After Ottoman conquests of Serbian lands in the late 14th century, conversion of Orthodox Christian Serbs began. Konstantin Mihailović (fl. 1455–63), an Ottoman janissary of Serb origin, spoke of Crypto-Christian Serbs in the janissary corps, having been converted as boys through the Devşirme. The first documented evidence of Crypto-Christianity in Serbs comes from an Ottoman Serbian deli (warrior) confessing to a French ambassador at the Ottoman court in 1568. He confesses that he belongs to the Serb nation and faith, that he lives with Turks and simulates himself (as a Muslim), but that he was born as, and in his heart is, a Christian. Religious syncretism in Serb families is documented in Ottoman documents. An 1848 census of Ottoman Novi Pazar shows instances of "one brother believes in Christ, the other in Muhammed", and several ones where the father is Christian and his sons Muslims. In the Sandžak area (historical Raška), even after World War I, some Christian widows remarried Muslims and stayed secret Christians, while being "real Muslims" in society.
Anthropological studies attest Muslim families recalling their slava (patron saint tradition), while some Muslim families in the 19th and 20th century were recorded as still venerating their patron saint and Christmas.
Serbian nationalist historiography have used the existence of religious syncretism and Crypto-Christianity in Bosnia and Herzegovina as proof of the Serb origin of Bosnian Muslims.
In Serbian and South Slavic, the term dvoverstvo (двоверство, "double belief, dual faith") is also used.
See also
- Serb Muslims
- Laramans, Kosovo Albanian Catholics
- Linobambaki, Crypto-Christian Cypriots
References
- ^ Skendi, Stavro (1980). Balkan Cultural Studies. East European Monographs. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-914710-66-0.
- Stephen Turk Christensen (1990). Violence and the Absolutist State: Studies in European and Ottoman History. Akademisk Forlag. p. 81. ISBN 978-87-500-2940-3.
- ^ Petrović, Petar Ž. (1984). "Raška: antropogeografska proučavanja". Posebna Izdanja (26). Etnografski institut Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti: 216–217.
- Jastrebov, Ivan S. (1879). Подаци за историју српске цркве. p. 141.; Filipović, Milenko (1967). "Različita etnološka građa". Srpski etnografski zbornik. 80: 97.
- Dennis Dennis Charles Washburn; A. Kevin Reinhart (2007). Converting Cultures: Religion, Ideology, and Transformations of Modernity. BRILL. pp. 429–. ISBN 978-90-04-15822-1.
- Selim Deringil (27 August 2012). Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-107-00455-9.
- Skendi 1967.
Further reading
- Skendi, Stavro (June 1967). "Crypto-Christianity in the Balkan Area under the Ottomans". Slavic Review. 26 (2). Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies: 227–246. doi:10.2307/2492452. JSTOR 2492452.
- Bartolomé Bennassar; Lucile Bennassar (1989). Les chrétiens d'Allah: l'histoire extraordinaire des renégats, XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Perrin. ISBN 978-2-262-00721-8. (in French)