Muslim Lives in Eastern Europeexamines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic ...world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.
Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region's state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women's embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks' new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria's Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.
The Asanids Madgearu, Alexandru
2016, 2016-12-08, Letnik:
41
eBook
In The Asanids, Alexandru Madgearu provides a detailed history of the second Bulgarian empire in its interactions with Byzantium, Hungary, Latin Empire of Constantinople and the Golden Horde. This is ...the first English language monograph on this subject.
Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist Statesinvestigates why some Eastern European states transitioned to new forms of governance with minimal violence while others broke into civil war. In ...Bulgaria, the Turkish minority was subjected to coerced assimilation and forced expulsion, but the nation ultimately negotiated peace through institutional channels. In Macedonia, periodic outbreaks of insurgent violence escalated to armed conflict. Kosovo's internal warfare culminated in NATO's controversial bombing campaign. In the twenty-first century, these conflicts were subdued, but violence continued to flare occasionally and impede durable conflict resolution. In this comparative study, Maria Koinova applies historical institutionalism to conflict analysis, tracing ethnonationalist violence in postcommunist states to a volatile, formative period between 1987 and 1992. In this era of instability, the incidents that brought majorities and minorities into dispute had a profound impact and a cumulative effect, as did the interventions of international agents and kin states. Whether the conflicts initially evolved in peaceful or violent ways, the dynamics of their disputes became self-perpetuating and informally institutionalized. Thus, external policies or interventions could affect only minimal change, and the impact of international agents subsided over time. Regardless of the constitutions, laws, and injunctions, majorities, minorities, international agents, and kin states continue to act in accord with the logic of informally institutionalized conflict dynamics. Koinova analyzes the development of those dynamics in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, drawing on theories of democratization, international intervention, and path-dependence as well as interviews and extensive fieldwork. The result is a compelling account of the underlying causal mechanisms of conflict perpetuation and change that will shed light on broader patterns of ethnic violence.
Bones of Contention Todorova, Maria N
2009, 20090225, c2009., 2009-01-10
eBook
This book is about documenting and analyzing the living archive around the figure of Vasil Levski (1837–1873), arguably the major and only uncontested hero of the Bulgarian national pantheon. The ...processes described, although with a chronological depth of almost two centuries, are still very much in the making, and the living archive expands not only in size but constantly adding surprising new forms. The monograph is a historical study, taking as its narrative focus the life, death and posthumous fate of Levski. By exploring the vicissitudes of his heroicization, glorification, appropriations, reinterpretation, commemoration and, finally, canonization, it seeks to engage in several broad theoretical debates, and provide the basis for subsequent regional comparative research. The analysis of Levski's consecutive and simultaneous appropriations by different social platforms, political parties, secular and religious institutions, ideologies, professional groups, and individuals, demonstrates how boundaries within the framework of the nation are negotiated around accepted national symbols.
The monograph investigates the origins of state policy toward population and the family in Bulgaria. Reconstructs the evolution of state legislation in the field of social policy toward the family ...between the two World Wars, colored by concerns about the national good and demographic considerations. It sets the laws regarding family welfare in their framework of a distinctively cultural, historical and political discourse to follow the motives behind the legislative initiatives.
The long reign of Ivan Aleksandăr (1331-1371), the penultimate emperor of Bulgaria prior to the Turkish conquest, was marked by a series of successful military campaigns against Serbia and Byzantium ...and above all by an intensive cultural production, largely fostered and funded by the sovereign himself. The central decades of the fourteenth century were of crucial importance for the later cultural evolution of Bulgaria and the whole of Orthodox Slovenia, despite which to date ample and exhaustive studies on the figure of Ivan Aleksandăr are lacking. There is, in effect, a considerable amount of information at disposal, although it is scattered over the literary sources, the colophons of the manuscripts, the epigraphic documentation and also, obviously, the official deeds promulgated by the Emperor. Through the analysis of this varied documentation, this book attempts to reconstruct the figure of the sovereign, the context in which he lived and worked, his greatness and his mistakes and his parallel activities as a strategist and an illuminated patron of the arts. For the first time, the Italian reader can find collected and translated all the manuscript sources relating to the Bulgarian sovereign. The book is completed by an appendix with the original texts of the Slavonic-ecclesiastical tradition.
This volume offers the first comprehensive collection of medieval Bulgarian sources in English translation. It includes literary works, documents, inscriptions on stone and metal, graffiti, as well ...as coins, seals and medallions, produced during the Middle Ages by and for Bulgarians of all walks of life.
This innovative survey of Byzantium's relations with pre-Christian Bulgaria in the late eighth and early ninth century offers an entirely new framework for understanding the developments that shaped ...one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the early Medieval Balkans. Unlike previous studies, it integrates the surviving literary sources with the ever-growing archaeological record to construct a comprehensive narrative account of the Byzantine-Bulgar conflict for political mastery in the region. Moreover, the analysis of the changing socio-political structures of Bulgaria provides a basis for understanding its transformation from a loose tribal confederation into a stable monarchy. While this is primarily a regional study, focusing on the territories and peoples controlled by the two competing powers, it is also of interest to students of the Frankish, Arab and steppe-nomad worlds, since the relations between Byzantium and Bulgaria are put into a wider international context.
Das in der vorliegenden Arbeit verfolgte Ziel ist es, die Zeitung 'Bälgarija' und ihre journalistischen Kontrahenten als literarische Denkmäler der frühen bulgarischen Wiedergeburt zu betrachten und ...nicht bloß als rein historische Quellen. Zu der Zeit, als die 'Bälgarija' erschien, waren die bulgarischen Zeitungen bzw. Zeitschriften noch die eigentliche "Literatur" der erst im Entstehen begriffenen neubulgarischen Schriftsprache. Zudem waren die ersten bulgarischen Zeitungen und Zeitschriften das einzige Medium, durch welches die erst in geringer Zahl vorhandenen genuin bulgarischen literarischen Werke publiziert werden konnten. Genau an diesem Punkt setzt die vorliegende Arbeit an: Die hier besprochene Auseinandersetzung zwischen (?) fünf Zeitungen bzw. Zeitschriften soll vor dem objektiven historischen und sachlichen Hintergrund in all ihrer gepfefferten Polemik, in ihren mit Leidenschaft geführten Streitgesprächen, mit all ihrer Unbekümmertheit und Naivität betrachtet werden.
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