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Bosniaks (natively: Bošnjaci), previously known as Ethnical Muslims of Yugoslavia, are Slavs who were converted to Islam during the Ottoman period (15th-19th century). Bosniaks are named after Bosnia, the westernmost Balkan region held by the Turks. Most Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina declare themselves ethnically Bosniak, and also some Muslims of Serbia and Montenegro (in the Sandžak region). Note that other Muslims of the Balkans aren't Bosniaks; rather, they're Albanians and Turks.
There are conflicting claims on how the population in Bosnia was converted to Islam. A large segment of Bosnian population at the time were members of an indigenous Bosnian Church (krstjani, "Christians") and were considered heretics by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, and they are said to have willingly embraced Islam. Some of the converts may have been Bogomils or Patarenes.
Many Christian children became Muslims by getting forcibly enrolled as janičari into the Ottoman army. Janissaries, however, had no right to marry until 1566, and before and after that were used throughout the Ottoman Empire; their descendants do not comprise a major part of Bosniak population.
Economically, at the end of the Ancient Regime, the Bosnian Muslims were the majority of the landlords, with Christians being peasants. This may have been caused by conversion being concentrated in towns rather than villages, leading to a longer term division between urban and rural areas.
Being part of Europe and influenced not only by the oriental but also by the occidental culture, Bosnian Muslims are considered to be some of the most advanced Islamic peoples of the world. The nation takes pride in the melancholic folk songs sevdalinke, the precious medieval filigree manufactured by old Sarajevo craftsmen, and a wide array of traditional wisdoms that are carried down to newer generations by word of mouth, and in recent years written down in numerous books.
1968 saw the first identification of the Yugoslav Muslims as a unique nationality. The term "Muslim as a nationality" (Muslimani u smislu narodnosti) was officially adopted.
In September 1993 Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals adopted the term Bosniak instead of the previously used Muslim. Some Serbs objected to the name as a ploy to monopolize the history of Bosnia and make them seem to be foreign invaders (see History of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The term in itself means Bosnian and is an archaic term that once used for all inhabitants of Bosnia regardless of faith. Since the 1990s, the name has been projected outside of Bosnia itself, onto Serbia's and Macedonia's Slav Muslim population. It allows a Bosniak/Bosnian distinction to match the Serb/Serbian and Croat/Croatian distinctions between ethnicity and residence.
Some thoughts on national integration in Bosnia and Herzegovina
In the times following the Ottoman conquest, the name «Bošnjanin» was turkified into «Bošnjak» (Bosh-nyak, Bosniak in English), which is the name Bosnian Muslims had officially adopted as their own national name (it was «plebiscitarily» accepted on the September 28th 1993., at the 2nd Bosniak Congress- an institution of Bosnian Muslim intellectuals and ideologues). But, during early Ottoman rule, the term «Bošnjak» was applied exclusively to the Christian population, while islamized natives were referred to as «Bosnalu». However, in following centuries (16th to 19th), this name, under various hyphenated forms («Bošnjak-milleti», «Bošnjak-taifesi») had acquired additional nuances of meaning: it became the common term for all the inhabitants of Bosnian Turkish pashaluk/military province. However, it is just one regional reference. Bureaucracy of the theocratic Ottoman empire couldn't even imagine that Muslims and Christians in one of the provinces of the vast Islamic polity would constitute a separated, supradenominational community. Nor was it thinkable to the Bosnian Christians and Muslims. As pointed out earlier, the origins of the three nations now present in Bosnia & Herzegovina can be traced back to the period (ca. 1500. to ca. 1800.) of intense islamization when «triple» ethnic-denominational differentiation served as the focal point for growth of modern national individualities based on ancient ethnic loyalties: as Camus has said, people become what they already are-notwithstanding the fact that they may not yet be aware of it. Bosnian Croats and Serbs have definitely crystallized into modern nations during the 19th century, simultaneously retaining their regional Bosnian and Herzegovinian identities rooted in history and conjoining with their compatriots in Croatia and Serbia. Bosnian Muslims, on the other hand, have set out on the trek for self-identity. Feeling in their bones the unbridgeable separateness and distance from both Croats and Serbs, these «Turkey's abandoned children» found themselves in an uneasy position: being a cultural/denominational transplant from Asia Minor grafted onto South Slavic ethnicities whose nascent Croat and Serb identities melted away in the process of islamization, they vacillated between a few national and semi-national individualities: Turkish, Croat, Serb, supranational Yugoslav and quasidenominational ethnic Muslim designation- Bosnian Muslims were officially recognized as a nation under the name of Muslims in the 1971. Yugoslav census. Finally, this identity crisis was resolved in a rather bizarre way: «Bosniak» designation (actually, a Turkish word meaning «Bosnian») was adopted in 1993. as a sign of differentiating ethnic identity from denominational loyalties. Although circumstances of the procedure may look somewhat weird (it was unanimously accepted on September the 28th 1993., at the 2nd Bosniak Congress- an institution of Bosnian Muslim intellectuals and ideologues ), it seems that, in all likelihood, Bosnian Muslims have definitively reached the goal in their quest for national identity.