it is mainly the Christian (and thus Croatian) social structure that undermines
attempts to create such a space, as it feels threatened by the prospect of mixing
with the hostile culture of the Ottoman invaders. Thus, in Bijedna Mara, the
punishment for the interracial love affair is for Mara to spend the rest of her life in
a monastery, an isolated space structured according to Christian religious ideals.
On a more subtle level, the Ottoman-Islamic social structure also prevents the
intermingling of different religions: Ajkuna has to escape from her parents’ house
in order to join her Christian lover, and Hasan has to leave Bosnia in order to be
with Sofa.
Finally, conversion seems to be the last resort for lovers belonging to different
religions to be together. As historians have shown, the practice of conversion
to Islam was relatively common in the territories occupied by the Ottoman
Empire; the theory of forceful conversion and massive colonization by the
Turks, however, has been revised by more recent research which has shown
that conversion was largely motivated by the wish of many “infidels” to enjoy
certain social and political privileges. In her study of the Ottoman conquest of
the island of Crete, which had been a stronghold of the Venetian Republic in
the Eastern Mediterranean, Molly Greene has shown the political, social, and
cultural consequences of this historical event for the town of Candia. Because of
its maritime location, history, and culture, as well as certain other Mediterranean
characteristics, the intermixing of different cultures in Candia and Crete strongly
resembles that in Split and Dalmatia. Greene compares the historical phenomena
of the conquest of the Balkans with that of Crete, analyzing different examples
of conversion, and describes the relationships between converts, Christian and
Muslim.61 Finally, using Crete as an example, she criticizes the prevailing notion
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that there were no mixed marriages, analyzing court documents to discuss the
nature of some of the relationships between men and women:
Both the court documents and travelers’ accounts show that mixed marriages
were not uncommon, facilitated by the fact that Islamic law permits the
marriage of a Muslim man with a Christian woman (but not the reverse).
These Muslim-Christian unions did not take place in isolation, outside of
society, but in fact received the imprimatur of important institutions. From
the court records we know that the Muslim courts had no objection to
registering these marriages. Even on the Christian side there is evidence that
the church—admittedly at the low level of the village priest—was willing to
bless these marriages.62
Conversion and the possibility of mixed marriages as seen through Botić’s
interpretation of folk poetry and knowledge of the Croatian literary tradition do
not, however, exactly parallel Greene’s historical accounts of the island of Crete.
Botić portrays conversion as simply a method used by men to marry the woman
of their choice, showing how both men and women were aware that conversion
to another religion was the only possible solution to their problem. In that sense,
Botić’s work echoes the “wedding and rescue” songs discussed by Albert Lord,
but it also calls into question Lord’s thesis according to which conversion was
exclusively undertaken by women.63 Indeed, in Botić’s work it is always the man
who converts. The explanation of this phenomenon could lie in Botić’s Christian
(and patriotic) ideology, as well as his emphasis on tradition and his patriotic
concept of the feminine—women had to be protected from any kind of conversion,
especially cultural or religious. In Bijedna Mara, Mara desperately hopes that
Adel will convert to Catholicism, since everything happens in the “Christian
geographical domain.” In fact, Adel was supposed to convert to Christianity, but
he could not go through with it; after a period of mourning for the loss of Mara,
he marries the Muslim girl. In Petar Bačić, Mejra expects that Petar will convert
to Islam:
Miruj, Mejro, srditi se nemoj,
Be still, Mejra, and do not fret,
Hoće tebe utješiti majka,
Your mother wants to comfort you,
Ti ćeš svojoj ozdraviti majci.
For your mother you shall recover.
Mladi će se Bačić poturčiti,
Young Bačić will become a Turk,
Kaursko će ime ostaviti,
He shall renounce his infidel name,
Mi ćemo mu tursko izbirati,
The Turkish one we shall choose for him,
Krasno ime Omer-beže mladi,
A beautiful name, that of
young Omer-bey,
Pa ćemo mu tebe pokloniti,
Then we shall give you to him as a gift
I zvat će se dizdarovim zetom,
And he shall be called the
captain’s son-in-law
A ti, Mejro, Omer-begovica.
And you, Mejra, the wife of Omer-bey.64
Šolić, Women in ottoman Bosnia
327
It is possible that Botić borrowed the motif of conversion from Bosnian Muslim
ballads in which, as the Czech ethnologist Ludvík Kuba has noted, the lover’s
desire is so strong that it makes the “Turk” convert to Christianity.65
Although Mejra flatters Petar’s mother in order to obtain her help in mediating
with Petar, there is no conversion. First, Petar is in love with Jelka, a Christian
girl; and second, as a pious Christian (and Croatian), Petar Bačić does not want
to betray his religion, cultural tradition, and beliefs in order to gain the privileges
granted to “Turks.” However, he is the victim of an injustice within his own
community: his social status and poverty prevent him from marrying Jelka. She
is already engaged to a Venetian aristocrat whom she goes to meet clad in black
attire instead of wedding clothes, thus expressing her sadness for the loss of Petar.
Because of this element of social injustice, the end of the ballad is romantic and
tragic and is set on the open sea towards the Venetian side, far away from Split.
Petar’s brave attempt to kidnap his beloved is unsuccessful: Venetian guards kill
him and take back the girl.
In conclusion, our analysis of the different patterns of representation of the
feminine in the work of Luka Botić places the ballads of this nineteenth-century
Croatian writer in the broader ideological, political, and aesthetic context of
European romanticism. Moreover, because historical documents were used as a
pretext and basis for their construction, Botić’s ballads offer an image of everyday
life on the border between the region of Dalmatia and the Ottoman Empire. They
demonstrate the mutual co-existence of these two political and cultural systems,
the Christian and the Islamic. This approach departs from the notions established
by traditional historiography, which has argued for a strict and rigid boundary
between the two societies. Finally, by using different modes of writing including
folk as well as “high” literary traditions, Botić portrays Ottoman Bosnian women
in different social contexts and as playing an activ
e role in social rituals. However,
his poetic and ideological prism remains that of an outside observer. Indeed, no
matter how much he tried to immerse himself into another cultural code and
different traditions, Botić remained faithful to his Christian vision of the world,
and its specific aesthetic and political traditions.
Botić’s fascination with Bosnia is a stylistic exploration of the culture hidden
in the hinterland of Split and beyond the borders of the Habsburg monarchy and
the Ottoman Empire. The ideological underpinnings of his re-discovery of Bosnia
are linked to the pan-Slavic ideas of the Illyrian movement as a specific, local
cultural and political variation of European romanticism. Like many Croatian
intellectuals of his time, Botić traveled to Bosnia and recorded the customs and
traditions of the Muslim Slavs living just beyond the border of the Christian
Habsburg Empire. Yet Botić’s artistic interests led him further than the everyday-
life and documentary approach established by the Croatian travelogue writers
of his time. Not only did he record folk customs and poems, but he also infused
his writings with Turkish and Arabic words in order to depict the culture of
Bosnian Muslims. He used different literary traditions and modes of writing to
describe the life of the people of the region, especially the women. Finally, and
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Women in the ottoman Balkans
most importantly for our subject, through lyrical descriptions of the feminine in
particular social contexts and situations, he showed the extent to which the two
cultures—Islam and Christianity—mutually interacted and influenced each other,
yet remained separate for their own historical reasons.
Although Botić saw Ottoman Bosnian women through the eyes of a Christian
poet and a romantic writer, he cast new light on their social roles through an
alternative reading of the social codes as presented in folk poetry. Through the
artistic use of folk material, he showed that Ottoman Bosnian society did not
quite follow traditional western notions of private/public in relation to gender,
and how women had quite an important role within the structure of patriarchal
society. Although the power of women was limited in the public world, they—
and mothers in particular—were privileged and influential within the intimate
boundaries of their own households. They were involved in some of the most
important moments of family life, such as marriage arrangements. They were
also responsible for the survival and good standing of the family, as well as the
emotional life of their children and even that of adult male family members—who,
in return, respected and protected them. Finally, living in a society where contact
with men outside of the family were restricted, they created internal networks
consisting mainly of women.
Botić moreover approaches Ottoman Muslim (but also Christian) women
through the use of the sevdalinka as a unique Bosnian form of love poetry. As
part of the social ritual of courting, the sevdalinka reflects the development of the
Ottoman features of Bosnian towns and urban culture. Botić uses the sevdalinka
as a pattern of communication and a particular way of expressing feelings of love,
longing, and desire. In a way the sevdalinka represents the essence of Botić’s
obsession with Bosnia and of the particular Bosnian spirituality that he sensed
during his travels to the northern parts of Croatia. The communicative nature of
the sevdalinka became important for those who participated in this social event
based in song, both in Ottoman Sarajevo and in Christian Split. Moreover, sung in
the bazaar of Split, the sevdalinka became the main connection between the two
cultures, and culturally represented the penetration of the “other” (in this instance,
Islam) into the very center of the well-defined Roman-Slavic-Christian world.
The sevdalinka also initiated possible ways for lovers of different religions to
unite, such as through abduction, escape, and conversion. These three phenomena
were recorded not only in folk poetry but also in cultural studies and historical
annals. They were present to varying degrees in different regions of the Ottoman
Empire, as well as in the Ottoman and Venetian Mediterranean. As Botić portrays
them, women were not at all helpless and passive, but rather took part in these
romantic actions together with the broader community. The man in Botić’s works
is always the one who converts in order to be united with his beloved—though it
must be remembered that Botić wrote from the position of the “outsider” Christian
poet: the characters’ wish to convert or their unsuccessful attempts at abduction
and escape were influenced by traditions and religious backgrounds that proved
to be stronger than love.
Šolić, Women in ottoman Bosnia
329
Finally, Botić’s portrayal of landscapes plays an important role in the
representation of the feminine in his work. On the one hand, his description of
the Dalmatian hinterland was strongly influenced by artistic modes taken from
the history of Croatian literature. Here, Botić drew heavily on renaissance and
baroque poetry, and its ideological use of folk traditions and notions of Christian
piety. He also drew on the romantic links between patriotism and the feminine, or
rather between bašćina and eroticism. The absence of any description of Catholic
Split is interesting and significant, as it points to Botić’s intense preoccupation
with Bosnia whose Ottoman culture penetrated Split’s very center through the
songs sung in the bazaar. On the other hand, Ottoman Sarajevo was portrayed
through a highly stylized language characterized by the use of words of Arabic
and Turkish origin, and through vivid dialogues and songs close to the desirous
character of the sevdalinka and the Muslim ballad. But tragic love between
members of different religions is a leitmotif in both: Mara dies a Christian martyr,
and Sofa marries a Christian after Hasan’s death.
Notes
1. Davor Dukić’s study of the figure of the “rival” in Croatian historical epics
and oral epic poetry may be applied to the “hayduk-Turkish” genre. According
to Dukić, a large number of folk poems may be reduced to only a few sjuzet
patterns, consequently leading to the creation of a dichotomous structure
in which the narrator belongs to “us” (Christians), in opposition to “them”
(Turks). (Dukić 1998)
2. Barac 1947: 13.
3. The beginnings of the nineteenth-century movement can be traced back to the
fourteenth century in Croatian literature and political thought (Juraj Šižgorić,
Vinko Pribojević, Juraj Križanić, Mavro Orbini, Pavao Ritter Vitezović,
and others). Due to mythological anachronism, the Slavs not only became
“Illyrians,” but the South Slavic languages were also termed “Illyrian,” often
confused with “Croatian” or just “Slavic.” The question of Illyrianism thus
became a question of identity. As Trpimir Macan has argued, nineteenth-
century Croatian intellectuals preferred the term “Illyrian language” over
“Croatian” since the latter denoted the
inhabitants of the region surrounding
Zagreb who used the so-called kajkavian idiom—regionally limited and thus
unsuitable to become the common standard idiom of Croats and other Slavs in
the wider area of the Balkans. (Macan 1995: 135.)
4. Kolodny 1975: 8.
5. Barac 1947: 11.
6. Lamar and Thompson 1981: 7.
7. Faroqhi 2004: 141.
8. King 1966: 125.
9. Mažuranić 1965: 229.
10. Ibid., 189.
11. Lape 2000: 22.
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Women in the ottoman Balkans
12. Ujević 1965: 163.
13. Ibid., 156.
14. Bošković-Stulli 1984: 234.
15. Botić 1949: 339.
16. Maglajlić 1983: 15.
17. It
is important to note that the western private/public dichotomy is not monolithic
either, and that is has been widely criticized especially by feminist theorists.
For instance, Nancy Duncan has taken issue with this rigid distinction, arguing
that “both private and public spaces are heterogeneous and not all space is
clearly private or public.” (Duncan 1996: 128.) The application of binary
distinctions to non-Western society has also been part of the feminist critique.
In her discussion of women in Middle Eastern cultures, Cynthia Nelson has
criticized the depoliticization of space through the establishment of binary
distinctions, and the limited knowledge of ethnographers “who, by virtue of
their foreignness and maleness, have had limited if any access to the social
world of women.” (Nelson 1974: 553.) Julie Marcus refers to the world of the
harem, imagined in the West as “the hidden world of the Muslim women,”
as serving as the ultimate projection of sexual fantasies that accompany the
dichotomy of private and public. (Marcus 1992: 92)
18. Peirce 1993: 8.
19. Maglajlić 1983: 16.
20. Ibid., 55.
21. Botić 1949: 1
10.
22. Ibid., 179–80.
23. Ravlić 1970: 70.
24. Maglajlić 1983: 13.
25. Faroqhi 2000: 16.
26. Like
the currents in folk poetry, a dichotomous concept recurred throughout
Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History Page 59