Islam in the Balkans : religion and society between Europe and the Arab world
"The tragic events that began to unfold in the former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s have drawn the world's attention to the history and rich culture of the Muslim communities of Bosnia especially, but also of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia - the historic heartland of Muslim Europe. Here H.T. Norris breaks new ground by focusing on their religious and intellectual links with the Arab world, Persia and Central Asia, whereas the few previous publications on the subject have been mostly concerned with the more obvious links between the Balkan Muslims and the Turks. Norris illustrates from a wide range of sources the many channels through which the Arabs and Persians were linked with Balkan peoples, especially after the Ottoman conquest, in their art, architecture, literature and religion - direct contacts were also forged through Sufism. From the earliest times, also, many Balkan Muslim soldiers and bureaucrats, as well as scholars and poets, made an impact on the wider Islamic world, the most prominent being Mohammed Ali, the founder of modern Egypt." "The resurgence of Muslim identity in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo has of course much to do with the aggressive nature of Serbian nationalism. But it is also a legacy of the region's relations over many centuries with the Arab countries and Persia, now given a new meaning in the wake of Serbian attempts to 'cleanse' Sarajevo and other cities of their Muslim inhabitants." "As the wider world has become aware, for the first time in several generations, of the phenomenon of Muslim Europe, many people of all persuasions now want to know and understand more about it, and the forces which have been tearing ancient communities apart and threatening a wider conflagration. Up till now, the sources available to them have been largely concerned with power politics, economics and demography. H.T. Norris's cultural investigation, the fruit of many years' research, corrects this imbalance."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©1993
University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, S.C, ©1993
History
xxii, 304 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
9780872499775, 0872499774
28067651
1. The Arabs, the Slavs, the Hungarian Saracens and the Arnauts. The Arabs enter Balkan history. Middle Eastern beliefs among the Slavs. The Arab threat to Byzantium. Arabs and Bulgarians at the beginning of the tenth century. Dubrovnik and the Arab East. Pecheneg and Khwarizmian Muslims in medieval Hungary. Al-Idrisi (548/1154) describes the Yugoslav coast, Albania and the Macedonian interior. The Arnauts. Balkan regions, the 'Chanson de Roland' and medieval Arabic folk epics
2. Oriental influences on Islamic and non-Islamic life and literature in Bosnia, in Macedonia and among the Albanians. The Bogomil and Christian background. Islam and the Balkan city. Mosque, tekke and library. Arabic and Persian scholarship. Early Islamic poets in Albania. Islamic popular literature. Early nineteenth-century poets
3. Sufi movements and orders in the Balkans and their historical links with the Sufism of Central Asia. The Baktashiyya. Non-Shiite ̃Sufi orders in the Balkans. The Qadiriyya. The Mawlawiyya. The Khalwatiyya. The Naqshabandiyya. The Malamiyya. Shaykh al-Ta'ifa al-Bayramiyya. The origins of the Baktashiyya in Albania. When were the first tekkes built in the heart of Albania? Kruje
4. Muslim heroes of the Bulgars, the Tatars of the Dobrudja, the Albanians and the Bosnians. Oriental legends about the Arabian and Central Asian ancestry of the Bulgars and Arnauts. The folk epic, religious mission, miracles and many tombs of Sari Saltik. Kruje, Sari Saltik and Gjerg Elez Alia in Albania and Bosnia
5. Albanian Sufi poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their impact on contemporary Albanian thought. The writings of Naim Frasheri. Naim Frasheri's poem on Skanderbeg. Naim Frasheri's Baktashi works. The historical background to Naim's 'Qerbelaja'. The tekkes of Iraq. The epic of Fuduli and his influences on later Albanian literature. 'Qerbelaja'. Twentieth-century Sufi poets of Kosovo. The Baktashi legacy in the verse of Baba Ali Tomori. The neo-mysticism of Hamid Gjylbegaj
6. Balkan Muslims in the history of the Maghrib, Egypt and Syria and the influence of the Arab East in the courtly life of Ali Pasha of Tepelene. Albanians and Bosnians in Algeria and Tunisia. Albanians in Egypt. Albanians and the Cairene Baktashi tekkes. The history of Shaykh Muhammad Lutfi Baba and Shaykh Ahmad Sirri Baba. al-Hajj Umar Lutfi Bashanzi. Ali Pasha of Tepelene. The Albanians in Syria
7. Bridges and barriers of Islamic faith and culture within Balkan Muslim and non-Muslim societies. The battle of Kosovo and the Serb crusade against Islam. Syncretic movements and religious bridge-building in the late Middle Ages. Romanian monasteries and mosques and links with the Arab East. Islam in Kosovo. The Future
Appendix: The Serbian view of Islam in the 1980s