Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ottoman historical heritage has greatly contributed to shaping of the country’s contemporary image. With respect to this, we could mention several issues which, to a larger or lesser extent, have roots in the Ottoman period, from the question of the territory and borders of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the shape and organisation of settlements and architectural monuments, old crafts, nutrition, to mentality, customs, lexical heritage, music and folklore, and various other cultural facets of the identity of a large segment of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina – both its Muslim and non-Muslim communities. However, we believe that the immaterial and intangible heritage from the Ottoman era is particularly interesting, seeing as it has been passed down through generations, and is very much “alive” and present to this day. This issue is complex and multifaceted, and we have thus chosen to discuss in this paper only one specific question within this field: changes in religious identity in the first half of the 19th century, as witnessed in examples of conversions to Islam.
The question of converting is one of the fundamental questions that influence an individual’s change of identity. Such a change entails accepting new perceptions of the world, of life, death, moral, spiritual values and other concepts – all of which belong to the area of the inward – as well as adopting the new, recognisable models of behaviour and the new way of life that Islam, as both a religion and a culture, entailed. In Bosnia, the conversion implied the entrance into a new cultural circle, while any ties with the earlier religious community were usually severed. In addition, the new religious identity and integration into the Muslim community also played a significant role in shaping an individual’s self-image in the process of establishing national identities. With respect to all of the above, a study of conversions to Islam is, in our esteem, very useful in the understanding of historical, but also of contemporary identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The phenomenon of the expansion of Islam on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been studied for over a century, with contributions by several authors and researchers. It needs to be stressed that significant scientific progress in this area has been made since the times of the earliest works that studied or touched upon these issues (S. Bašagić, H. Kreševljaković, V. Skarić, M. Handžić, A. Solovjev, V. Čubrilović etc.)[2] . The discovery and subsequent systematic examination of survey registers (tapu tahrir defter) has provided a new dimension to the study of Islam’s expansion. The biggest contributions have been the works of N. Filipović, A. Handžić and A. S. Aličić, as well as the works of the participants of a conference entitled Širenje islama i islamska kultura u bosanskom ejaletu [The Spread of Islam and Islamic culture in the Bosnian eyalet], which took place in Sarajevo in 1991. (A. S. Aličić, A. Handžić, F. Spaho, B. Zlatar, H. Č. Drnda, F. Hafizović, A. Kupusović, N. Moačanin, S. Buzov, N. Filipović, R. Ibrahimović etc.)[3] .
A great majority of researchers have to this day remained focused on the initial phases of this process, as well as on the period of mass adoption of the Islamic faith, which took place between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The period that followed this span has remained only partially examined, with merely a couple of attempts at shedding light at this era. In his posthumously published work, “Islamizacija u Bosni i Hercegovini” [Islamisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina], academician Nedim Filipović generally touched upon the character of the process of converting after it had stopped being a massive phenomenon[4] . In addition to Filipović, we also have a recent study by Philippe Gelez, “Vjerska preobraćenja u Bosni i Hercegovini, c. 1800-1918 [Religious conversions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, c. 1800-1918]. In this study, the Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian period were examined as one era, whereas the sources of the first half of the 19th century were poorly represented, in relation to the length of the subject period. In the said literature, the Sharia sijils, which are a significant source of historical data, were not put to use. Gelez claimed that the only sources for the study of religious conversions in this era are Franciscan sources and consular reports, and that “similar data cannot be found in the kâdî (sharia court judge) protocols”[5] . However, cases of conversions to Islam were in fact entered into Sharia sijils, and do offer information that may deepen our understanding of the expansion of Islam as a long-term process with numerous phases, which continued to evolve in the 18th and 19th centuries, albeit not intensively, and not nearly to the extent it was in during the 16th centuries.
In addition to the above considerations, it should be pointed out that in Turkish historiography Sharia court protocols were researched much more thoroughly as a source for understanding the spread of Islam than it has been the case in the historiography of Bosnia and Hercegovina.[6] The very act of converting to Islam in Turkish historiography is usually labelled as ihtidâ[7] , which is a term that could be considered as a continuation of the classical Islamic ideas regarding the adoption of the Islamic religion. Certainly, the majority of researchers focussed their attention on the areas which are today parts of the Republic of Turkey, while the insight that is provided about the eyalet of Bosnia is scarce and insufficient, similarly as it has been the case with the rest of the western Balkans. However, the studies in question were very useful for our work as they provided us with a starting point in finding out ways to improve our understanding of the conversion to Islam, as well as with the possibility to compare our findings with the results achieved in the historiography. On the other hand, it should be noted that the numbers could be compared, but statistical data by itself, without the comparison and the interpretation of the historical context, cannot provide us with an answer to the questions which are of interest to us. In respect to this, we consider the historical context of the eyalet of Bosnia to be different in a number of ways than the situation of Anatolia, as we speak here of a borderland province which was predominantly inhabited by South Slavic peoples (Christians and Muslims). Also, one should have in mind that the 19th century in the Balkans represents the age of national movements and upheavals which attracted the attention of the great European forces. So, it was not the golden age for the spread of Islam, but still year-by-year new conversions were mentioned in the primary sources.
The purpose of this paper is to present in particular the characteristics of conversions to Islam that took place in the first half of the 19th century, based precisely on the study of the sijils of the Sarajevo Sharia court, which are kept in Sarajevo’s Gazi Husrev Bey’s Library. For the purposes of this paper, we analysed a total of 48 sijils, compiled in the period between 1800 and 1851[8] . The basic reason behind our decision to analyse exactly those cases of converting to Islam that took place before the Sarajevo court, is because the only sijils in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that provide information for the entire period are the Sarajevo court sijils, which are thus extremely significant in determining the intensity of conversions to Islam. The number of preserved sijils for other kazas and nahiyes of the eyalet of Bosnia is, for the most part, quite miniscule. In our study of the sijils, we will focus on a couple of significant questions: 1) the act of converting to Islam and how this act is noted in the judicial records; 2) the number of conversions, and 3) the former identities of the converts. Naturally, we do not pretend to offer finite answers to these questions, nor do we believe that this is possible, given the extent to which the sources that offer this data have been preserved, but we do entertain the hope that, with this work, we will at least partially fill certain information loops that are obvious in current literature on this subject.
The very procedure of converting to Islam took place at the Sharia court, and consisted of a few simple steps. The individual wishing to convert would state in front of witnesses that he or she was willingly renouncing the “vain/void religion” or “all of the vain/void religions”, and then declared that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammed is His servant and messenger. This declaration is also known as “kelime-i şehâdet”[9] . Also a part of the procedure was the choosing of a Muslim name by the newly-converted Muslim. At the end of the proceedings, the Sharia court judge would decide that the convert is to be considered as a Muslim[10]. The official proceedings were most probably followed by congratulations and other customs expected in such occasions, for which there is no record in the sijils themselves, seeing as the only relevant segment of the procedure, for the court, was the legal act of conversion itself. There is also no record of any festivities that followed these acts. On the other hand, the legal procedure of converting was based on the works on Islamic law of the Hanafi mezheb. For example, the statement that the individual was converting “of his own will” followed the principle stated in the Qur’an that “there is no compulsion in religion”[11], while the renouncing of the earlier religion or religions was in compliance with a fatwa issued by Ebuʼs-Suʻud Efendi, the Sheikh al-Islam during the era of Ottoman sultan Kanunî Süleyman (Süleyman the Lawgiver), which stipulates that one could not be legally considered as a Muslim if he or she had not given up their earlier religion, even if this person had pronounced the “kelime-i şehâdet” [12].
Upon the completion of the formal proceedings, the court scribes would use a schematised way to register the proceedings on the first or last pages of the sijils. They would always note the basic personal information about the convert, and whereas some entries would be very short and limited, others would include more detail[13]. All the entries were followed by the above formal utterances, which had to be made in order for the conversion to Islam to take place. The text entry itself was also sometimes adorned with additional expressions and epithets. For instance, some entries would state that a convert was “honoured by the honour of Islam”[14], that he or she had “entered the community of believers”[15], that they had “accepted the true/ pure religion of Islam”[16], that they had “entered among those who believe in one God”[17], had “renounced the vain/void religion with the help and guidance of the Eternal One”[18], that they are “persons in whom the Divine guidance is manifested[19], that they had “acquired the obvious mercy of the Eternal One[20]”, that they had “reached the light of faith’s guidance”[21], and many such descriptions.[22] The entries sometimes made no mention of any witnesses, but this was not because there were none – the presence of witnesses was a condition of conversion under the Sharia law, but the sijil notaries may have wanted to use writing space in the sijils more efficiently. The most common witnesses were, in fact, the officers of the court present, such as notaries, court ushers and service staff, while the number of witnesses was often much bigger than the minimum of two male witnesses specified by Sharia law. In all the registered cases we analysed, the witnesses were always Muslim men.[23]
The question of how many people converted to Islam in the 19th century is a special issue in its own right, which in scientific research is analysed in the form of rough and quite arbitrary judgments. Only P. Gelez has attempted to provide an answer to this question, in a couple of sentences, looking at the period between 1840 and 1878. He claims to have consulted consular reports and Franciscan chronicles, and that, in the above period, “the number of converts reached, grosso modo, a hundred or so people”. Furthermore, he also estimates that “there were, in the worst case, a thousand conversions in these 40 years”. He believes that it is very likely that many cases were left out, because the chronicles were local, and the consuls did not have intelligence networks which would be able to cover the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.[24] Gelez’s estimates were given for the whole area that was once the province of Bosnia, and do not refer specifically to conversions to Islam, but give information as to the general number of all kinds of religious conversions in this period. Apart from Gelez’s account, existing literature does not provide any other insights.
We believe that it is currently not possible to give a precise account of how many conversions to Islam there were throughout the eyalet of Bosnia in the 19th century, primarily because many areas do not have preserved sijils to provide such data, while the Franciscan sources and consular reports only offer unorganized and scattered information. As far as research goes, the temettuât defters (registers) for the eyalet of Bosnia have yet to be found, while the other Ottoman registers from the 19th century, which could possibly help complete existing information gaps, are still insufficiently analyzed and not very familiar to researchers in this field. With all this in mind, we will not pretend to give any arbitrary estimates for the entire area of the eyalet, nor will we discuss all the kinds of the changes of religious identity that may have taken place – instead, we will focus on precise data on the number of conversions to Islam, as recorded in the Sarajevo Sharia court sijils, during the period between 1800 and 1851, for which the sijils provide uninterrupted evidence.
All individuals who converted to Islam at the Sarajevo Sharia court can be classified into two categories. The first group consists of people who followed the conversion procedure described earlier in this paper – i. e. who willingly recited the kelime-i şehâdet and accepted Islam. The second were the underage children of newlyconverted Muslims, who, after one of their parents would convert to Islam, would be judicially converted with no particular expression of willingness.[25] Between 1800 and 1851, the Sarajevo Sharia court registered 123 people who willingly accepted Islam, two of which – it should be pointed out were mürtedd – apostates[26] who returned to Islam.[27] The reason we are pointing this out is because the mürtedd received special treatment under Sharia law, and by virtue of that, also by the Sarajevo Sharia court. The works of the Hanafi mezheb autors usually mention that the regulation was to give an apostate man (mürtedd) three days to repent, and if he did not, he would be faced with the death penalty. In the case of women apostates, the death penalty was not applied, but she was supposed to be imprisoned until she was ready to repent[28]. Furthermore, a fatwa by Ebuʼs-Suʻud says that the person who, after the conversion to Islam, again reverted to being an “infidel”, was supposed, under Sharia rules, to be persuaded by force (cebren) to return to Islam, and if the refused, that the should be executed[29]. In addition to the already mentioned number of conversions, there were also ten children who were legally converted to Islam, after one of their parents became a Muslim, which made the total number of people who either chose to convert or were converted to Islam during this period 133[30]. What is interesting is that there were conversions happening almost every year. Of the 52 years studied[31], there is no record of a conversion taking place for only five years[32]. Moreover, the pace of the conversions remained more or less stable, with the number of conversions per year ranging from one to a maximum of seven conversions[33]. Court records show that changes of religious affiliation were registered in all of the months of the Islamic lunar calendar. There were only eight conversions overall that occurred during the month of Ramadan, which is not much, if we take into the account the total number of the registered conversions.[34] Therefore, on the basis of the sijils of Sarajevo one cannot speak about the increasing of conversion activity during the Islamic holy months, nor is there evidence that the religious “atmosphere” in these months made a significant difference as to the number of converts.[35]
In addition to this group of people who converted to Islam before the Sarajevo Sharia Court, it should also be mentioned that the Sarajevo sijils also make note of other individuals who had accepted Islam earlier, at another Sharia court, or at some anonymous location. This was usually done when a person from another town wanted, for whatever reason, to be judicially registered as a Muslim. Furthermore, when resolving various legal matters concerning some of the converts, a Sharia court judge would sometimes make a note in the sijil that the said individual had earlier converted to Islam. We have classified all of these in a special category, with eight cases for which we have confirmed with certainty that they do not coincide with any of the cases already included in the figure earlier mentioned. If we were to include these cases in the total number, we would have 141 individuals recorded in the Sarajevo sijils to have converted to Islam, with 133 of them having converted before the court in Sarajevo. In addition, there were also other people, who are not recorded as having converted to Islam by means of the procedure outlined earlier, but are just described as persons “who embraced Islam by Divine guidance” (mühtedī/ye). We have not included these cases in the above count, since, due to scarce and generalised information, we could not determine with certainty that they are not among the cases we already included in this group[36].
In order to reach some conclusions on the geographical and gender distribution of the conversions to Islam that took place before the Sarajevo kâdî, a statistic analysis has been conducted in this paper at the Sarajevo court for the above-mentioned 133 converts, while the remaining eight cases have more or less similar characteristics, and will not be subject to a separate study in this paper. We will begin by determining the places of origin of the converts, so as to determine their local and regional identity. The greatest number of people who converted to Islam originated from the town of Sarajevo and the villages that belonged to the Sarajevo nahiye (53 people), while 16 converts were from the other nahiyes in the kaza of Sarajevo, 44 of them were from other kazas and nahiyes in the eyalet of Bosnia, 6 were from other areas in the Ottoman Empire[37], 11 cases were from outside the Empire (mainly from the Habsburg Monarchy)[38], while 3 people could not be defined with regard to their place of origin.[39] These cases demonstrate that conversions to Islam did not have to be carried out in the convert’s place or residence – in fact, all the courts in the Ottoman Empire had equal jurisdiction in these matters. We should also point out that some of the converts noted as being from outside the Sarajevo nahiye had relocated there permanently, while there were also cases where a visitor/traveller (müsafir) decided to accept Islam while they were in Sarajevo[40]. The number of men who adopted Islam before the molla in Sarajevo was greater than the number of women (80 vs. 43 cases), but when you take into account the children who were converted to Islam after one of the parents became Muslim, then the ratio becomes 85:48 in favour of men.[41]
These notes on conversion to Islam are especially valuable because they offer an entire range of personal information on the new Muslims, and will present the basis of an attempt to contribute to understanding the actual identities of the converts. What is interesting is that the converts were members of other monotheistic communities that coexisted in this region. Catholics and Orthodox Christians were not specifically distinguished, but were instead identified under the common term zimmî (or wards of the state), which was used to denote non-Muslim subjects, or were simply called “Christians” (naṣranī/yye) [42]. In some cases, we can distinguish the different religions by the convert’s name, but as this method does not guarantee a foolproof religious identification for all of the converts, we did not go any further into this analysis. However, we should point out that very frequently, the names of the converts in the sijils were characteristic of Orthodox Christians[43]. Furthermore, in all cases of Jews converting to Islam – there were a total of three recorded adult converts, and four underage children who were legally converted – the sijils specifically mentioned that the convert was a “yahūdī” (In addition to these cases, we also came across another Jewish convert for whom we do not know where and when he accepted Islam)[44]. In the case of some of the foreigners who had come to the eyalet of Bosnia and adopted Islam as their religion, the sijils usually make no specific mention of their ethnic background, but one of the converts is recorded as being English (a hekimbaşı, or head physician to the Bosnian vâlî) [45]. It was noted for some of the converts that they were of German or Hungarian origin, but we have reason to doubt this, as they bore Slavic names (e.g. Yovan, son of Yovan)[46].
The age distribution of converts to Islam can only be determined with reference to a minor number of cases. For converts who were of age (bāliġ), and had, according to Sharia regulations, legal capacity to have rights and obligations, the court notaries only recorded their ages on rare occasions, whereas the great majority of cases do not specify the exact age of the convert. On the other hand, the notaries used specific and established terms to record any underage converts[47] (such as ṣaġīr and mümeyyiz), as well as those that were on the verge of maturity (mürāhik), since it was important to establish their legal status[48]. Sometimes, for these cases, the exact age of the individual was given, and we can thus come across cases where the children who converted were 12, 13, or 14 years old, and even two cases where the converts were 9 and 10 years of age (one of each)[49]. Here we need to mention that maturity, according to Islamic tenets, is associated with one’s reproductive maturity, and can thus vary from case to case – for example, Hanafi jurists specify that the minimum age a boy can be considered mature is 12 years old, while it was 9 years old for girls. On the other hand, the maximum age by which a child reaches adulthood was, according to Abu Hanifa, 18 for boys and 17 for girls, while his pupils, imam Yusuf and imam Muhammed, are of the opinion that it was 15 years old for both sexes[50]. According to a fatwa by Ebuʼs-Suʻud Efendi, minors could convert to Islam if they were able to understand religion[51]. This issue lead to dispute from time to time, seeing as different communities harboured different ideas as to maturity and being of age, as well as to being able to “understand religion”[52].
Among the women who converted, some were unmarried[53], while others were married. When a married woman would accept Islam, the regulation was to offer her husband the chance to convert too. If he declined, they would automatically be divorced by the court, seeing as a Muslim woman could not be married to a nonMuslim man. This practice is evident in the sijils, and has its judicial basis in the works of Ibrahim Al-Halabī and Sheikh al-Islam Molla Hüsrev, as well as in the fatwas of Ebuʼs-Suʻud[54]. What is interesting is that, in the cases where only one parent would accept Islam, custody of all minor children would always be granted to this parent, and they would also be automatically converted[55]. If the child was of age according to Islamic regulations, he or she would be considered “ fāʻil-i muḫtār” i.e. as a person who can judge for themselves[56]. A total of twelve cases were registered where the woman would convert to Islam and her husband would refuse to, as well as one case of a husband refusing, and agreeing to accept Islam later, and one case of a husband converting to Islam, but his wife refusing to[57]. These refusals perhaps paint a clearer picture of the freedom of choice that was offered to individuals when it came to accepting Islam, than even the formulations in the sijils, which also stipulate that one had become a Muslim with their own “free will”.
In addition to the above considerations, in understanding the identity of the individuals converting to Islam, it is also necessary to establish their social background. Their occupations, as well as their parentsʼ occupations, can serve as indicators of the converts’ social status. The sijils themselves only in some cases state the occupation of the converts or their parents, but we consider these notes important in determining the social strata that the converts were from. According to the notes in the sijils, we know that the following individuals converted to Islam: one glassmaker, two people whose fathers are identified as bakers, one land tenant (müstecir), a daughter of a land tenant, 16 people identified as servants/ḫidmet-kār, or in the service/ḫidmet of certain wealthier individuals, as well as a head physician to a Bosnian vâlî, and a sipahi’s daughter who had committed “apostasy” (irtidād), and had then repented and returned to Islam[58]. The converts came from towns, as from villages. Seeing as those who lived in cities were mostly tradesmen and craftsmen, we believe that converts from towns were also mostly involved in trade and craft, or originated from families in this line of business. Similarly, the non-Muslim population in villages worked mostly in agriculture and livestock raising, and we can therefore assume with some certainty that those were the occupations of the majority of converts who lived in villages. As we mentioned earlier, some converts were also recorded in the sources as having been land tenants or müstacirs. Also, the number of village inhabitants who converted was greater than the number of city-dwelling converts. Among the 123 people (including two apostate women) who converted to Islam of their own will before the Sharia Court in Sarajevo, 33 originated from cities, 81 from villages, and for 9 of them, the sijils only mention the administrative unit they were from, or the country or place of origin (in cases of foreigners converting), and we thus cannot tell whether they came from towns or villages. If we add to our count the children who were legally converted after one of their parents accepted Islam, then the town to village ratio becomes 39:85 (plus 9 cases where only an administrative unit or country of origin of the convert is mentioned). An interesting observation is that difference in the numbers of town and village inhabitants who converted is significantly diminished if we only consider cases in the Sarajevo nahiye, and becomes 20:27 in favour of villages. If we then count the children who were legally converted, the number of town folk who converted is only slightly smaller (25:28).
In the end, we can conclude that the conversions to Islam that took place in the first half of the nineteenth century before the Sharia Court in Sarajevo are an excellent indicator of the fact that the process of the expansion of Islam continued to survive in this period, albeit to a much more humble extent. There were new cases of conversion to Islam almost every year, and the new Muslims included Orthodox Christian, Catholic and Jewish locals, together with individuals from other areas in the Ottoman Empire, as well as those from the Habsburg Monarchy. The analysis we conducted of conversions to Islam during the first half of the 19th century, on the basis of the study of the Sarajevo sijils, could also be conducted, with some continuity, for the second half of the 18th century, while similar information can also be found in sijils found for other areas in the eyalet of Bosnia, but these can only be used to account for a few years, as they are not that well preserved. Also, a very significant question, which requires detailed analysis and research, is what motivated these individuals to convert to Islam. The sijils, and all other available sources, only offer limited information on the actual reasons for converting, and we, in making assumptions with regard to this issue, must therefore take into consideration a range of various intertwined religious, cultural, social, economic, psychological, and other individual factors which could have influenced an individual to accept Islam as their religion, as well as how these factors played out in the context of the historical milieu of the 19th century.[59] It seems like after many studies[60] that have been conducted about the motives of the conversions, we still have more questions than answers; so, it has become obvious that further talks about issues as complex as these should focus on possibilities, rather than on seeking the so-called “true and objective” solutions. Providing a definite answer to the above-mentioned question of motives exceeds the aims which were originally put forward in this paper, so we will satisfy ourselves by drawing attention to the problems that could be of interest to future researchers. Even though the world of people who converted to Islam in the eyalet of Bosnia during the first half of the 19th century is only briefly touched upon in this paper, we would like to express our hope that future studies and analyses would contribute to its better understanding, as well as to the more complete comprehension of the historical heritage that remained in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Ottoman Empire left the stage.
APPENDIX
