ISLAM IN THE BALKANS pdf download

Islam in the Balkans Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World

H.T. NORRIS

ISLAM IN THE BALKANS

INTRODUCTION

This book began as a study of the relationship between the Arabs and those sundry peoples that inhabited Europe to the north of the Black Sea.

Circumstances were to prevent the publication of such a wide study. The field of interest soon appeared to be over-ambitious. By then, it had become narrow and focused upon the Balkans, and upon Albania in particular.

The stimulus that was provided by such works as F. W. Hasluck’s Christianity and Islam under. the Sultans (Oxford, 1929), and Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush’s Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the S011iet Union (London: Hurst 1985) may be detected in the pages that follow.

Travel in the Balkans was also a spur. The thrill of entering unknown territory as one carried one’s luggage through the wild no-man’s-land between Yugoslavia, as it then was, and the atheist PSR of Albania at Hani Hoti in the days that followed the death of Enver Hoxha was a memorable experience.

Subsequent visits to Macedonia, Romanian Dobrudja, and Bulgaria stimulated and sharpened an interest in these Muslim peoples, which has in no way diminished over the years.

Even during visits to North Africa, it was an extra pleasure to meet representatives of the dwindling Balkan communities that survive in Algiers and elsewhere.

Apart from the valuable essays brought together in the publication Islam in the Balkans (papers arising from a symposium held to celebrate I lie World of Islam Festival at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, /8-30 July 1976, published in 1979), there are few current works in h1glish that aim at being a general introduction to the subject.

 It should I)(‘ said at the outset that in my book it is principally the selected list 111 books and journals in the bibliography and the notes accompanying