Początek świata: żywoty proroków jako źródła religijnych dystynkcji w narracjach bułgarskojęzycznych muzułmanów
The beginning of the world: Lives of the prophets as a source of religious distinctions in the narratives of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims

Summary/Abstract: This paper draws on data collected through the ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2002 and 2009 in the Central and Western Rhodope Mountains. In my studies I aimed to verify the thesis of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims’ syncretic religiosity, believed by some Bulgarian scholars to preserve strong crypto-Christian components. Asked about motivations behind their religious practices, Muslims often evoked cosmological narratives. These narratives are of crucial importance in the process of legitimising their religion in a multi-faith neighborhood. Referring to the main topic of this volume of “Slavia Meridionalis” I focus on the possible “ideological” backgrounds to these stories. I consider them as examples of the vanishing post-Ottoman influences on Bulgarian Muslims’ religious culture.

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