Encyclopedia of Islam

Bibliography: Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper before Print: 

The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001); 

James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed. Rev. ed. 

(Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1995); Brinkley 

Messick,  The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination 

and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of 

California Press, 1993); Johannes Pederson, The Arabic 

Book. Translated by Geoffrey French (Princeton, N.J.: 

Princeton University Press, 1984).

books and bookmaking

  

113  J

---

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a predominantly Mus-

lim country in the southern Balkan mountains. 

With an area of nearly 20,000 square miles (the 

size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined), 

it is bordered on the north and west by Croatia (a 

predominantly Catholic country), on the east by 

Serbia (a predominantly Eastern Orthodox Chris-

tian country), and on the south by Montenegro 

(also a predominantly Orthodox land). It has a 

small outlet to the Adriatic Sea providing it with 

less than 15 miles of coastline.

Ethnically, Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to 

three main groups: Bosniaks (a modern designa-

tion for South Slovaks who are mostly Muslim, 48 

percent), Serbians (14.3 percent), and Croatians 

(14.3 percent). In addition to Islam (40 percent), 

the chief religions are Eastern Orthodoxy (31 

percent) and Roman Catholicism (15 percent). 

The Bosnians and Herzegovinans do not form 

separate groups ethnically so much as religiously, 

being defined by their religious affiliation since 

the 15th century. There is no separate language for 

the country; its 4.6 million residents speak either 

Serbian or Croatian.

At the end of the 12th century, Bosnia gained 

its independence from its neighbors, the Hungar-

ians (including the Croatians) to the north and 

the Serbians to the east. The Kingdom of Bosnia 

was a religiously divided land. Its people were 

partly Catholic and partly Orthodox, but many 

were adherents of an independent third religion, 

the Bosnian Church, which held to an esoteric 

religion called Bogomilism, with roots in Mani-

cheanism. Originating in Macedonia, Bogomilism 

had appeared in the 10th century and spread 

across the southern Balkans. In Bosnia, where its 

had its greatest support, it became identified with 

the Bosnian national spirit and came to define the 

people in contrast to the Eastern Orthodox faith 

radiating from Constantinople and the Catholic 

faith of the Hungarian.

Then at the end of the 15th century, Turkish 

forces swept over the southern Balkans, and Islam 

was introduced into Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Because of the use of the Inquisition by the 

Catholic Church against the Bogomils, it appears 

that given the choice, the Bogomils supported 

the Turks over their former Catholic rulers and 

assisted their conquest. Many Bogomils saw them-

selves as closer to Islam in belief than Christianity 

and rather quickly converted to Islam, while the 

remainder made the conversion through the next 

decades. As Bosnian elites affirmed their Islamic 

beliefs, many of their number rose to positions of 

prominence in the empire, several serving as the 

grand vizer in the sultan’s court in Constantinople 

(i

stanbUl

) in the late 16th century. Under Turk-

ish rule, a governor (pasha) was appointed who 

made his headquarters in Sarajevo. The land was 

divided into eight districts (sanjaks). Islam in the 

land adhered to the h

anaFi

  l

egal

  s

chool

, the 

school favored by Ottoman rulers.

In the 19th century, the Bosnians became 

critical of what they saw as corruption coming to 

dominate the Ottoman Empire, and a new spirit 

of independence swept the land. A half century of 

conflict resulted in the Austro-Hungarian Empire 

pushing the Ottomans out of the area. Rather 

than achieving independence, however, Bosnia 

and Herzegovina came under Habsburg rule. At 

the end of the 19th century, Bosnian Muslims 

made a new effort to mobilize in the cause of 

national independence with a focus for a time 

in the Muslim National Organization. In 1909, 

the Austrian authorities created a new office of 

Reis-ul-ilema, the supreme leader of the Muslim 

community. Austria continued to exercise its 

hegemony throughout World War I, after which 

Serbia came to control Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Through the 20th century, Muslims existed as 

the largest group in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but 

the land was successively incorporated into larger 

political structures—Serbian, Nazi, and Yugo-

slavian Communist—that repeatedly forced the 

Muslims into a minority status. Successive govern-

ments also continued policies that set different eth-

nic and religious communities against each other, 

K  114