Between 1804 and 1835 Serbia fought for independence from the Ottoman Empire that had ruled over the Balkans for more than 400 years. Men like Dositej Obradović and Vuk Karadžić emphasized the essentials of being Serbian, the things that unified the Serbian people and nation. Language, customs, and a shared history became the foundation of the rallying …
When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain on 31 July 1492, they were welcomed with open arms into the Ottoman-ruled Balkans. Thus the Balkans, and particularly Sarajevo, came to be populated with Sephardic Jews to the extent that at the height of the community’s population, 20% of Sarajevo was Jewish and 10% of …
The baby who would become the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III was born on 30 January 1894. The biggest scandal around his infancy centered around the fact that his father, Ferdinand I, defying the angry wishes of Boris’s mother, converted the infant from the Catholic to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The switch horrified the Catholic Habsburg …
In 1817 an incident occurred in Travnik which would change the schedule of religious holidays for Sarajevo’s Jews forever. It did seem like a big deal at the time, although it wasn’t too different from the sorts societal stresses which happen from time-to-time when multiple religions have to coexist in one space. It certainly did …
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