Muslim Bulgarians

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The Muslim Bulgarians (Bulgarian: българи мохамедани; locally called pomak, ahryan, poganets, marvak, poturnak) are Bulgarians of the Islamic faith. They are descendants of Christian Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the period between the 16th and the 18th century, during the Ottoman occupation of Bulgaria.

Because they speak Bulgarian, they are officially considered a religious minority within the Bulgarian ethnicity and not a separate ethnic group.

Muslim Bulgarians live mostly in the Rhodopes – Smolyan Province, the southern part of Pazardzhik and Kardzhali Provinces and the eastern part of Blagoevgrad Province in Southern Bulgaria, as well as the Xanthi and Rhodope Prefectures in Northeastern Greece. They also live in a group of villages in Lovech Province in Northern Bulgaria, and in the Golo Bardo region of Albania as well.

The name Pomak is sometimes considered pejorative in Bulgaria and is resented by most members of the community. The name adopted and used instead is 'Bulgari Mohamedani' (Muslim Bulgarian).

Outside of Bulgaria, the term 'Pomak' is often used to describe Bulgarian-speaking Muslim people, most of which live in Greece and Turkey. The origin of those people is debated and they often display non-Bulgarian ethnic consciousness. Yet many of them have a sense of community with the Muslim Bulgarians on the territory of Bulgaria.

Today most Muslim Bulgarians in Bulgaria have Slavic-Bulgarian names, as opposed to previously used Arab/Turkish names. Since the 1990s a signifficant part of that community has converted back to Orthodox Christianity, under the mentorship of Father Boyan Saruev - a Bulgarian Orthodox pastor, who himself was born to a Muslim family.

The movement of returning back to the Bulgarian roots was started in the 1930s by the 'Rodina' organization. It was created by a number of prominent leaders of the Muslim Bulgarian community, who were working towards reconciliation between Bulgarians of both Christian and Muslim faith. They promoted secular way of live, modern non-Muslim clothing and education for females.

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[edit] Geographic distribution

[edit] Bulgaria

Muslim Bulgarians do not represent a homogenous community in Bulgaria. Those living in the eastern and central parts of the Rhodopes (the districts of Smolyan region and Kurdzhali) tend to be non-practising Muslims and usually have Christian names. A large number of them, especially those living in the municipalities of Zlatograd, Nedelino, Krumovgrad, and Kirkovo, converted to Christianity in the 1990s. The ones living in Pirin and on the western fringes of the Rhodopes (in the districts of Pazardzhik and Blagoevgrad) are, however, strongly religious and have preserved the Muslim name system, customs and clothing. Whereas the majority of the community has identified itself as Bulgarian in the population censuses in 1992 and 2001, a certain minority in the Western Rhodopes has opted for Turkish ethnicity although its mother tongue is also Bulgarian.

Muslim Bulgarians speak a variety of archaic Bulgarian dialects. Under the influence of mass media and school education, the dialects have been almost completely unified with standard Bulgarian among Muslim Bulgarians living in Bulgaria.

[edit] Greece

As Greece has tended to regard its Muslim minority as only Turkish-speaking and has allowed only education in Turkish, the Muslim Bulgarian community in Greece has become largely bilingual and the mother tongue of some of its members now is Turkish. The spoken language of those members of the community who have preserved the dialect as their mother tongue has been influenced to a large extent by Turkish and Greek and shows many aberrations from standard Bulgarian.

The Muslim Bulgarian community in Greece has been largely Turkified. Since the 1990s Greece has made tentative attempts to promote a separate Pomak identity, partly because of the advanced Turkification of the non-Turkish members of its Muslim minority (Muslim Bulgarians and Roma) and partly for fear of the growing percentage of Muslims in Thrace in the past couple of decennia. A Greek-Pomak dictionary has been issued and Muslim Bulgarians have frequently been described by Greek authorities as an amalgamation of Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks or Muslim Slavophone Greeks.

[edit] Turkey

There is also a substantial Muslim Bulgarian community in Turkey, estimated at some 200,000 people. These are not considered by the Turkish government as an ethnic minority and have been denied any cultural authonomy or education in their mother tongue. Some of them have Turkish or distinctive Pomak self-consciousness.

[edit] See also