The final chapter traces Yugoslavias violent disintegration and Serbias post-Yugoslav destiny. In 1990 Milošević and his Socialists (the renamed Communists) won in multi-party elections, but the following year Yugoslavia disinegrated. A short 1991 war in Slovenia was followed by more brutal and prolonged Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, characterized by ethnic cleansing and, in the case of Bosnia, genocidal violence. Serbs were the principal perpetrators but also the victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo and of international sanctions, which cripled the countrys economy and society. The 1999 Kosovo war led to a NATO military intervention against Belgrade. The following year Milošević lost elections and was forced to step down. Supported by the West, Kosovo declared independence in 2008, two years after Montenegro left a union with Serbia. The difficult transition to democracy of the post-Milošević era was halted by a return to populism, like elsewhere in the world. Serbias future will be shaped by the legacies of the historical developments discussed in this book. It will also depend on a world that emerges out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Although the Ottoman conquest is traditionally interpreted as a violent break with the past, this chapter demonstrates that it was enabled by diplomacy as much as warfare. The chapter discusses the early modern Serb society, which formed in the imperial borderlands and was shaped by migrations and wars fought between Christian coalitions led by Hungary and Austria and the Ottoman Empire. Other main topics discussed include the restoration of the Serbian church in the sixteenth century, conversion to Islam of the local population, and migrations to the north of the Danube, following which a Serb plurality was established in southern Hungary. Orthodox Serbs also settled, alongside Catholic Croats, in the Habsburg Military Border, while others were recruited by Ottoman and Venetian armies. During this period, Serbian Orthodox patriarchs became de facto proto-ethnic leaders. A rich oral tradition preserved, and invented, a collective memory of medieval Serbia, while in the eighteenth century educated Serbs embraced the Enlightenment ideas and began to think of Serbs as a modern nation.

The first part of the chapter discusses Serbia during the Great War. Following initial military successes, Serbias army was forced to retreat, together with the government and the royal family, to the Greek island of Corfu in late 1915. By late 1918, a recuperated Serbian army, together with its allies, liberated Serbia and occupied much of what would soon become Yugoslavia. Serbia suffered enormously in the war, but its domination of interwar Yugoslavia alienated non-Serbs and many formerly Habsburg Serbs. In response to the political crisis, King Aleksandar Karadjordjević introduced dictatorship in 1929. His project to create a unified Yugoslav nation had largely failed even before his assassination in 1934. The late 1930s saw a partial return to democracy, in contrast to developments elsewhere in East-Central Europe, a Serb-Croat compromise, and a move closer to Berlin and Rome. Serb officers and most political leaders rejected a pact with the Axis in 1941, leading to the invasion and partition of Yugoslavia by the Axis. The final part discusses resistance, civil war and collaboration and the German policy of reprisals against Serbs, Jews and Roma in occupied Serbia.

A federalised Serbia was formed after the war, as part of a communist-governed Yugoslav federation. Tito and the Party leadership restored Yugoslavia following four years of occupation and civil war, including a brutal conflict between pro-communist and pro-monarchy Serbs. In the post-war period, Serbia, like the rest of Yugoslavia, experienced modernization and industrialization and it was home to a vibrant arts and cultural scene. Serbia was the only Yugoslav republic that itself was federalized, with the establishment of the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo. In the late 1970s, Serbian political leadership and intellectuals objected, from their different positions, to Serbias status in Yugoslavia. In the second half of the 1980s, the Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević adopted a nationalist platform which alienated many non-Serbs, undermined pro-democracy forces in Serbia, and destabilized Yugoslavia. Under the guise of the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution, Milošević pushed his agenda in 1988-1989 to restore Serbia’s sovereignty over the provinces, and to extend his influence in Montenegro, where pro-Serb sentiments were strong.

Inspired by Italian and German unification movements and Polish plans for a Europe of free, smaller nations, pan-Serb and pan-South Slav unification ideas emerged in the 1830s and 1840s. They gained a new momentum in the 1860s under the leadership of Prince Mihailo Obrenović, whose reign saw the departure of the last Ottoman troops in 1867. Formally independent following the Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878, Serbia became Austria-Hungarys satelite. The first modern political parties, socialist-inspired, pro-Russian Radicals, and Liberals, formed. A violent overthrow of dynasty in 1903 saw the return of a Karadjordjević monarch and coincided with important political developments in the Balkans, including a greater collaboration between Serbia and Habsburg South Slavs. The 1912-1913 Balkan Wars practically ended the Ottoman rule in Europe. Serbia doubled-up its territory, albeit by incorporating mostly non-Serb populated regions which had once been part of medieval Serbia. The 1914 assassination in Sarajevo of the Habsburg heir by a Serb and Yugoslav radical youth from Bosnia led to Austria-Hungarys declaration of war against Serbia, and to the beginning of the First World War.

This chapter sets the scene for the book by discussing historical legacies, changing borders and meanings of Serbia, and the Serbs relations with their neighbours, the empires and Great Powers, and how these factors shaped the modern Serbian society. The chapter problematizes the continuity between pre-modern and modern Serbian states and challenges the national framework through which the Balkan history is usually approached. It also discusses how unique is the history of Serbia and to what extent its historical development is part of broader regional and European historical experiences. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion about the authors approach and the books key arguments and themes.

This chapter explains the emergence of modern Serbia within the broader context of European and Middle Eastern revolutionary upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A largely illiterate society of peasant farmers, the Serbs of the Belgrade pashalik successfully resisted local Jannisary misrule. Despite the collapse of Karadjordje Petrović’s revolutionary statelet in 1813, by 1830 Serbia, led by Prince Miloš Obrenović, gained full autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, initially guaranteed by Russia and then collectively by the Powers. A dual Ottoman-Serb administration gradually transitioned into de facto independence for Serbia. The chapter discusses the impact of central and west European ideas on the formation of the Serbian national identity, and the role played by Austria and Russia in the regional politics. Serbia built a state administration, education and legal system and proto political parties emerged, pushing for a western-style constitution. The emancipation of the Serbs in the 1830s turned Serbia into a land of free peasants and an attractive destination for migrants from neighbouring empires. At the same time, the local Muslim population continued to emigrate.

As elite Ottoman Bosnians belonged to multiple places, the pilgrimage equally belonged to their native society. Even though going on the Hajj was an unreachable goal for most Ottoman Bosnians, the pilgrimage was deeply embedded in society in a variety of ways. Its presence in the imagination as well as the emotional and spiritual attachment to it were continuously nurtured, not only through the social prestige that returning Hajjis accrued through the coveted title of Hajji, but also, and even more persistently, in the way in which textual and visual material mediated believers’ aspiration to the sacred. Depictions of Mecca and Medina in manuscripts called dalā’il al-khayrāt circulated in great numbers, bringing an almost palpable presence of the sacred places into Bosnian homes and cultivating believers’ devotion to the Prophet in domestic settings. Other material objects from the Hijaz helped to nurture not only the emotional, but also the sensorial connection: perfumes, oils and eye make-up were some of the most desirable items that Hajjis brought from the pilgrimage. Some material objects linked believers to both the holy places and the other world – for example, the shroud (ihram, the cloth also worn by pilgrims), as well as the outer cover (ćuburtija) were directly connected to the performance of the pilgrimage and the cycle of life.

Apart from figuring in material culture, the pilgrimage was made visible to local Bosnians in the annual succession of farewell and greeting ceremonies for Hajjis. The flow of Hajjis from Bosnia was not steady throughout the Ottoman period, and the numbers varied according to factors beyond the control of individual believers: wars, plague and Bedouin raids on pilgrim caravans all affected the physical mobility of the Hajjis and shaped the expectations of Bosnian Muslims. The rich and the learned were more likely to go to the Hijaz, but, as we will see, those less privileged also managed to travel great distances and emerge from the depths of anonymity thanks to that feat.

One of the main sources for retracing the paths of Ottoman Bosnians is the mecmua (collection of texts, scrapbook) of Mula Mustafa Bašeskija (1731– 1809).

Many Hajjis describe the summon at Mount Arafat, the crucial mount and place of a major Hajj rite, as a foretaste of Judgement Day. The heat and the vast mass of people in one place often provoke feelings of belonging to a wide unified body of believers, whose numbers and strength in their eyes represents an untapped human potential, a pool of unbreakable solidarity and a firm link between all Muslims. Hasan Ljubunčić, one member of a tiny Yugoslav group of Hajjis travelling in 1949, was not overly impressed by this idea. The difference between Muslims was stark at Arafat: Turkish Hajjis meticulously pondered over every single detail of the ritual and marvelled at the things that the Yugoslavs told them about freedom of religion in their homeland, raising their hands in prayer for the long life of Marshal Tito. Indonesians tearfully recounted their struggles against the colonisers and asked for help. Ljubunčić dejectedly thought how the mission of gathering all Muslims in Mecca for the purpose of knowing and learning from each other had somehow failed, since to him it seemed that it only served to support the poor in this desert region.

The Hajjis were invited to a dinner at King Ibn Saud’s court. The instructions for the attendance were clear: the guests were asked not to request songs or music, and they were to abstain from giving speeches. The dinner was served in ‘European style’ yet simple: whole roasted sheep and turkeys, with cold water for drinks. Hasan Ljubunčić noted the high-ranking guests that flocked around the king: one of them was Amin al-Husseini (1895–1974), a former Palestinian mufti who, as the author recalled, had helped with forming the infamous Handžar division in Bosnia during the Nazi occupation. Ljubunčić added that the Yugoslavs had extremely bad memories of al-Husseini.

Just a few days later, the Yugoslav Hajjis were attending the Eid reception at the king’s court. Waiting in the tent in the courtyard, the Hajjis were sipping lemonade in the scorching heat.

Ottoman Bosniaks had a firm and lasting attachment to places within the traditional Islamic geography. The connection was physical and directed to multiple spaces. Let us take the example of the famous seventeenth-century Sufi scholar ‘Abdullah al-Būsnawī (1593–1644). If a careful observer visits his tomb in Konya – hidden within a residential area, close to a hairdresser salon, a restaurant and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s tomb and mosque – they can see a sign erected in 2007, briefly describing al-Būsnawī’s lifepath. In green letters, the sign presents the major points of al-Būsnawī’s biography: he was a scholar, a Sufi devotee and an interpreter of Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī’s (1207–73) Mathnawi. He was born in Bosnia, spent time in Egypt, Damascus and the Hijaz, and died in Konya. His Arab students were proud of having learned from him, and he left dozens of works. According to his will, the tomb’s inscription also reads that he carried the nisbas (names indicating belonging) of al-Būsnawī (Bosnian), al-Rūmī (Rūmī, from the lands of Rūm, a term that at this point encompassed Anatolia and the Balkans) and al-Bayrāmī, designating his local, cultural and spiritual leanings. ‘Abdullah al-Būsnawī was, thus, a man of many places, ranging from the Balkans to the Hijaz, just like hundreds of his compatriots whose remains today are scattered across the modern-day nation-states of the Middle East, symbolising a long-forgotten mobility.

Beyond the physical, the connection was also emotional and imaginative, especially to the holy places of Mecca and Medina. Ottoman Bosnian authors such as ‘Abdullah al-Būsnawī penned treatises describing different facets of the holy: how places were made special through God’s love and mercy, how significant the presence of the Prophet Muhammad’s body was in Medina, and how it contained miraculous benefits for believers and visitors. In doing so, the Ottoman Bosnians joined the ranks of their scholarly predecessors and contemporaries, and they wrote for geographically diverse audiences. As the biographical dictionaries testify, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, many Bosnians were truly cosmopolitan through their participation in the scholarly and literary discourses of the age.