The Albanians under Turkish rule appear always to have maintained a kind of semi-autonomy, and the several tribes and clans remained as essentially independent as they were before the conquest. Though vassals of the Sultans, they would not brook the interference of Turkish officials in their internal administration, and there is reason to believe that the Turkish Government has never been able to appoint or confirm any provincial governor who was not a native of Albania, and had not already established his influence by his arms, policy or connections.123 Their racial pride is intense, and to the present day, the Albanian, if asked what he is, will call himself a Skipetar,124 before saying whether he is a Christian or a Muhammadan—a very remarkable instance of national feeling obliterating the fierce distinction between these two religions that so forcibly obtrudes itself in the rest of the Ottoman empire. The Christian and Muhammadan Albanians alike, just as they speak the same language, so do they cherish the same traditions, and observe the same manners and customs; and pride in their common nationality has been too strong a bond to allow differences of religious belief to split the nation into separate communities on this basis.125 Side by side they served in the [179]irregular troops, which soon after the Turkish conquest became the main dependence of the government in all its internal administration, and both classes found the same ready employment in the service of the local pashas, being accounted the bravest soldiers in the empire. Christian Albanians served in the Ottoman army in the Crimean War,126 and though they have perhaps been a little more quiet and agricultural than their Muslim fellow-countrymen, still the difference has been small: they have always retained their arms and military habits, have always displayed the same fierce, proud, untameable spirit, and been animated with the same intense national feeling as their brethren who had embraced the creed of the Prophet.127

The consideration of these facts is of importance in tracing the spread of Islam in Albania, for it appears to have been propagated very gradually by the people of the country themselves, and not under pressure of foreign influences. The details that we possess of this movement are very meagre, as the history of Albania from the close of the fifteenth century to the rise of ʻAlī Pasha three hundred years later, is almost a blank; what knowledge we have, therefore, of the slow but continuous accession of converts to Islam during this period, is derived from the ecclesiastical chronicles of the various dioceses,128 and the reports sent in from time to time to the Pope and the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.129 But it goes without saying that the very nature of these sources gives the information derived from them the stamp of imperfection—especially in the matter of the motives assigned for conversion. For an ecclesiastic of those times to have even entertained the possibility of a conversion to Islam from genuine conviction—much less have openly expressed such an opinion in writing to his superiors—is well-nigh inconceivable. [180]

During the sixteenth century, Islam appears to have made but little progress, though the tide of conversion had already set in. In 1610 the Christian population exceeded the Muhammadan in the proportion of ten to one,130 and as most of the villages were inhabited by Christians, with a very small admixture of Muhammadans,131 the conversions appear to have been more frequent in the large towns. In Antivari, for example, while many Christians elected to emigrate into the neighbouring Christian countries, the majority of those who remained, both high-born and low, went over gradually to the Muslim faith, so that the Christian population grew less and less day by day.132 As the number of accessions to Islam increased, churches were converted into mosques—a measure which, though contrary to the terms of the capitulation, seems justified by the change in the religion of the people.133 In 1610 two collegiate churches only remained in the hands of the Latin Christians, but these appear to have sufficed for the needs of the community;134 what this amounted to can only roughly be guessed from the words of Marco Bizzi: “There are about 600 houses inhabited indiscriminately by Muhammadans and Christians—both Latin and Schismatics (i.e. of the Orthodox Greek Church): the number of the Muhammadans is a little in excess of the Christians, and that of the Latins in excess of the Schismatics.”

In the accounts we have of the social relations between the Christians and the Muslims, and in the absence of any sharp line of demarcation between the two communities, we find some clue to the manner in which Muhammadan influences gradually gained converts from among the Christian population in proportion as the vigour and the spiritual life of the Church declined. [181]

It had become very common for Christian parents to give their daughters in marriage to Muhammadans, and for Christian women to make no objection to such unions.135 The male children born of these mixed marriages were brought up as Musalmans, but the girls were allowed to follow the religion of their mother.136 Such permission was rendered practically ineffective by the action of the Christian ecclesiastics, who ordered the mothers to be excluded from the churches and from participation in the sacraments;137 and consequently (though the parish priests often disregarded the commands of their superiors) many of these women embraced the faith of their husbands. But even then they kept up a superstitious observance of the rite of baptism, which was supposed to be a sovereign specific against leprosy, witches and wolves,138 and Christian priests were found ready to pander to this superstition for any Muhammadan woman who wished to have her children baptised.139 This good feeling between the members of the two religions140 is similarly illustrated by the attendance of Muhammadans at the festivals of Christian saints; e.g. Marco Bizzi says that on the feast-day of St. Elias (for whom the Albanians appear to have had a special devotion) there were as many Muhammadans present in the church as Christians.141 Even to the present day we are told that Albanian Muhammadans revere the Virgin Mary and the Christian saints, and make pilgrimages to their shrines, [182]while Christians on the other hand resort to the tombs of Muslim saints for the cure of ailments or in fulfilment of vows.142 In the town of Calevacci, where there were sixty Christian and ten Muhammadan households, the followers of the Prophet contributed towards the support of the parish priest, as the majority of them had Christian wives.143 Under such circumstances it is hardly surprising to learn that many openly professed Islam, while satisfying their consciences by saying that they professed Christianity in their hearts.144 Marco Bizzi has three explanations to offer for such a lapse—the attraction of worldly advantage, the desire to avoid the payment of tribute, and the want of a sufficiently large number of intelligent clergy to supply the spiritual needs of the country.145 Conversions are frequently ascribed to the pressure of the burden of taxation imposed upon the Christians, and whole villages are said to have apostatised to avoid payment of the tribute. As no details are given, it is impossible to judge whether there was really sufficient ground for the complaint, or whether this was not the apology for their conduct alleged by the renegades in order to make some kind of excuse to their former co-religionists—or indeed an exaggeration on the part of ecclesiastics to whom a genuine conversion to Islam on rational grounds seemed an absolute impossibility. A century later (in 1703) the capitation-tax was six reals a head for each male and this (with the exception of a tax, termed sciataraccio, of three reals a year) was the only burden imposed on the Christians exclusively.146 Men must have had very little attachment to their religion to abandon it merely in order to be quit of so slight a penalty, and with no other motive; and the very existence of so large a body of Christians in Albania at the present time shows that the burden could not have been so heavy as to force them into apostasy without any other alternative.

If only we had something more than vague general complaints against the “Turkish tyranny,” we should be better able to determine how far this could have had such a [183]preponderating influence as is ascribed to it: but the evidence alleged seems hardly to warrant such a conclusion. The vicious practice followed by the Ottoman Court of selling posts in the provinces to the highest bidder and the uncertainty of the tenure of such posts, often resulted in the occupants trying to amass as large a fortune as possible by extortions of every kind. But such burdens are said to have weighed as heavily on Muhammadans as Christians.147 Though certainly an avaricious and unjust official may have found it easier to oppress the Christians than the Muslims, especially when the former were convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Venetians and other Christian states and were suspected of a wish to revolt.

However this may have been, there can be little doubt of the influence exerted by the zealous activity and vigorous life of Islam in the face of the apathetic and ignorant Christian clergy. If Islam in Albania had many such exponents as the Mullā, whose sincerity, courtesy and friendliness are praised by Marco Bizzi, with whom he used to discuss religious questions, it may well have made its way.148 The majority of the Christian clergy appear to have been wholly unlettered: most of them, though they could read a little, did not know how to write, and were so ignorant of the duties of their sacred calling that they could not even repeat the formula of absolution by heart.149 Though they had to recite the mass and other services in Latin, there were very few who could understand any of it, as they were ignorant of any language but their mother tongue, and they had only a vague, traditionary knowledge of the truths of their religion.150 Marco Bizzi considered the inadequate episcopate of the country responsible for these evils, as for the small numbers of the clergy, and their ignorance of their sacred calling, and for the large number of Christians who grew old and even died without being confirmed, and apostatised almost everywhere;151 and unless this were [184]remedied he prophesied a rapid decay of Christianity in the country.152 Several priests were also accused of keeping concubines, and of drunkenness.153

It may here be observed that the Albanian priests were not the repositories of the national aspirations and ideals, as were the clergy of the Orthodox Church in other provinces of the Turkish empire, who in spite of their ignorance kept alive among their people that devotion to the Christian faith which formed the nucleus of the national life of the Greeks.154 On the contrary, the Albanians cherished a national feeling that was quite apart from religious belief, and with regard to the Turks, considered, in true feudal spirit, that as they were the masters of the country they ought to be obeyed whatever commands they gave.155

There is a curious story of conversion which is said to have taken place owing to a want of amicable relations between a Christian priest and his people, as follows: “Many years since, when all the country was Christian, there stood in the city of Scutari a beautiful image of the Virgin Mary, to whose shrine thousands flocked every year from all parts of the country to offer their gifts, perform their devotions, and be healed of their infirmities. For some cause or other, however, it fell out that there was dissension between the priest and the people, and one day the latter came to the church in great crowds, declaring that unless the priest yielded to them they would then and there abjure the faith of Christ and embrace in its stead that of Muḥammad. The priest, whether right or wrong, still remaining firm, his congregation tore the rosaries and crosses from their necks, trampled them under their feet, and going to the nearest mosque, were received by the Mollah into the fold of the True Believers.”156

Through the negligence and apathy of the Christian clergy [185]many abuses and irregularities had been allowed to creep into the Christian society; in one of which, namely the practice of contracting marriages without the sanction of the Church or any religious ceremony, we find an approximation to the Muhammadan law, which makes marriage a civil contract. In order to remedy this evil, the husband and wife were to be excluded from the Church, until they had conformed to the ecclesiastical law and gone through the service in the regular manner.157

In the course of the seventeenth century, the social conditions and other factors, indicated above, bore fruit abundantly, and the numbers of the Christian population began rapidly to decline. In the brief space of thirty years, between 1620 and 1650, about 300,000 Albanians are said to have gone over to Islam.158 In 1624 there were only 2000 Catholics in the whole diocese of Antivari, and in the city itself only one church; at the close of the century, even this church was no longer used for Christian worship, as there were only two families of Roman Catholics left.159 In the whole country generally, the majority of the Christian community in 1651 was composed of women, as the male population had apostatised in such large numbers to Islam.160 Matters were still worse at the close of the century, the Catholics being then fewer in number than the Muhammadans, the proportions being about 1 to 1⅓,161 whereas less than a hundred years before, they had outnumbered the Muhammadans in the proportion of 10 to 1;162 in the Archbishopric of Durazzo the Christian population had decreased by about half in twenty years,163 in another town (in the diocese of Kroia) the entire population passed from Christianity to Islam in the course of thirty years.164 In spite of the frequent protests and regulations made by their ecclesiastical superiors, the parish priests continued to countenance the open profession of Islam along with a secret adherence to Christianity, on the part of many male members of their flocks, by administering to them the Blessed Sacrament; the result of which was that the children [186]of such persons, being brought up as Muhammadans, were for ever lost to the Christian Church.165 Similarly, Christian parents still gave their daughters in marriage to Muhammadans, the parish priests countenancing such unions by administering the sacrament to such women,166 in spite of the fulminations of the higher clergy against such indulgence.167 Such action on the part of the lower clergy can hardly, however, be taken as indicating any great zeal on behalf of the spiritual welfare of their flocks, in the face of the accusations brought against them; the majority of them are accused of being scandalous livers, who very seldom went to confession and held drunken revels in their parsonages on festival days; they sold the property of the Church, frequently absented themselves from their parishes, and when censured, succeeded in getting off by putting themselves under the protection of the Turks.168 The Reformed Franciscans and the Observants who had been sent to minister to the spiritual wants of the people did nothing but quarrel and go to law with one another; much to the scandal of the laity and the neglect of the mission.169 In the middle of the seventeenth century five out of the twelve Albanian sees were vacant; the diocese of Pullati had not been visited by a bishop for thirty years, and there were only two priests to 6348 souls.170 In some parishes in the interior of the country, there had been no priests for more than forty years; and this was in no way due to the oppression of the “Turkish tyrant,” for when at last four Franciscan missionaries were sent, they reported that they could go through the country and exercise their sacred office without any hindrance whatever.171 The bishop of Sappa, to the great prejudice of his diocese, had been long resident in Venice, where he is said to have lived a vicious life, and had appointed as his vicar an ignorant priest who was a notorious evil-liver: this man had 12,400 souls under his charge, and, says the ecclesiastical visitor, “through the absence of the bishop there is danger of his losing his own [187]soul and compassing the destruction of the souls under him and of the property of the Church.”172 The bishop of Scutari was looked upon as a tyrant by his clergy and people, and only succeeded in keeping his post through the aid of the Turks;173 and Zmaievich complains of the bishops generally that they burdened the parishes in their diocese with forced contributions.174 It appears that Christian ecclesiastics were authorised by the Sultan to levy contributions on their flocks. Thus the Archbishop of Antivari (1599–1607) was allowed to “exact and receive” two aspers from each Christian family, twelve for every first marriage (and double the amount for a second, and quadruple for a third marriage), and one gold piece from each parish annually, and it seems to have been possible to obtain the assistance of the Turkish authorities in levying these contributions.175

Throughout the whole of Albania there was not a single Christian school,176 and the priests were profoundly ignorant: some were sent to study in Italy, but Marco Crisio condemns this practice, as such priests were in danger of finding life in Italy so pleasant that they refused to return to their native country. With a priesthood so ignorant and so careless of their sacred duties, it is not surprising to learn that the common people had no knowledge even of the rudiments of their faith, and that numerous abuses and corruptions sprang up among them, which “wrought the utmost desolation to this vineyard of the Lord.”177 Many Christians lived in open concubinage for years, still, however, being admitted to the sacraments,178 while others had a plurality of wives.179 In this latter practice we notice an assimilation between the habits of the two communities—the Christian and the Muslim—which is further illustrated by the admission of Muhammadans as sponsors at the baptism of Christian children, while the old superstitious custom of baptising Muhammadan children was still sanctioned by the priests.180 [188]

Such being the state of the Christian Church in Albania in the latter half of the seventeenth century, some very trifling incentive would have been enough to bring about a widespread apostasy; and the punishment inflicted on the rebellious Catholics in the latter half of the century was a determining factor more than sufficient to consummate the tendencies that had been drawing them towards Islam and to cause large numbers of them to fall away from the Christian Church. The rebellious movement referred to seems to have been instigated by George, the thirty-ninth Archbishop of Antivari (1635–1644), who through the bishops of Durazzo, Scodra and Alessio tried to induce the leaders of the Christian community to conspire against the Turkish rule and hand over the country to the neighbouring Christian power, the Republic of Venice. As in his time Venice was at peace with the Turks a fitting opportunity for the hatching of this plot did not occur, but in 1645 war broke out between Turkey and the Republic, and the Venetians made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city of Antivari, which before the Turkish conquest had been in their possession for more than three centuries (1262–1571). The Albanian Catholics who had sided with the enemy and secretly given them assistance were severely punished and deprived of their privileges, while the Greek Christians (who had everything to fear in the event of the restoration of the Venetian rule and had remained faithful to the Turkish government) were liberally rewarded and were lauded as the saviours of their country. Many of the Catholics either became Muhammadans or joined the Greek Church. The latter fact is very significant as showing that there was no persecution of the Christians as such, nor any attempt to force the acceptance of Islam upon them. The Catholics who became Muhammadans did so to avoid the odium of their position after the failure of their plot, and could have gained the same end and have at the same time retained their Christian faith by joining the Greek Church, which was not only officially recognised by the Turkish government but in high favour in Antivari at this time: so that those who neglected to do so, could have had very little attachment to the Christian religion. The same remark holds good of the numerous conversions [189]to Islam in the succeeding years: Zmaievich attributes them in some cases to the desire to avoid the payment of tribute, but, from what has been said above, it is very unlikely that this was the sole determining motive.

In 1649 a still more widespread insurrection broke out, an Archbishop of Antivari, Joseph Maria Bonaldo (1646–1654), being again the main instigator of the movement; and the leading citizens of Antivari, Scodra and other towns conspired to throw open their gates to the army of the Venetian Republic. But this plot also failed and the insurrection was forcibly crushed by the Turkish troops, aided by the dissensions that arose among the Christians themselves. Many Albanians whose influence was feared were transported from their own country into the interior of the Turkish dominions; a body of 3000 men crossed the border into Venetian territory; those who remained were overawed by the erection of fortresses and the marching of troops through the disaffected districts, while heavy fines were imposed upon the malcontents.181

Unfortunately the Christian writers who complain of the “unjust tributes and vexations” with which the Turks oppressed the Albanians, so that they apostatised to Islam,182 make use only of general expressions, and give us no details to enable us to judge whether or not such complaints were justified by the facts. Zmaievich prefaces his account of the apostasy of 2000 persons with an enumeration of the taxes and other burdens the Christians had to bear, but all these, he says, were common also to the Muhammadans, with the exception of the capitation-tax of six reals a year for each male, and another tax, termed sciataraccio, of three reals a year.183 He concludes with the words: “The nation, wounded by these taxes in its weakest part, namely, worldly interest, to the consideration of which it has a singular leaning either by nature or by necessity, has given just cause for lamenting the deplorable loss of about 2000 souls who apostatised from the true faith so as not to be subject to the tribute.”184 There is nothing in his report to show that [190]the taxes the Catholics had to pay constituted so intolerable a burden as to force them to renounce their creed, and though he attributes many conversions to Islam to the desire of escaping the tribute, he says expressly that these apostasies from the Christian faith are mainly to be ascribed to the extreme ignorance of the clergy,185 in great measure also to their practice of admitting to the sacraments those who openly professed Islam while in secret adhering to the Christian faith:186 in another place he says, speaking of the clergy who were not fit to be parish priests and their practice of administering the sacraments to apostates and secret Christians: “These are precisely the two causes from which have come all the losses that the Christian Church has sustained in Albania.”187 There is very little doubt that the widespread apostasy at this time was the result of a long series of influences similar to those mentioned in the preceding pages, and that the deliverance from the payment of the tribute was the last link in the chain.

What active efforts Muhammadans themselves were making to gain over the Christians to Islam, we can hardly expect to learn from the report of an ecclesiastical visitor. But we find mention of a district, the inhabitants of which, from their intercourse with the Turks, had “contracted the vices of these infidels,” and one of the chief causes of their falling away from the Christian faith was their contracting marriages with Turkish women.188 There were no doubt strong Muhammadan influences at work here, as also in the two parishes of Biscascia and Basia, whose joint population of nearly a thousand souls was “exposed to the obvious risk of apostatising through lack of any pastor,” and were “much tempted in their faith, and needed to be strengthened in it by wise and zealous pastors.”189

Zmaievich speaks of one of the old noble Christian families in the neighbourhood of Antivari which was represented at that time by two brothers; the elder of these had been “wheedled” by the prominent Muhammadans of the place, who were closely related to him, into denying his [191]faith; the younger wished to study for the priesthood, in which office “he would be of much assistance to the Christian Church through the high esteem in which the Turks held his family; which though poor was universally respected.”190 This indeed is another indication of the fact that the Muhammadans did not ill-treat the Christians, merely as such, but only when they showed themselves to be politically disaffected. Zmaievich, who was himself an Albanian, and took up his residence in his diocese instead of in Venetian territory, as many of the Archbishops of Antivari seem to have done,191 was received with “extraordinary honours” and with “marvellous courtesy,” not only by the Turkish officials generally, but also by the Supreme Pasha of Albania himself, who gave him the place of honour in his Divan, always accompanying him to the door on his departure and receiving him there on his arrival.192 This “barbarian” who “showed himself more like a generous-hearted Christian than a Turk,” gave more substantial marks of good feeling towards the Christians by remitting—at the Archbishop’s request—the tribute due for the ensuing year from four separate towns.193 If any of the Christian clergy were roughly treated by the Turks, it seems generally to have been due to the suspicion of treasonable correspondence with the enemies of the Turks; ecclesiastical visits to Italy seem also to have excited—and in many cases, justly—such suspicions. Otherwise the Christian clergy seem to have had no reason to complain of the treatment they received from the Muslims; Zmaievich even speaks of one parish priest being “much beloved by the principal Turks,”194 and doubtless there were parallels in Albania to the case of a priest in the diocese of Trebinje in Herzegovina, who in the early part of the eighteenth century was suspected, on account of his familiar intercourse with Muhammadans, of having formed an intention to embrace Islam, and was accordingly sent by his bishop to Rome under safe custody.195

No subsequent period of Albanian history appears to [192]have witnessed such widespread apostasy as the seventeenth century, but there have been occasional accessions to Islam up to more recent times. In Southern Albania, the country of the Tosks, the preponderance of the Muhammadan population placed the Christians at a disadvantage, and a story is told of the Karamurtads, inhabitants of thirty-six villages near Pogoniani, that up to the close of the eighteenth century they were Christians, but finding themselves unable to repel the continual attacks of the neighbouring Muhammadan population of Leskoviki, they met in a church and prayed that the saints might work some miracle on their behalf; they swore to fast till Easter in expectation of the divine assistance; but Easter came and no miracle was wrought, so the whole population embraced Islam; soon afterwards they obtained the arms they required and massacred their old enemies in Leskoviki and took possession of their lands.196 Community of faith in Albania is never allowed to stand in the way of a tribal feud. Even up to the nineteenth century Albanian tribes and villages have changed their religion for very trivial reasons; part of one Christian tribe is said to have turned Muhammadan because their priest, who served several villages and visited them first, insisted on saying mass at an unreasonably early hour.197

At the present day the Muhammadans in Albania are said to number about 1,000,000 and the Christians 480,000, but the accuracy of these figures is not certain. The Mirdites are entirely Christian; they submitted to the Sultan on condition that no Muslim would be allowed to settle in their territory, but adherents of both the rival creeds are found in almost all the other tribes. Central Albania is said to be almost entirely Muhammadan, and the followers of Islam form about sixty per cent. of the population of Northern Albania; the Christian population attains its largest proportion in Southern Albania, especially in the districts bordering upon Greece.

The kingdom of Servia first paid tribute to the Ottomans in 1375 and lost its independence after the disastrous defeat of Kossovo (1389), where both the king of Servia and the [193]Turkish sultan were left dead upon the field. The successors of the two sovereigns entered into a friendly compact, the young Servian prince, Stephen, acknowledged the suzerainty of Turkey, gave his sister in marriage to the new sultan, Bāyazīd, and formed with him a league of brotherhood. At the battle of Nikopolis (1394), which gave to the Turks assured possession of the whole Balkan peninsula, except the district surrounding Constantinople, the Servian contingent turned the wavering fortune of the battle and gave the victory to the Turks. On the field of Angora (1402), when the Turkish power was annihilated and Bāyazīd himself taken prisoner by Tīmūr, Stephen was present with his Servian troops and fought bravely for his brother-in-law, and instead of taking this opportunity of securing his independence, remained faithful to his engagement, and stood by the sons of Bāyazīd until they recovered their father’s throne. Under the successor of Stephen, George Brankovich, Servia enjoyed a semi-independence, but when in 1438 he raised the standard of revolt, his country was again overrun by the Turks. Then for a time Servia had to acknowledge the suzerainty of Hungary, but the defeat of John Hunyady at Varna in 1444 brought her once more under tribute, and in 1459 she finally became a Turkish province.

It is not impossible that the Servians who had embraced Islam after the battle of Kossovo had knowledge of the fate of the little Muslim community that had been rooted out of Hungary about a century before, and therefore preferred the domination of the Turks to that of the Hungarians. Yāqūt gives the following account of his meeting, about the year 1228, with some members of this group of followers of the Prophet in mediæval Europe, who had owed their conversion to Muslims who had settled among them. “In the city of Aleppo, I met a large number of persons called Bashkirs, with reddish hair and reddish faces. They were studying law according to the school of Abū Ḥanīfah (may God be well pleased with him!) I asked one of them who seemed to be an intelligent fellow for information concerning their country and their condition. He told me, ‘Our country is situated on the other side of Constantinople, in a kingdom of a people of the Franks called the Hungarians. [194]We are Muslims, subjects of their king, and live on the border of his territory, occupying about thirty villages, which are almost like small towns. But the king of the Hungarians does not allow us to build walls round any of them, lest we should revolt against him. We are situated in the midst of Christian countries, having the land of the Slavs on the north, on the south, that of the Pope, i.e. Rome (now the Pope is the head of the Franks, the vicar of the Messiah in their eyes, like the commander of the faithful in the eyes of the Muslims; his authority extends over all matters connected with religion among the whole of them); on the west, Andalusia; on the east, the land of the Greeks, Constantinople and its provinces.’ He added, ‘Our language is the language of the Franks, we dress after their fashion, we serve with them in the army, and we join them in attacking all their enemies, because they only go to war with the enemies of Islam.’ I then asked him how it was they had adopted Islam in spite of their dwelling in the midst of the unbelievers. He answered, ‘I have heard several of our forefathers say that a long time ago seven Muslims came from Bulgaria and settled among us. In kindly fashion they pointed out to us our errors and directed us into the right way, the faith of Islam. Then God guided us and (praise be to God!) we all became Muslims and God opened our hearts to the faith. We have come to this country to study law; when we return to our own land, the people will do us honour and put us in charge of their religious affairs.’ ”198 Islam kept its ground among the Bashkirs of Hungary until 1340, when King Charles Robert compelled all his subjects that were not yet Christians to embrace the Christian faith or quit the country.199

The Servian Muslims may, therefore, well have been pleased to escape from the rule of Hungary, like their Christian fellow-countrymen, for when these were given the choice between the Roman Catholic rule of Hungary and the Muslim rule of the Turks, the devotion of the Servians to the Greek Church led them to prefer the tolerance of the Muhammadans to the uncompromising proselytising [195]spirit of the Latins. An old legend thus represents their feelings at this time:—The Turks and the Hungarians were at war; George Brankovich sought out John Hunyady and asked him, “If you are victorious, what will you do?” “Establish the Roman Catholic faith,” was the answer. Then he sought out the sultan and asked him, “If you come out victorious, what will you do with our religion?” “By the side of every mosque shall stand a church, and every man shall be free to pray in whichever he chooses.”200 The treachery of some Servian priests forced the garrison of Belgrade to capitulate to the Turks;201 similarly the Servians of Semendria, on the Danube, welcomed the Turkish troops who in 1600 delivered them from the rule of their Catholic neighbours.202

The spread of Islam among the Servians began immediately after the battle of Kossovo, when a large part of the old feudal nobility, such as still remained alive and did not take refuge in neighbouring Christian countries, went over voluntarily to the faith of the Prophet, in order to keep their old privileges undisturbed.203 In these converted nobles the sultans found the most zealous propagandists of the new faith.204 But the majority of the Servian people clung firmly to their old religion through all their troubles and sufferings, and only in Stara Serbia or Old Servia,205 which now forms the north-eastern portion of modern Albania, has there been any very considerable number of conversions. Even here the spread of Muhammadanism proceeded very slowly until the seventeenth century, when the Austrians induced the Servians to rise in revolt and, after the ill-success of this rising, the then Patriarch, Arsenius III Tsernoïevich, in 1690 emigrated with 40,000 Servian families across the border into Hungary; another exodus in 1739 of 15,000 families under the leadership of Arsenius IV Jovanovich, well nigh denuded this part of the country of its original Servian population.206 [196]

Albanian colonists from the south pressed into the country vacated by the fugitives: these Albanians at the time of their arrival were Roman Catholics for the most part, but after they settled in Old Servia they gradually adopted Islam and at the present time the remnant of Roman Catholic Albanians is but small, though from time to time it is recruited by fresh arrivals from the mountains: the new-comers, however, usually follow the example of their predecessors, and after a while become Muhammadans.207

After this Albanian immigration, Islam began to spread more rapidly among the remnant of the Servian population. The Servian clergy were very ignorant and unlettered, they could only manage with difficulty to read their service-books and hardly any had learned to write; they neither preached to the people nor taught them the catechism, consequently in whole villages scarcely a man could be found who knew the Lord’s Prayer or how many commandments there were; even the priests themselves were quite as ignorant.208 After the insurrection of 1689, the Patriarch of Ipek, the ecclesiastical capital of Servia, was appointed by the Porte, but in 1737, as the result of another rebellion, the Servian Patriarchate was entirely suppressed and the Servian Church made dependent upon the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. The churches were filled with Greek bishops, who made common cause with the Turkish Beys and Pashas in bleeding the unfortunate Christians: their national language was proscribed and the Old Slavonic service-books, etc., were collected and sent off to Constantinople.209 With such a clergy it is not surprising that the Christian faith should decline: e.g. in the commune of Gora (in the district of Prizren), which had begun to become Muhammadanised soon after the great exodus of 1690, the Servians that still clung to the Christian faith, appealed again and again to the Greek bishop of Prizren to send them priests, at least occasionally, but all in vain; their children remained unbaptised, weddings and burials were conducted without the blessing of the Church, and the consecrated buildings fell into decay.210 In the neighbouring district [197]of Opolje, similarly, the present Muslim population of 9500 souls is probably for the most part descended from the original Slav inhabitants of the place.211 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Bizzi found in the city of Jagnevo, 120 Roman Catholic households, 200 Greek and 180 Muhammadan;212 less than a hundred years later, every house in the city was looked upon as Muhammadan, as the head of each family professed this faith and the women only, with some of the children, were Christian.213 About the middle of the eighteenth century, the village of Ljurs was entirely Catholic; in 1863 there were 90 Muslim and 23 Christian families, but at the present day this village, together with the surrounding villages, has wholly given up Christianity.214 Until recently some lingering survivals of their old Christian faith, such as the burning of the Yule-log at Christmas, etc., were still to be met with in certain villages, but such customs are now fast dying out.

After the battle of Kossovo and the downfall of the Servian empire, the wild highlands of Montenegro afforded a refuge to those Servians who would not submit to the Turks but were determined to maintain their independence. It is not the place here to relate the history of the heroic struggles of this brave people against overwhelming odds, how through centuries of continual warfare, under the rule of their prince-bishops,215 they have kept alive a free Christian state when all their brethren of the same race had been compelled to submit to Muhammadan rule. While the very basis of their separate existence as a nation was their firm adherence to the Christian faith it could hardly have been expected that Islam would have made its way among them, but in the seventeenth century many Montenegrins in the frontier districts became Muhammadans and took service with the neighbouring Pashas. But in 1703, Daniel Petrovich, the then reigning bishop, called the tribes together and told them that the only hope for their country and their faith lay in the destruction of the Muhammadans living among them. Accordingly, on Christmas Eve, all [198]the converted Montenegrins who would not forswear Islam and embrace Christianity were massacred in cold blood.216

To pass now to Bosnia:—in this country the religious and social conditions of the people, before the Turkish conquest, merit especial attention. The majority of the population belonged to a heretical Christian sect, called Bogomiles, who from the thirteenth century had been exposed to the persecution of the Roman Catholics and against whom Popes had on several occasions preached a Crusade.217 In 1325, Pope John XXII wrote thus to the king of Bosnia: “To our beloved son and nobleman, Stephen, Prince of Bosnia,—knowing that thou art a faithful son of the Church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate the heretics in thy dominion, and to render aid and assistance to Fabian, our Inquisitor, forasmuch as a large multitude of heretics from many and divers parts collected hath flowed together into the principality of Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and dwell there in safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old Fiend, and armed with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of Catholics by outward show of simplicity and the sham assumption of the name of Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheep’s clothing, covering their bestial fury as a means to deceive the simple sheep of Christ.” In the fifteenth century, the sufferings of the Bogomiles became so intolerable that they appealed to the Turks to deliver them from their unhappy condition, for the king of Bosnia and the priests were pushing the persecution of the Bogomiles to an extreme which perhaps it had never reached before; as many as forty thousand of them fled from Bosnia and took refuge in neighbouring countries; others who did not succeed in making their escape, were sent in chains to Rome. But even these violent measures did little to diminish the strength of the Bogomiles in Bosnia, as in 1462 we are told that heresy was as powerful as ever in this country. The following year, when Bosnia was invaded by Muḥammad II, the Catholic [199]king found himself deserted by his subjects: the keys of the principal fortress, the royal city of Bobovatz, were handed over to the Turks by the Bogomile governor; the other fortresses and towns hastened to follow this example, and within a week seventy cities passed into the hands of the Sultan, and Muḥammad II added Bosnia to the number of his numerous conquests.218

From this time forth we hear but little of the Bogomiles; they seem to have willingly embraced Islam in large numbers immediately after the Turkish conquest, and the rest seem to have gradually followed later, while the Bosnian Roman Catholics emigrated into the neighbouring territories of Hungary and Austria. It has been supposed by some219 that a large proportion of the Bogomiles, at least in the earlier period of the conquest, embraced Islam with the intention of returning to their faith when a favourable opportunity presented itself; as, being constantly persecuted they may have learnt to deny their faith for the time being; but that, when this favourable opportunity never arrived, this intention must have gradually been lost sight of and at length have been entirely forgotten by their descendants. Such a supposition is, however, a pure conjecture and has no direct evidence to support it. We may rather find the reason for the willingness of the Bogomiles to allow themselves to be merged in the general mass of the Musalman believers, in the numerous points of likeness between their peculiar beliefs and the tenets of Islam. They rejected the worship of the Virgin Mary, the institution of Baptism and every form of priesthood.220 They abominated the cross as a religious symbol, and considered it idolatry to bow down before religious pictures and the images and relics of the saints. Their houses of prayer were very simple and unadorned, in contrast to the gaudily decorated Roman Catholic churches, and they shared the Muhammadan dislike of bells, which they styled “the devil’s trumpets.” They believed that [200]Christ was not himself crucified but that some phantom was substituted in his place: in this respect agreeing partially with the teaching of the Qurʼān.221 Their condemnation of wine and the general austerity of their mode of life and the stern severity of their outward demeanour would serve as further links to bind them to Islam,222 for it was said of them: “You will see heretics quiet and peaceful as lambs without, silent, and wan with hypocritical fasting, who do not speak much nor laugh loud, who let their beard grow, and leave their person incompt.”223 They prayed five times a day and five times a night, repeating the Lord’s Prayer with frequent kneelings,224 and would thus find it very little change to join in the services of the mosque. I have brought together here the many points of likeness to the teachings of Islam, which we find in this Bogomilian heresy, but there were, of course, some doctrines of a distinctly Christian character which an orthodox Muslim could not hold; still, with so much in common, it can easily be understood how the Bogomiles may gradually have been persuaded to give up those doctrines that were repugnant to the Muslim faith. Their Manichæan dualism was equally irreconcilable with Muslim theology, but Islam has always shown itself tolerant of such theological speculations provided that they did not issue in a schism and that a general assent and consent were given to the main principles of its theory and practice.

The Turks, as was their usual custom, offered every advantage to induce the Bosnians to accept their creed. All who embraced Islam were allowed to retain their lands and possessions, and their fiefs were exempt from all taxation,225 and it is probable that many rightful heirs of ancient houses who had been dispossessed for heretical opinions by the Catholic faction among the nobility, now embraced the opportunity of regaining their old position by submission to the dominant creed. The Bosnian Muhammadans [201]retained their nationality and still for the most part bear Serb names and speak only their national tongue;226 at the same time they have always evinced a lively zeal for their new faith, and by their military prowess, their devotion to Islam and the powerful influence they exercised, the Bosnian nobility rapidly rose into high favour in Constantinople and many were entrusted with important offices of state, e.g. between the years 1544 and 1611 nine statesmen of Bosnian origin filled the post of Grand Vizier.

The latest territorial acquisition of the Ottoman conquests was the island of Crete, which in 1669 was wrested from the hands of the Venetian Republic by the capture of the city of Candia after a long and desperate siege of nearly three years, which closed a struggle of twenty-five years between these rival powers for the possession of the island.

This was not the first time that Crete had come under Muslim rule. Early in the ninth century the island was suddenly seized by a band of Saracen adventurers from Spain, and it remained in their power for nearly a century and a half (A.D. 825–961).227 During this period well nigh the whole population of the island had become Muslim, and the churches had either fallen into ruins or been turned into mosques; but when the authority of the Byzantine empire was once re-established here, the people were converted again to their ancient faith through the skilful preaching of an Armenian monk, and the Christian religion became the only one professed on the island.228 In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Venetians purchased the island from Boniface, Duke of Montserrat, to whose lot it had fallen after the partition of the Byzantine empire, and they ruled it with a heavy hand, apparently looking upon it only in the light of a purchase that was to be exploited for the benefit of the home government and its colonists. Their administration was so oppressive and tyrannical as to excite several revolts, which were crushed with pitiless severity; on one of these occasions whole cantons in the provinces of Sfakia and Lassiti were depopulated, and it was forbidden under pain of death to sow any corn there, so that these districts remained barren [202]and uncultivated for nearly a century.229 The terrific cruelty with which the Venetian senate suppressed the last of these attempts at the beginning of the sixteenth century added a crowning horror to the miserable condition of the unhappy Cretans. How terrible was their lot at this time we learn from the reports of the commissioners sent by the Venetian senate in the latter part of the same century, in order to inquire into the condition of the islanders. The peasants were said to be crushed down by the cruelest oppression and tyranny on the part of the Venetian nobles, their feudal lords, being reduced to a worse condition than that of slaves, so that they never dared even to complain of any injustice. Each peasant had to do twelve days’ forced labour for his feudal lord every year without payment, and could then be compelled to go on working for as long as his lord required his services at the nominal rate of a penny a day; his vineyards were mulcted in a full third of their produce, but fraud and force combined generally succeeded in appropriating as much as two-thirds; his oxen and mules could be seized for the service of the lord, who had a thousand other devices for squeezing the unfortunate peasant.230 The protests of these commissioners proved ineffectual to induce the Venetian senate to alleviate the unhappy condition of the Cretans and put a stop to the cruelty and tyranny of the nobles: it preferred to listen to the advice of Fra Paolo Sarpi who in 1615 thus addressed the Republic on the subject of its Greek colonies: “If the gentlemen of these Colonies do tyrannize over the villages of their dominion, the best way is not to seem to see it, that there may be no kindness between them and their subjects.”231

It is not surprising to learn from the same sources that the Cretans longed for a change of rulers, and that “they would not much stick at submitting to the Turk, having the example of all the rest of their nation before their eyes.” Indeed, many at this time fled into Turkey to escape the intolerable burden of taxation, following in the footsteps of countless others, who from time to time had taken refuge [203]there.232 Large numbers of them also emigrated to Egypt, where many embraced Islam.233 Especially galling to the Cretans were the exactions of the Latin clergy who appropriated the endowments that belonged of right to the Greek ecclesiastics, and did everything they could to insult the Christians of the Greek rite, who constituted nine-tenths of the population of the island.234 The Turks, on the other hand, conciliated their good-will by restoring the Greek hierarchy. This, according to a Venetian writer, was brought about in the following manner: “A certain papas or priest of Canea went to Cusseim the Turkish general, and told him that if he desired to gain the good-will of the Cretan people, and bring detestation upon the name of Venice, it was necessary for him to bear in mind that the staunchest of the links which keep civilised society from falling asunder is religion. It would be needful for him to act in a way different from the line followed by the Venetians. These did their utmost to root out the Greek faith and establish that of Rome in its place, with which interest they had made an injunction that there should be no Greek bishops in the island. By thus removing these venerated and authoritative shepherds, they thought the more easily to gain control over the scattered flocks. This prohibition had caused such distress in the minds of the Cretans that they were ready to welcome with joy and obedience any sovereignty that would lend its will to the re-institution of this order in their hierarchy—an order so essential for the proper exercise of their divine worship. He added, that it would be a further means of conciliating the people if they were assured that they would not only be confirmed in the old privileges of their religion, but that new privileges would be granted them. These arguments seemed to Cusseim so plausible that he wrote at once to Constantinople with a statement of them. Here they were approved, and the Greek Patriarch was bidden to institute an archbishop who should be metropole of the Province of Candia. Under the metropolitan seven other bishops were also to be nominated.”235 [204]

The Turkish conquest seems to have been very rapidly followed by the conversion of large numbers of the Cretans to Islam. It is not improbable that the same patriotism as made them cling to their old faith under the foreign domination of the Venetians who kept them at arm’s length and regarded any attempt at assimilation as an unpardonable indignity,236 and always tried to impress on their subjects a sense of their inferiority—may have led them to accept the religion of their new masters, which at once raised them from the position of subjects to that of equals and gave them a share in the political life and government of their country. Whatever may have been the causes of the widespread conversion of the Cretans, it seems almost incredible that violence should have changed the religion of a people who had for centuries before clung firmly to their old faith despite the persecution of a hostile and a foreign creed. Whatever may have been the means by which the ranks of Islam were filled, thirty years after the conquest we are told that the majority of the Muslims were renegades or the children of renegades,237 and in little more than a century half the population of Crete had become Muhammadan. From one end of the island to the other, not only in the towns but also in the villages, in the inland districts and in the very heart of the mountains, were (and are still) found Cretan Muslims who in figure, habits and speech are thoroughly Greek. There never has been, and to the present day there is not, any other language spoken on the island of Crete except Greek; even the few Turks to be found here had to adopt the language of the country and all the firmans of the Porte and decrees of the Pashas were read and published in Greek.238 The bitter feelings between the Christians and Muhammadans of Crete that have made the history of this island during the nineteenth century so sad a one, was by no means so virulent before the outbreak of the Greek revolution, in days when the Cretan Muslims were very generally in the habit of taking as their wives Christian maidens, the children of their Christian friends.239 The social communication between the two communities was further signified by their common dress, [205]as the Cretans of both creeds dressed so much alike that the distinction was often not even recognised by residents of long standing or by Greeks of the neighbouring islands.240

Recent political events have brought about a considerable diminution in the Muhammadan population of Crete. In 1881 the number of Muhammadans in the island was 73,234; in 1909, in consequence of continual emigrations, it had been reduced to 33,496.241 [206]