Bosniak History - Early History

Early History

The Pre-Slavic roots of the Bosniaks can be traced back to the Illyrians. This ancient people presumably arrived in the west Balkans around 2,000 BCE, overrunning the various old European cultures that lived there before them (such as the Butmir Culture in the vicinity of modern Sarajevo). Despite the arrival of the Celts in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, the Illyrians remained the dominant group in the west Balkans until the arrival of the Romans.

Rome conquered Illyria after a series of wars, the final being the crushing of a rebellion by certain tribes in what is now central Bosnia around 9 CE. Latin-speaking settlers from all over the empire settled among the Illyrians at this time. The Roman province of Dalmatia included Herzegovina and most of Bosnia, and a strip of northern Bosnia, south of the Sava River, was part of the province of Pannonia. The Vlachs, a historically nomadic people who live throughout the Balkans, speak a language derived from Latin, and are the descendants of Roman settlers and Romanized indigenous peoples. No longer present in a large number, they were absorbed into Bosnia's three main ethnic groups based on religion during the Ottoman period.

Bosniaks, unlike other people whose land is named after an ancient ethnic name, derive their name from Bosnia. The most commonly accepted theory regarding the origins of the name Bosnia is that it comes from the river Bosna, which has had a similar name since ancient times. That word itself is of Illyrian origin.

The Goths conquered Roman Dalmatia in the fifth century, and later the Alans, who spoke an Iranian language, and the Turkic Huns and Avars passed through what is now Bosnia. These invaders left few linguistic traces, and whatever remnant populations were left behind were absorbed by the Slavic wave that was to follow.