Islam in Romania - History - Early Presence

Early Presence

The first significant numbers of Muslims arrived in Romania with the Pechenegs and Cumans. Around 1061, when the Pechenegs ruled in Wallachia and Moldavia, there was a Muslim minority among them, as was among the Cumans. The Cumans followed the Pechenegs in 1171, while the Hungarian kings settled the Pechenegs in Transylvania and other parts of their kingdom.

Muslim presence is traditional in Dobruja, and partly predates both Ottoman rule and the creation of the neighboring Danubian Principalities. Both the Pechengs and Cumans were present in the area, where they probably established a number of small communities. Around 1260, two Rûm Seljuq community leaders, the deposed Sultan Kaykaus II and the mystic Sari Saltik, were allowed to settle the region during the reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos, ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Kaykaus, who arrived in Dobruja with his brother and co-ruler Kilij Arslan IV, was reportedly followed by as many as 12,000 of his subjects. Researchers such as Franz Babinger and Gheorghe I. Brătianu endorse the view that Saltuk and his followers were in fact crypto-Shiite Alevis who were regarded as apostates by the dominant Sunni group of central Anatolia, and who sought refuge from persecution.

The exact location of their earliest area of settlement is disputed: a group of historians proposes that the group was probably tasked with defending the Byzantine border to the north, and settled in and around what later became known as Babadag, while another one centers this presence on the Southern Dobrujan strip of land known as Kaliakra (presently in Bulgaria). In addition, various historians argue that this Seljuq migration was the decisive contributor to the ethnogenesis of the Gagauz people, which, some of them believe, could also have involved the Cumans, Pechenegs, Oghuz and other Turkic peoples. The Gagauz, few of whom have endured in Dobruja, are majority Eastern Orthodox, a fact which was attributed to a process of religious conversion from Islam.

The presence of Tatars was notably attested through the works of Berber traveler Ibn Battuta, who passed through the area in 1334. In Ibn Battuta's time, the region was regarded as a westernmost possession of the Tatar Golden Horde, a khanate centered on the Eurasian Steppe. Archeology has uncovered that another Tatar group, belonging to the Golden Horde, came to Dobruja during the rule of Nogai Khan, and were probably closely related to the present-day Nogais. Following Timur's offensives, the troops of Aktai Khan visited the region in the mid-14th century and around 100,000 Tatars settled there.

Before and after the Golden Horde fell, Dobrujan Muslims, like the Crimean Tatars, were recipients of its cultural influences, and the language in use was Kipchak. The extension of Ottoman rule, effected under Sultans Bayezid I and Mehmed I, brought the influence of Medieval Turkish, as Dobruja was added to the Beylerbeylik of Rumelia.

The grave of Sari Saltik, reportedly first erected into a monument by Sultan Bayezid, has since endured as a major shrine in Romanian Islam. The shrine, which has been described as a cenotaph, is one of many places where the Sheikh is supposed to be buried: a similar tradition is held by various local communities throughout the Balkans, who argue that his tomb is located in Kaliakra, Babaeski, Blagaj, Edirne, the Has District, Krujë, or Sveti Naum. Other accounts hold that Saltuk was buried in the Anatolian city of İznik, in Buzău, Wallachia, or even as far south as the Mediterranean island of Corfu or as far north as the Polish city of Gdańsk. The toponym Babadağ (Turkish for "Old Man's Mountain", later adapted into Romanian as Babadag) is a probable reference to Sari Saltik, and a Dobrujan Muslim account recorded by chronicler Evliya Çelebi in the late 15th century has it that the name surfaced soon after a Christian attack partly destroyed the tomb.

The oldest madrasah in Dobruja and Romania as a whole was set up in Babadag, on orders from Bayezid II (1484); it was moved to Medgidia in 1903. From the same period onwards, groups of Muslim Tatars and Oghuz Turks from Anatolia were settled into Dobruja at various intervals; in 1525, a sizable group of these, originating from the ports of Samsun and Sinop, moved to Babadag. Bayezid also asked Volga Tatars to resettle into northern Dobruja.