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Pomaks
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Pomaks ( ) are a Bulgarian-speaking Muslim population group native to some parts of Bulgaria, specifically southern Bulgaria, and the adjacent parts of Greece and Turkey. Members of the group today declare a variety of ethnic identities, Bulgarian, Turkish, Pomak or Muslim. Historically they are usually considered descendants of Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans, although some alternative narratives of their historical identity have been proposed and, according to some authors, their precise origins remain unknown.
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Encyclopedia
Pomaks ( ) are a Bulgarian-speaking Muslim population group native to some parts of Bulgaria, specifically southern Bulgaria, and the adjacent parts of Greece and Turkey. Members of the group today declare a variety of ethnic identities, Bulgarian, Turkish, Pomak or Muslim. Historically they are usually considered descendants of Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans, although some alternative narratives of their historical identity have been proposed and, according to some authors, their precise origins remain unknown. Pomaks speak the dialects of Bulgarian language as mother tongue and are fluent in Turkish in Greece and Turkey.
Population
Bulgaria
The Pomaks in Bulgaria are referred to as Muslim Bulgarians Bulgarian Muslims, Mokhammedan Bulgarians or under the ethnographic names Ahryani, Torbeshi, etc. They inhabit mainly the Rhodope Mountains - Smolyan Province, Kardzhali Province, Pazardzhik Province and Blagoevgrad Province. There are Pomaks in other parts of Bulgaria as well. There are a few Pomak villages in Burgas Province, Lovech Province, Veliko Tarnovo Province and Ruse Province. According to the 2001 census there are 131 531 Muslim Bulgarians in Bulgaria.Since the start of the 20th century the Pomaks in Bulgaria were the subject of state-supported assimilation which included the change of their Turkish-Arabic names to ethnic Bulgarian ones and conversions from Islam to Eastern Orthodoxy. The Bulgarian state redefined the Pomaks as ancestral Bulgarians who therefore needed to be repatriated back to the Bulgarian national domain. These attempts were met with stiff resistance by the Pomaks.
Greece
Today the Pomaks in Greece inhabit the prefectures of Xanthi, Rhodope and Evros. Until Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and Population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 Pomaks inhabited a part of the region of Moglena. and some other parts of Macedonia, Greece. The Pomaks of Thrace were exempted from those exchanges and, together with Muslim Turks and Rom, were granted by the Lausanne Treaty (1923) the right to primary education in Turkish and Greek. A part of Pomaks still transmits their language, pomatsko, to their children and also speaks Turkish and Greek, but a big part of them doesn't transmit Pomak anymore but Turkish as a first language.
Turkey
Today the Pomaks are present in Turkey, in both Eastern Thrace and in Anatolia. Since their settlement there many of them have lost their identity and were assimilated to the Turks.
Alternative origin theories
A specific DNA mutation which emerged about 2,000 years ago on a rare haplotype is characteristic of the Pomaks. Its frequency increased as a consequence of high genetic drift within this population. This indicates that the Pomaks are an isolated population with limited contacts with their neighbours. The DNA tree line of Pomaks implies the hypothesis, that Pomaks are descendants of ancient Thracian tribes.
According some historians some of the Pomaks in the Rhodope Mountains are successors of the Cumans that converted to Islam in the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century after establishing contact with missionaries from North Africa and the Middle East. This theory is further backed by the fact that in the 9th century many Muslims moved from Bulgaria to Hungary and were ordered to be expelled by Pope Nicholas I in 866, yet enjoyed many freedoms and were even allowed to serve in the military and in border guard units during the 11th and 12th century. Many researchers are of the opinion that these were Cumans or Pechenegs.
Another theory, especially popular among the Pomaks themselves, is that they are successors of Arabs or Thraco-Slavs who have adopted Islam from Arabic missionaries. This theory is backed by the fact that Arabs distributed many religious books in the Balkans during the 10th century and that there is overwhelming evidence of Muslim presence on the peninsula from the 7th century on.
Further reading
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