Bulgarian Muslims
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The Bulgarian Muslims (Bulgarian: българи-мохамедани; locally called pomak, ahryan, poganets, marvak, poturnak) are Bulgarians of the Islamic faith. They are descendants of Christian (Eastern Orthodox, Bogomils and Paulicians) Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the period between the 16th and the 18th century through the Ottoman empire influence.
Muslim Bulgarians live mostly in the Rhodopes – Smolyan Province, the southern part of Pazardzhik and Kardzhali Provinces and the eastern part of Blagoevgrad Province in Southern Bulgaria, as well as the Xanthi and Rhodope Prefectures in Northeastern Greece. They also live in a group of villages in Lovech Province in Northern Bulgaria.
The name Pomak is strongly pejorative in Bulgarian and is resented by most members of the community, especially by non-practising Muslims. The name adopted and used instead is Bulgarian Muslims.
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[edit] Geographic distribution
[edit] Bulgaria
Muslim Bulgarians do not represent a homogenous community. The ones living in Pirin and on the western fringes of the Rhodopes (in the provinces of Pazardzhik and Blagoevgrad) are, however, strongly religious and have preserved the Muslim name system, customs and clothing. Whereas the majority of the community has identified itself as Bulgarian in the population censuses in 1992 and 2001, a certain minority in the Western Rhodopes has opted for Turkish ethnicity although its mother tongue is also Bulgarian.
Muslim Bulgarians in the Rhodopes speak a variety of archaic Bulgarian dialects. Under the influence of mass media and school education, the dialects have been almost completely unified with standard Bulgarian among Muslim Bulgarians living in Bulgaria.
[edit] Greece
As Greece has tended to regard its Muslim minority as only Turkish-speaking and has allowed only education in Turkish, the Muslim Bulgarian community in Greece has become largely bilingual and the mother tongue of some of its members now is Turkish. The spoken language of those members of the community who have preserved the dialect as their mother tongue has been influenced to a large extent by Turkish and Greek and shows many aberrations from standard Bulgarian.
The Muslim Bulgarian community in Greece has been largely Turkified. Since the 1990s Greece has made tentative attempts to promote a separate Pomak identity, partly because of the advanced Turkification of the non-Turkish members of its Muslim minority (Muslim Bulgarians and Roma) and partly for fear of the growing percentage of Muslims in Thrace in the past couple of decennia. A Greek-Pomak dictionary has been issued and Muslim Bulgarians have frequently been described by Greek authorities as an amalgamation of Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks or Muslim Slavophone Greeks.
[edit] Turkey
There is also a substantial Muslim Bulgarian community in Turkey, estimated at some 120,000 people. These are not recognized by the Turkish government as an ethnic minority and have been largely Turkified. Some of them have Turkish or distinctive Pomak self-consciousness.
[edit] See also
