan peoples become subjects of the Ottoman state. The religion becomes the defining separator in the social-legal space of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th c. – justifiably defined as the century of the “Islamization” – of the Ottoman state, relatively speaking, and of its non-Muslim subjects. In the focus of this study is not the politics of Islamization, but rather the main characters in the islamization process – the “converts” – and their complex existence within the “Islamic religious community”. The difficult task of the author is to trace in some legal sources – mainly in the 16th-century fetvas of the Ottoman Seyhülislâm – the hesitations, accompanying the inclusion of “new Muslims” into “the other religion”, as well as the too “blurred” boundaries of what is allowed and forbidden in the religious practices of the “new Muslims” and in their contact with “their former Christian co-believers”.

Keywords:

Ottoman Empire; Balkans; Christianity; Islam; islamization; identity; non-Muslim; fetvas

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