Pomak folk song - Rusa kosa Imam (I have blond/fair hair)

The Pomaks are a Slavic-speaking Muslim population living mainly in the Rhodope Mountains of southern Bulgaria, in western Thrace in Greece, and in smaller numbers in European Turkey. They speak local Rhodope/Bulgarian dialects, but their religion is Islam. Because of that combination – Slavic language + Islamic faith – they stand at a crossroads between the Christian Balkan world and the former Ottoman world.

Historically, Pomaks are not a separate people that migrated from somewhere else. Most researchers agree they are local Balkan Slavs who converted to Islam during the period of Ottoman rule (15th–18th centuries). The Rhodopes were under stable Ottoman control, there were tax and social advantages for Muslims, and in some areas there was real pressure to convert. In some local traditions, people say they were “forced,” in others they say they “accepted the faith of the rulers,” but in any case they did not lose their Slavic speech. That is the key point: Islam changed their religion, not their language.

During the Ottoman Empire, Pomak villages became part of the wider Muslim world of the Balkans. They used the Hanafi school like the Turks, they went to Friday prayers, they used Turkish and Arabic religious words, and some local elites were educated in Ottoman centers. But unlike urban Turkish-speaking Muslims, the Pomaks stayed in the mountains, in small, closed villages. That isolation helped them keep older Slavic songs, local costumes, and a very recognizable women’s dress with red, striped and richly decorated elements.

In the 19th and early 20th century, when Balkan nationalism grew, Pomaks suddenly became “a problem” for everybody: Bulgarians said, “they are actually Bulgarians who became Muslim,” Greeks said, “they are part of our Muslim minority,” Turks said, “they are Muslims, so they are close to us.” Nobody fully accepted their local identity. After the Balkan Wars and World War I, borders cut their traditional areas: some Pomaks stayed in Bulgaria, some in Greece, some later under Turkey. From that moment on, their identity developed differently in each state.

In Bulgaria, Pomaks were repeatedly pressured to assimilate. At several moments in the 20th century (especially during the communist period), the state tried to make them change their Muslim or Turkish-sounding names to “Bulgarian” ones, to limit religious practice, and to present them officially as “Bulgarian Muslims.” Many of them resisted silently. This created trauma and also a tendency to be cautious about showing their identity.

In Greece, Pomaks were put into the general category of “Muslim minority of Western Thrace” together with Turks and Roma. Because Turkey was the protecting power for that minority, Turkish language and Turkish media became dominant. As a result, many Greek Pomaks grew up with Turkish in school or in public, while their own Slavic/Pomak speech was kept mostly at home. So in Greece, the pressure was not to become Christian, but to become more “Muslim-Turkish.”

Culturally, Pomaks preserved a very strong women’s tradition. Women kept the old songs, the embroidery patterns, the wedding rituals and the specific ways of tying the headscarf. Their music is typical for the Rhodopes: slow, emotional songs, sometimes with long ornaments, sometimes with Islamic words mixed into a Slavic text. Weddings used to last several days, with a clear separation between men’s and women’s roles, and with gifts, dowry and public showing of clothes.

Religion is Sunni Islam, but it is lived in a rural, Balkan way: mosque, imam, Friday prayer, Ramadan, but also local saints, visits to graves, prayers by old women, religious lullabies. It is not the same as Arab urban Islam; it is Islam filtered through centuries of Ottoman Balkan life.

Economically they were mountain people: livestock, tobacco, wood, small farming. That kept them relatively poor and isolated. In the late 20th and 21st century, many Pomaks migrated to cities or to Western Europe. That weakened the traditional costume and the village structure, but it also made some young Pomaks more interested in their roots, because they realized that neither Bulgarians, nor Greeks, nor Turks see them 100% as their own.

Today the Pomak identity is layered. A Pomak in Bulgaria might say: “I am Muslim, I speak Bulgarian, I am from the Rhodopes, and I remember the name-changing campaigns.” A Pomak in Greece might say: “I am Muslim, I speak Pomak at home, but I use Turkish in public, and I live inside the Greek state.” What unites them is: mountain origin, Slavic speech, Islamic faith, and a memory of being in-between. Their culture is exactly that: Balkan in form, Ottoman in religion, and local in feeling.