ISLAM IN ROMANIA

'Islam' is followed by only 0.3-percent of Romania's population, but has 700 years of tradition in Northern Dobruja, a region on the Black Sea coast which was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries (ca.1420-1878). The vast majority of Romania's 58,000 believers in Islam are Sunnis who adhere to the Hanafi school. Eighty-five percent of them live in Constanţa County, twelve percent in Tulcea County and the rest in urban centres such as Bucharest, Brăila, Călăraşi, Galaţi, Giurgiu, and Drobeta-Turnu Severin. Ethnically, they are mostly Tatars (Crimean Tatars and a number of Nogais), followed by Turks, as well as Muslim Roma (as much as 15,000 people in one estimate),^[1] Albanians (about 3,000),^[2] and groups of Middle Eastern immigrants.
The community's interests are represented by the Muftiat (''Muftiatul Cultului Musulman din România'') and the Cultural and Islamic League of Romania (''Liga Islamică şi Culturală din România''). Romania is home to 80 mosques.^[3]

Contents

History

Dobruja

Wallachia and Moldavia

Banat

References

External links

History

The first Muslims arrived in Romania with the Pechenegs and Cumans. Around 1061, when the Pechenegs ruled in Wallachia and Moldavia, there was a Muslim minority among them, as was among the Cumans.^[4] The Cumans followed the Pechenegs in 1171, while the Hungarian kings settled the Pechenegs in Transylvania and other parts of their kingdom.

Dobruja

Tatars (yellow) in Northern Dobruja (1903)

The dome of the Carol I Mosque in Constanţa, topped by the Islamic crescent

A Muslim presence is traditional in Northern Dobruja, and partly predates Ottoman rule, as well as the creation of the two Danubian Principalities. Izz al-Din Kaykaus II and Sarı Saltuk, two Seljuq Turkish leaders, were allowed to settle the region during the reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos, ruler of the Byzantine Empire — followed by up to 12,000 of their subjects, the two settled the region around Babadag in the early 1260s, defending the Byzantine border to the north. The Tatar presence was notably attested through the works of Berber traveler Ibn Battuta, who passed through the area in 1334, and grave of Sarı Saltuk has endured as a major monument and place of worship in Romanian Islam. Archeology has uncovered that another Tatar group, belonging to the Golden Horde, came to Dobruja during the rule of Nogai Khan, and were probably closely related to the present-day Nogais. Following Timur's offensives, the troops of Aktai Khan visited the region in the mid-14th century and around 100,000 Tatars settled the region.
Before and after the Golden Horde fell, Dobrujan Muslims, like the Crimean Tatars, were recipients of its cultural influences, and the language in use was Kipchak. The extension of Ottoman rule under Sultans Bayezid I and Mehmed I, brought the influence of Medieval Turkish, as Dobruja was added to the ''Beylerbeylik'' of Rumelia. The oldest ''madrasah'' in Dobruja and Romania as a whole was set up in Babadag, on orders from Bayezid (1484); it was moved to Medgidia in 1903. From the same period onwards, groups of Muslim Tatars and Oghuz Turks from Anatolia were settled into Dobruja at various intervals; in 1525, a sizable group of these, originating from the ports of Samsun and Sinop, moved to Babadag. Bayezid also asked Volga Tatars to resettle into northern Dobruja.
By the 17th century, according to the notes of traveler Evliya Çelebi, Dobruja was also home to a distinct community of people of mixed Turkish and Wallachian heritage. Additionally, a part of the Dobrujan Roma community has traditionally adhered to Islam; it is believed that it originated with groups of Romani people serving in the Ottoman Army during the 16th century, and has probably incorporated various ethnic Turks who had not settled down in the cities or villages. The Roma group, whose members are generally referred to as "Turkish Romani", is traditionally less religious then others, and its culture mixes Islamic customs with Roma social norms.
Following the Crimean Khanate's conquest by the Russian Empire (1783), many Tatars there took refuge in Dobruja, especially around Medgidia. At the time, Crimean Tatars had become the largest community in the region. Nogais in the Budjak began to arrive upon the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–1812, when the Budjak and Bessarabia were ceded to Russia (they settled in northern Tulcea County - Isaccea and Babadag). Over the same period, large groups of Circassians (as many as 200,000), refugees from the Caucasian War, were resettled in the Dobruja and northern Bulgaria by the Ottomans (localities with large Circassian populace included Isaccea, Slava Cercheză, Crucea, Horia, and Nicolae Bălcescu). Members of other Muslim communities which joined in the colonization included Arabs (a group of 150 families of ''fellahin'' from Syria Province, brought over in 1831-1833), Kurds, and Persians — all of these three communities were quickly integrated into the Tatar-Turkish mainstream.
Tatars in Tulcea County were driven out by Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 (''see Muhajir Balkan''). Following the conflict, the Romanian government of Ion Brătianu agreed to extend civil rights to non-Christians. Nevertheless, after 1910, the community was subject to a steady decline, and many predominantly-Muslim villages were abandoned. The Dobrujan community was subject to cultural repression during Communist Romania. Education in Tatar dialects and Turkish was eliminated in stages after 1959, becoming optional, while the ''madrasah'' in Medgidia was shut down in 1965. At the same time, Sufi tradition was frowned upon by Communist officials — as a result of their policies, the Sufi groups became almost completely inactive.^[5]
Following the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Tatar and Turkish were again added to the curriculum for members of the respective communities, and the seminary was reopened as the ''Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Theological and Pedagogic High School''. Today, eighty-five percent of Romanian Turkish and Tatar Muslims reside in Constanţa County, forming just six percent of the county's population, and represented in Parliament by the Democratic Union of Turco-Islamic Tatars of Romania. The city of Constanţa, with its Carol I Mosque, is the center of Romanian Islam; Mangalia, near Constanţa, is the site of a monumental mosque, built in 1525 (''see Mangalia Mosque'').^[6]

Wallachia and Moldavia

In the two Danubian Principalities, where Muslims could not purchase property, and Muslim Nogais from the Bujak who were captured in skirmishes counted as slaves (alongside all Roma), three conversions in the ranks of ''hospodars'' are documented: Princes Radu cel Frumos (1462-1475) and Mihnea Turcitul (1577-1591) of Wallachia, and Prince Ilie II Rareş (1546-1551) of Moldavia.
In 1417, when Ottoman domination over Wallachia became effective, the towns of Turnu and Giurgiu were annexed as ''kazas'', a rule enforced until the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829 (the status was briefly extended to Brăila in 1542). Khotyn, once part of Moldavia, was the birthplace of Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, who was the Ottoman Grand Vizier until 1808. Two more Grand Viziers between 1821 and 1828 came from Bender (a once Moldavian city), as Benderli Pashas.
The pattern of a scarce or seasonal presence of Muslims (Turkish traders, small communities of Muslim Roma)^[7] in the two countries can be traced back to the ''Capitulations'' (Ottoman Turkish: ''ahdnâme'') agreed in the Middle Ages between the two states and the Ottoman Empire. The documents themselves have not been preserved: modern Romanian historians have revealed that ''Capitulations'', as invoked in the 18th century to reaffirm Romanian rights vis à vis the Ottomans, were spurious; nevertheless, research carried out in the 2000s may have discovered genuine ''Capitulations'' and other documents^[8] proving that the relations between the Danubian Principalities and the Porte did indeed have a contractual character.^[9]
Provisions toward Muslim-Christian relations have traditionally been assessed by taking in view later policies — Muslim Ottomans could not purchase property on the Principalities' territory, nor could they marry Christians or build mosques.^[10] This indicates that the Principalities were regarded by the Ottomans as belonging to the ''Dâr al ahd''' ("Home of Peace"); the Ottoman Empire could not maintain troops or garrisons or build military facilities,^[11] although this provision appears to have been discarded during later Phanariote rules and the frequent Russo-Turkish Wars.^[12]
Muslims were awarded legal status after 1878, and in 1923 a monument in the shape of a small mosque was built in Bucharest's Carol Park, as sign of reconciliation after World War I. In 1921, the first translation of the ''Qur'an'' into Albanian was completed by Ilo Mitke Qafëzezi in the Wallachian city of Ploieşti.

Banat

Alongside Dobruja, a part of present-day Romania under direct Ottoman rule in 1551-1718 was the Eyalet of Temeşvar (the Banat region of western Romania), which extended as far as Arad (1551-1699) and Oradea (1661-1699). The few thousand Muslims settled there were, however, driven out by Habsburg conquest.
A small community resided on Ada Kaleh island in the Danube, an Ottoman enclave and later part of Austria-Hungary; transferred to Romania in 1878, it was subject to an exodus of locals to Anatolia. Evacuated during the construction of the Đerdap dam, it was flooded in 1968.

References

1. Ana Oprişan, George Grigore, "The Muslim Gypsies in Romania", in International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter 8, September 2001, p.32; retrieved June 2, 2007
2. George Grigore, "Muslims in Romania", in International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter 3, July 1999, p.34; retrieved June 2, 2007
3. Cultural and Islamic League of Romania, retrieved June 2, 2007
4. Dan Toma Dulciu, "Prezenţe musulmane în spaţiul românesc", in ''Revista Sud-Est'', 2002/2/48; retrieved June 2, 2007
5. Nathalie Clayer, Alexandre Popovic, "A New Era for Sufi Trends in the Balkans", in International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter 3, July 1999, p.32; retrieved June 2, 2007
6. Thede Kahl, "Die muslimische Gemeinschaft Rumäniens. Der Weg einer Elite zur marginalisierten Minderheit", in ''Europa Regional'', 3-4/2005, Leipzig, p.94-101
7. Constantin C. Giurescu, ''Istoria Bucureştilor. Din cele mai vechi timpuri pînă în zilele noastre'', Ed. Pentru Literatură, Bucharest, 1966, p.273 (mention of the Muslim community in and around Bucharest)
8. Anton Caragea, ''Epoca Renaşterii Naţionale'', at the University of Bucharest, 2004; retrieved June 2, 2007
9. Ileana Cazan, Eugen Denize, "Marile puteri şi spaţiul românesc în secolele XV-XVI", Universitatea din Bucureşti, 2002
10. M. Maxim, "Din istoria relaţiilor româno-otomane, Capitulaţiile", in ''Analele de istorie'', 6/1982, pp. 54-56; Tasin Gemil, ''Românii şi otomanii, în secolele XIV-XVI'', Bucharest, 1991
11. Şt. Gorovei, "Moldova în Casa Păcii, pe marginea izvoarelor privind primul secol de relaţii moldo-otomane", in ''Anuarul Institutului de istorie şi arheologie A. D. Xenopol'', XVII, 1980
12. Neagu Djuvara, ''Între Orient şi Occident. Ţările române la începutul epocii moderne'', Humanitas, Bucharest, 1995, p.283 (mention of an Ottoman garrison stationed near Bucharest in 1802, one which intervened in the city to restore order after widespread panic over a rumored attack by Osman Pazvantoğlu's troops)

External links

★ The Romanian Muftiat

★ Muslim Roma in Romania

★ ''Liga Islamică şi Culturală din România''

★ Mosque in Mangalia