Whatever were the favouring causes of this wide-spread renegation, its effect has been to afford us the unique phenomenon of Mahometan feudalism and the extraordinary spectacle of a race of Sclavonic Mahometans. This must be borne in mind at the present moment, for nothing is more liable to confuse the questions at issue than to look on the Mussulman inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina as Turks. Conventionally, perhaps, one is often obliged to do so, and I must plead guilty in this respect in the course of this work. But it should always be remembered that, with the exception of a handful of officials and a certain proportion of the soldiery, the Mahometan inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina are of the same race as their Christian neighbours, speak the same Serbian dialect, and can trace back their title-deeds as far. It is a favourite delusion to suppose that the case of Bosnia finds a parallel in that of Serbia; that here, too, an independent Christian principality could be formed with the same ease, and that the independence of Bosnia has but to be proclaimed for the Mussulman to take the hint and quit the soil, as he has already quitted the soil of Serbia.
But, as I have said, the cases of the two provinces are altogether different; in Serbia the Mahometans were an infinitesimal minority of Osmanlì foreigners, encamped; in Bosnia, on the contrary, they are native Sclaves, rooted to the soil, and forming over a third of the population. Under whatever government Bosnia passes, it is safe to say that the Mahometans will still form a powerful minority, all the more important from having possession of the towns.
Nor must we omit another characteristic which marks off the Christian Bosniacs from their Serbian neighbours. As Bosnia of old was the debateable ground between the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, so, to-day, she is distracted between the adherents of the Eastern and Western Churches, who hate each other more cordially than the infidel. It might have been thought that the disappearance of Bogomilism would have resigned the country to the Catholics and Mahometans, for the orthodox Greek element is conspicuous by its absence in the general current of mediæval Bosnian history. But it was there nevertheless, and in the eastern parts of the country was even then the dominant creed. The conquest of Rascia by Tvartko I. brought a Greek province under the Bosnian sceptre, and though the Bosnian hold on Rascia was slight, the Greek Metropolitan appears at the Conventus of Coinica among the great magnates of the realm. Since the Turkish conquest the Sandjakate of Rascia or Novipazar has been incorporated in the Vilajet of Bosnia, and by this means alone a large Greek-Church element has been added to the present province. Nor, if we consider the history of Bosnia since the Turkish conquest, is it difficult to trace the process by which even in Bosnia proper and the Herzegovina, the Eastern Church has risen to a dominant position. The Roman Catholics of Bosnia have at different times during the last three centuries migrated in large numbers into Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, where they found shelter among their co-religionists, and it appears that the Greek population to the South and East, who had less temptation to cross the borders of Latin Christendom, have largely colonized the country thus vacated.[139] The Roman Catholic population who remained, their ecclesiastical organization broken up by these migrations, must in many cases have been absorbed in the congregation of the intrusive Serbs, and indeed, as has been already pointed out, the Roman Church in Illyria was to a great extent only Roman in its higher organization.
The extraordinary phenomenon that presents itself in the history of Bosnia under Turkish rule, is that till within the last few years it has been simply the history of the feudal Kingdom, under altered names and conditions. A Mahometan caste has tyrannised in place of a Popish—a Turkish Vizier has feebly represented the Suzerainty of the Osmanlì Grand Signior, just as of old we find Hungarian Bans or Kings representing the Overlordship of a Magyar King. The survival of the feudal nobility has been perfect. The great Bosnian lords, now calling themselves Begs or Capetans, resided still in the feudal castles reared by their Christian ancestors; they kept their old escutcheons, their Sclavonic family names, their rolls and patents of nobility inherited from Christian Kings; they led forth their retainers as of old under their baronial banners, and continued to indulge in the chivalrous pastime of hawking. The common people, on the other hand, have clung to their old Sclavonic institutions, their sworn brotherhoods, their village communities, their house-fathers; and have paid, and pay still, the same feudal dues to their Mahometan lords as they did to their Christian ancestors.
But though in political affairs, language, and customs, so much of the Præ-Turkish element has survived—though there are still to be found many secret observances of Christian rites among Mahometans in high places,—it would be a grievous error to suppose that the influence of Islâm is superficial in Bosnia, or that their religious convictions are not deep-rooted. On the contrary, the Sclavonic Mahometans of Bosnia, occupying an isolated corner of the Sultan’s dominions, have not been so liable to those external influences which at Stamboul itself have considerably modified the code of true believers. The Bosniac Mussulmans have had their religious antagonism perpetually roused by wars with the unbelievers who compass them round about; they, more than the Levantine Moslems, have borne the brunt of the long struggle with Christendom.
Add to this what the reader will have already perceived, that in Bosnia fanaticism is an inheritance from Christian times; that the renegaded Bogomiles have inherited the hatred they bear to the Christian rayah both of the Eastern and Romish Churches, from the days when these rival sectaries persecuted them without mercy.
Thus it is that Bosnia is the head-quarters of Mahometan fanaticism, and that when, at the beginning of this century, Sultan Mahmoud II. endeavoured to introduce his centralising innovations and reforms into Bosnia, which also promised the Christians a certain amount of religious liberty, he found himself opposed here not only by the feudal caste, who rallied round the Janissaries, but by a race of Mahometans whose religion had assumed a national character of a more fanatical hue than was fashionable in the capital. The wars between the Giaour Sultan, as the Bosniac Mussulmans contemptuously called the head of their faith, and his refractory vassals, have been described by Ranke,[140] and need not be dwelt on here. It was not till 1851 that Omer Pashà finally succeeded in breaking the resistance of Mahometan feudalism in Bosnia, and re-subjugated the country for the Sultan. Since that date the privileges of the native nobility have been greatly curtailed, and Sclavonic Mussulman and Sclavonic Christian alike have bowed before a new Osmanlì bureaucracy.
That the state of the country has not improved since that date may perhaps be gathered from the following pages. That at the moment of Omer Pashà’s conquest some good was done by breaking the strength of Bosnian feudalism, and setting a limit on the exactions of the native Mahometan landholders, is undeniable. The most turbulent of the native aristocracy were proscribed; the most galling of their feudal privileges were taken from them, and the Christians who had helped the Osmanlì in this second Turkish conquest of Bosnia received at the moment some partial compensation at the expense of their former lords. But when the Osmanlì ceased to garrison the country and prolonged his occupation in a bureaucratic form, it lay in the very nature of things that he should conciliate as far as possible those whose opposition was most formidable to him, his co-religionists, namely, the Bosniac Mahometans. Thus it is that since the period immediately succeeding Omer Pashà’s conquest the state of the Christian population has suffered a relapse, while in the Herzegovina, more especially, as I have shown elsewhere, the tyranny of the old feudal caste has recrudesced, and the misera contribuens plebs of those countries has to bear a double burden of extortion, from the landowner who represents the old régime and the Turkish officials and middle-men who represent the new; so that now the Christian rayah sees himself forced to serve two masters where he served one before. The present Government of Bosnia consists of a small body of foreign Osmanlì officials, speaking, in many cases, a language which is unintelligible to the native Sclaves; ill educated, totally unable to check the malpractices of their agents even when they themselves have honest intentions. Though often, let it be said to their credit, less bigoted themselves, they are altogether unable to place a restraint on the fanaticism which is the sad characteristic of the native Mussulman, and are well aware that, were they to attempt to introduce those reforms which look so well on paper, the native Mussulmans would hound them out of the country.
The more we examine the character of the Osmanlì government in Bosnia, the more unstable, artificial and mischievous does it appear. The centralization introduced by the ‘New Turks’ has struck at the roots of many of the most promising elements which Bosnia had inherited from the past, and the substitution of the authority of Osmanlì préfets, in the place of the old municipal councils of the towns, may be cited as a single example of the mischievous tendency of these innovations. The chief argument of those who wish to see the rule of the Osmanlìs upheld in Bosnia is that they act as a police to keep the peace between the warring elements of the native population. It would not be difficult to cite isolated instances where the Osmanlì has acted this part, and some will be found in the following pages; but it will be found, as a rule, that the Turkish rulers in Bosnia never put themselves out to control the Mahometan element of Bosnia, except when under the surveillance of European Consuls, or in their dealings with Franciscan monks, who are virtually Austrian officials. On the whole, it would be more true to say that the Osmanlì has prolonged his rule in Bosnia by playing on the jealousies of castes and creeds.