Islam in Romania
Islam in Romania is followed by only 0.3% of the country'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.1393-1878).
The vast majority of Romania's 58,000 Muslims are Sunnis, mostly of the Hanafi school. f Roman Muslims, 85 percent live in Constanţa County, 12 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 and other small communities of Albanians and Muslim Roma, as well as groups of Middle Eastern immigrants. Their cultural interests are represented by the Cultural and Islamic League of Romania (Liga Islamică şi Culturală din România).
Romania is home to 80 mosques.[1]
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. The Cumans followed the Pechenegs in 1171, while the Hungarian kings settled the Pechenegs in Transylvania and other parts of their kingdom.
Dobruja
The Crimean Tatar and Nogai presence (the latter have settled in northern Tulcea County - Isaccea and Babadag) is traditional in Northern Dobruja, and partly predates Ottoman rule, as well as the creation of the two Danubian Principalities — with several settlements founded around 1300. Tatars in Tulcea County were driven out by Imperial Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 (see Muhajir Balkan).
Following the war, the government of Ion Brătianu agreed to extend civil rights to non-Christians. The Dobrujan community was subject to cultural repression during Communist Romania.
Today, 85% of Romanian Turkish and Tatar Muslims reside in Constanţa County, forming just 6% of the county's population, and represented in Parliament by the Democratic Union of Turco-Islamic Tatars of Romania. The city of Constanţa is the centre of Romanian Islam; Mangalia, near Constanţa, is the site of a monumental mosque, built in 1525 (see Mangalia Mosque).
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), Ottoman influence led to a few conversions in the ranks of hospodars: Princes Radu cel Frumos (1462-1475) and Mihnea Turcitul (1577-1591) of Wallachia, and Prince Ilie II Rareş (1546-1551) of Moldavia. 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)[2] 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.1 The documents themselves have not been preserved, but their provisions toward Muslim-Christian relations have 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.[3] 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,[4] although this provision appears to have been discarded during later Phanariote rules and the frequent Russo-Turkish Wars.[5]
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.
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 thousands 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.
Notes
1 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, recent research may have discovered genuine Capitulations and other documents[6] proving that the relations between the Danubian Principalities and the Porte did indeed have a contractual character. [7]
References
- ^ http://www.islam.ro/
- ^ 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)
- ^ 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
- ^ 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
- ^ 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)
- ^ Anton Caragea in Epoca Renaşterii Naţionale, Universitatea din Bucureşti 2004, p. 16 - 17
- ^ Ileana Cazan, Eugen Denize, "Marile puteri şi spaţiul românesc în secolele XV-XVI", Universitatea din Bucureşti, 2002; Anton Caragea in the Epoca Renaşterii Naţionale, chapter "Ce sunt şi ce au reprezentat capitulaţiile" [1]