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Prof. Ugur Dinc from Istanbul University was asked:
Did Bosniaks get mixed with Ottomans (women with Ottomans living in Bosnia)?
He answers:
If you mean the Ottoman dynasty and its administrative ranks —which was the original meaning of Ottoman until the mid-19th century reforms that took place in response to misguided modern European nationalism— Bosnian Muslims and to a great extent even Bosnian Christians were part of the Ottomans themselves. They may have given few wives to the Ottoman dynasty, but Bosnian and Yugoslavian Muslims, who often had Christian relatives that they favored, were certainly a big part of the central Ottoman administration in the capital as well as the provinces including Bosnia itself. The dynasty and the rest of the Ottoman central administration quite liked them and took a big number of its grand viziers (prime ministers) and other high-level officials from among the Bosnian and other Yugoslavian populations. This was not only the case in the earlier, “devshirme” period when Christian boys were asked to convert to Islam and become Ottoman officers. It actually continued during the later centuries when the said “devshirme” system was abolished. Bosnians who were already Muslim continued staffing high-level Ottoman offices.
If you mean the Ottoman people, that is, the sense that the word Ottoman acquired in the 19th century, then at least Bosnian Muslims were more or less quintessential Ottomans. I’ve already talked about how they contributed to the Ottoman administrative apparatus. Moreover, they trained great Ottoman Islamic scholars whom I am proud of as a Turkish-speaking Ottoman “Rumi” Muslim with an origin in the Balkans —though not one in Bosnia or Yugoslavia. Bosnian Muslims were the hosts and not the guests in the Ottoman political and social system, and naturally they were at least as loyal to Ottoman Muslim values as Turkish-speaking Muslims.
If you mean to ask whether people of Turkish-speaking origin settled in Bosnia and married locals, both men and women probably did. Some Bosnians I have known believe that they have had some ancestors who came from Anatolia or other, Turkish-speaking parts of the Balkans and assimilated into the local Bosnian-/Slavic-speaking population. This does make sense, especially when you remember that there are Turkish-speaking Muslims in Bosnia, too. Some of the ancestors of these people must have arrived from Anatolia, carrying the language with them. At least these people have certainly been marrying other, Slavic-speaking Bosnian Muslims.
Nevertheless, why is it important whether some ancestors of Bosnians were Turkish-speaking? Think of me: All my ancestors that I know of have been Turkish-speaking, except a probable Kurdish-speaking great-great-great-grandfather who died in 1877 or 1878, and I am sure that only a small number of my ancestors actually originated from the homelands of the Turkish language in Inner Asia. As far as I’ve been able to observe, my and my family’s and my villagers’ looks generally are not different from that of an average Christian Bulgarian —as what is now northern Bulgaria nearby the Danube was the home region of all my fifth-generation ancestors. This is not only my observation but a Christian Bulgarian woman from Varna in Bulgaria commented likewise over a decade ago to me. Obviously, both the Christians and we descend from a blend of the original Thracian, Moesian and Dacian populations with the ancient Italic, ancient Greek, Slavic, Turkic and any other migrants. Most likely, most of us are basically still the same Thracians with some genetic contribution from others. Both the Christian Bulgarians and we Muslims have been speaking Turkish and Slavic alike. Yes, there were Turkish-speaking Christian “Bulgars” as well as Bulgarian-speaking Muslim “Turks”. Actually, I have some relatives in my extended family whose native language is Bulgarian —or “Pomak”— and they have probably been Muslims and therefore “Turks” for about as long as we Turkish speakers have been.
So, why does it matter whether Bosnians mixed with others? Whether we be of Slavic, Turkic, Thracian, Illyrian, Dacian, Moesian or other origin, we basically became the same Rumi people, that is, the same Roman people and have created a common civilization with secondary local variations. This process began during the oldest Roman period, continued in the Christian era and may have peaked during the Muslim Rumi (=Roman) rule of the Ottoman dynasty. From at least Sultan Mehmed (Muhammad) the Conqueror until some time in the 19th century, our sultan was Kaysar-i Rum —a direct translation of the Latin phrase Caesar Romanorum— and our people were the “Rumi”s or the Rum (when used as a plural) or the people of Diyar-i Rum (i.e. Roman lands). South-Slavic-speakers such as Bosnians were Rumis/Ottomans, as were we Turkish speakers. This is nothing strange or unusual. Romans have always spoken a large number of different languages even though the linguae francae have been Latin, Greek and Rumi (Ottoman) Turkish chronologically. This did not need to divide us because this variation in native languages and the similar variation in local cultures was always a main feature of our Rumi civilization, our Roman civilization.
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