Nationalities Papers, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2000 MUSLIM IDENTITY IN THE BALKANS BEFORE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NATION STATES Florian Bieber Introduction In analyzing national and ethnic identities in the Balkans, one notices a “delay” in the development of the Muslim national identity. The Bosniaks 1 and Albanians, for example, developed a national consciousness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 2 In contrast to the Southeastern European Christians, the Muslim inhabitants followed the ofcial religion of the dominant political class of the Ottoman Empire—Islam—a faith that (theoretically, at least) privileged religious belief over ethnicity or nationalism. These two concepts, alien to Ottoman intellec- tual tradition, became fully understood by the Ottoman elite only in the early twentieth century. Although the Muslims under Ottoman rule often perceived themselves as different from their co-religionist rulers in Istanbul, as shall be demonstrated in this paper, they nevertheless shared the religion of the rulers of the Empire and practised a religion that suppressed the development of national identity far more explicitly than did Christianity. Thus, it was the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, and the consequent recognition that this state was ceasing to protect the interests and identity of the Muslim population in Southeastern Europe, which led to the development of ethnic and national identity among the Muslims. While it is difcult to trace national and ethnic identities to the eighteenth century and earlier, it is essential to begin the analysis there in order to understand the national mythologies among the Balkan peoples that emerged in the nineteenth century. While the national ideologies of the Christian inhabitants tended to portray the Ottoman period as the “Turkish yoke,” national myths among the Muslims often glorify the Ottoman period and overestimate the degree of national or ethnic consciousness among the Muslims in the Ottoman Empire prior to the rst uprisings in the early nineteenth century. 3 This article shall rst examine the role of Islam in the areas ruled by the Sublime Porte. Next, the paper will survey the Islamic communities. While there are numerous Islamic communities in the Balkans which merit attention, this study shall concentrate on the Muslims of Bosnia (and Sanjak) and the Albanian Muslims, who constitute the two most numerous Muslim groups in the Balkans. 4 Finally, the article ISSN 0090-5992 print; 1465-3923 online/00/010013-1 6 Ó 2000 Association for the Study of Nationalities