A religious minority of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, the Pomaks now live dispersed in five Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Turkey. A living legacy of the complexities of Balkan history, the Pomaks represent a perfect case to study interstate political intricacies around the unsettled identity of small inter-communal groups. An examination of this community should enrich the knowledge about the nature of Balkan Islam that stands on the periphery of the Arab-Iranian-Turkic Islamic heartland, the three peoples who carried the major burden of Islamic history.