Bosniak History - Medieval Bosnia

Medieval Bosnia

Slavs settled in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the surrounding lands, which were then part of the Eastern Roman Empire, in the seventh century. The Slavic Serbs and Croats settled sometime after the first wave of Slavs. The Croats established a kingdom in what is northwestern Croatia. The Serbs settled in what is now southcentral Serbia, and later expanding into the upper Drina valley of eastern Bosnia and into Eastern Herzegovina, known in the later Middle Ages as Zahumlje. The Croats to the west came under the influence of the Germanic Carolingian Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, and Croatia was closely tied to Hungary and later Austria until the twentieth century. The Serbs to the east came under periodic Byzantine rule, converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and absorbed Byzantine cultural influences. After some centuries of rule by Croatia, Serb principalities, and the Byzantine Empire, an independent Bosnian kingdom flourished in central Bosnia between the 12th and the 15th centuries.

The subject of ethnicity in medieval Bosnia has been one of great debate ever since it was brought up in its current context by historians during the second half of the 19th century. All three ethnic groups in Bosnia have a different view on the matter, and this complex and sensitive subject has been further obscured by nationalism and propaganda through the ages. Proving their people as the true heirs of the medieval Bosnian state is important to many nationalists because they consider this indigenousness to have important implications in modern social, political, and interethnic issues. Simply put, however, there is no sign that the population of pre-Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina, in whichever social stratum, had developed Croatian or Serbian ethnic consciousness even in a medieval sense of the word. To quote Noel Malcolm, chairman of the board of trustees at the Bosnian institute, from the book "Bosnia A Short History":

As for the question of whether the inhabitants of Bosnia were really Croat or really Serb in 1180, it cannot be answered, for two reasons: first, because we lack evidence, and secondly, because the question lacks meaning. We can say that the majority of the Bosnian territory was probably occupied by Croats - or at least, by Slavs under Croat rule - in the seventh century; but that is a tribal label which has little or no meaning five centuries later. The Bosnians were generally closer to the Croats in their religious and political history; but to apply the modern notion of Croat identity (something constructed in recent centuries out of religion, history, and language) to anyone in this period would be an anachronism. All that one can sensibly say about the ethnic identity of the Bosnians is this: they were the Slavs who lived in Bosnia.

The Bosnian Kingdom blended cultural influences from east and west; although nominally Roman Catholic, the Bosnian kings embraced elements of Byzantine culture and court ceremonial, and formed alliances and dynastic marriages with the neighboring rulers of both Croatian-Dalmatian and Serb states. Because of Bosnia's mountainous and inaccessible terrain and its remote location on the borderland between the Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, control by church authorities was weak. The religious situation was also peculiar because of the presence of an indigenous Bosnian Church (its adherents were known as krstjani, "Christians"). The krštjani were considered heretics by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Modern historians have debated whether the Krštjani were a branch of the Bogomils, a Manichean sect which originated in Bulgaria, or whether they were members of the Catholic Church who had acquired some heretical beliefs and influences from Eastern Orthodoxy and fell into Schism.

At its largest extent, under King Tvrtko Kotromanić, the Bosnian Kingdom included most of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the exception of north-western Bosnia, as well as parts of Dalmatia and western Serbia. Discord among his heirs weakened the kingdom after his death, and Bosnia and the Serb principalities to the east were unable to prevent Ottoman Turkish incursions into the western Balkans. The final Turkish conquest in 1463 marked the end of an independent Bosnia and the beginning of the influence of a third civilization, Islam.