Perhaps this was because, in large swathes of the Balkan,
Christianity never really took hold. It was adopted by the peasant
as a folk religion - as was Islam later. In Bosnia, for instance,
Muslims and Christians were virtually indistinguishable. They prayed
in each other's shrines, celebrated each other's holidays and
adopted the same customs. Muslim mysticism (the Sufi orders)
appealed to many sophisticated urban Christians. Heretic cults (like
the Bogomils) converted en masse. Intermarriage flourished, mainly
between Muslim men (who could not afford the dowry payable to a
Muslim woman) and Christian women (who had to pay a dowry to her
Muslim husband's family). Marrying a Christian woman was a lucrative
business proposition.
And, then, of course, there was the Moslem birth rate. With four
women and a pecuniary preference for large families - Moslem out-
bred Christians at all times. This trend is most pronounced today
but it was always a prominent demographic fact.
But the success of Islam to conquer the Balkan, rule it, convert its
population and prevail in it - had to do more with the fatal flaws
of Balkan Christianity than with the appeal and resilience of Islam
and its Ottoman rendition. In the next chapter I will attempt to
ponder the complex interaction between Catholicism and Orthodox
Christianity as it was manifested in Croatia and Bosnia, the border
lands between the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires and between
"Rome" and "Byzantium".
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