The Ottoman Empire
was an Islamic empire in the eastern Mediterranean.
That is more than Turkey: the Balkans,
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia, the Algiers and the Arabian Peninsula,
including the holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina.
Under Ottoman rule
from the mid 14th until the early 20th century
Islamic architecture and culture thrived in different
forms and styles in the vast geographies of the empire.
However, after the fall of the Ottomans,
and especially in the Balkans, where the new nation states
like Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania
were predominantly Christian
and were born after war and revolution against the Ottomans,
the rule of the later was considered a dark period
of the history of those enslaved nations.
Consequently, whatever was left from the period of Ottoman
rule was considered an unwanted heritage.
The Ottomans
had built during the centuries of their rule
mosques and minarets, schools,
Islamic colleges and universities,
libraries, baths, etc.
Being pious Muslims,
they especially loved fountains,
which survive everywhere
in the former Ottoman Empire. In some cases
with beautiful inscriptions in Arabic script.
After the end of the Ottoman rule,
however, Ottoman heritage was
not wanted anymore.
Moreover, the new nation states in the Balkans
had to erase the memory of their former rulers.
Minarets, especially, and mosques
were targeted as symbols of Islamic identity,
the dominant identity of the Ottoman Empire.
The new nation states of the Balkans,
predominantly Christian, Orthodox.
Christian, mostly demolished, many surviving
minarets and mosques, like in this case in Ioannina.
In order to rearrange the cityscapes
from Islamic to Christian.
The Ottoman heritage had to give its place to the so-called modernization.
In the recent past,
a new method of war has appeared:
to attack the cultural heritage of the enemy
in order to erase its identity like a cultural genocide.
During the civil war in ex-Yugoslavia
between 1992 and 1996,
96% of the mosques in Bosnia
Herzegovina were heavily damaged or completely destroyed.
In some cases, nothing, absolutely
nothing remained after the destruction.
However, after the war,
in our days, many of the destroyed mosques were rebuilt
and are being rebuilt in order to reclaim the identity of the land,
in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Ottoman
heritage left in the Balkans was so vast,
so many monuments and so many buildings
that no campaign of de-Ottomanization
never succeeded in destroying the totality
of the remnants from the Ottoman centuries.
Many buildings were destroyed,
many survived as well.
In some cases
the new nation states were forced to use their Islamic buildings
in order to accommodate their new needs.
Like the Greeks, in Nafplio in the Moria during the Greek
Revolution, who used a former mosque
for their first parliament building. The Greeks
occupied Nafplio in 1822 from the Ottomans.
In 1825, they established there
their first parliament using a former mosque.
They demolished the minaret and in its place
they raised the Greek flag.
They replaced the carpets with modern furniture
in order to accommodate the needs of a parliament.
The building survives today and it is called
the Parliament Mosque.
In many cases,
former churches that had been transformed into mosques
under the Ottomans were again transformed into churches.
In some cases, like in Chania Crete, a former Catholic
monastery had been transformed into a sultanic mosque
to be re-transformed into an Orthodox church
in the beginning of the 20th century,
when Crete was united with Greece.
Thank God the minarets survived
and co-exist today with the modern bell tower,
the christian bell tower, as a symbol of peaceful coexistence
between Christianity and Islam.
In practice,
the appropriation of the Islamic heritage by the church
like what happened in Spain
and in the Iberian Peninsula in general,
actually saved the Islamic buildings from demolition.
Since they retained a holy identity,
like in this case of a former
Islamic prayer niche used now for
the Christian
the Christian prayers.
The surviving Islamic
and especially Ottoman heritage in the Balkans today
consists of what the bibliography
in cultural management calls a dissonant heritage.
Take, for instance, the case of Athens, Greece,
with the Acropolis and the Parthenon
and one particular mosque, the so-called mosque of the Dizdar Agha
the fortress commander, without a minaret
now downtown.
Material remains of past events or regimes
may defy easy obliteration
and thus act as mnemonic intrusions.
Archeological finds or historical scholarship
may embarrass accepted narratives,
or public recognition may be prompted by the fact
that while the troubling history may be uncomfortable
it is also of heritage interest, attracting
tourists and bringing revenue.
Following Sharon MacDonald we can also describe
the Islamic and Ottoman heritage in the Balkans today
as a difficult heritage, a past that is
recognized as meaningful in the present, but
that is also contested and awkward for public reconciliation
with a positive, self affirming contemporary identity.
Islamic and Ottoman heritage in the Balkans
today is still very much neglected
in many cases, both in
what have to do with restorations
and in the narratives of the history of the nations.
Many monuments are not restored or not being restored,
they are closed.
They are not open to visitors
and not included in the narrative of
cultural management.
Islamic and Ottoman heritage
in the Balkans is still very much under attack,
especially by ultra nationalist and neo-Nazi groups in our days
in some cases,
when the surviving, in very bad shape, buildings, Ottoman buildings
are identified with the influx of Muslim refugees
from the Middle East after the civil war in Syria.
On the other hand,
in many other cases
and in many success stories, we were able to restore
many of the Islamic and Ottoman buildings and even publish books,
like Ottoman architecture in Greece
and the Ottoman monuments in Greece.
In conclusion, we can say that in the Balkans
we're still in the process of negotiating
with an Ottoman past and our
Ottoman cultural heritage.
Ideally, we will be able to protect it,
but we do not live in an ideal world.