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Revision as of 22:01, 16 December 2002 by Gabbe (talk | contribs) (lots and lots of [[)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)By the term Bosnian Muslims or just Bosnians are called the inhabitants of Bosnia, a region in Southeastern Europe, in the west of the Balkan Peninsula. Bosnians are the descendants of Serbs and Croats who were - willingly or by force - converted to Islam during the Ottoman period.
They speak a variant of the common Croatoserbian (or Serbocroat) language, written in the same form of the Latin alphabet which is also used in the Croat (or Western) variant of the Croatoserbian language. The main difference of the Bosnian language variant is that contains many borrowings from Turkish - many of them being Arabic and Persian in origin - due to the Islamic faith of Bosnians.
Bosnia forms now part of the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, a former Yugoslav Republic, having gained its independence no more than five years ago. The history of this region is very turbulent, as it used to be a province of the Roman Empire, of the Austrian Empire under Hapsburg dynasty, of the Ottoman Empire and, finally, of the Yugoslav Federation.