Bosniaks

Bosniaks are a South Slavic ethnic group and nation native to Bosnia and Herzegovina and constitute the largest ethnic group in Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by Serbs and Croats. They share a common ancestry, culture, history and language emanating from the Bosnian historical region; and traditionally and predominantly adhere to Sunni Islam for which reason they are often also referred to as Bosnian Muslims although this is an imprecise ethnic descriptor today. The Bosniaks constitute significant native communities in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo as well. Largely due to displacement stemming from the Bosnian War and Genocide in the 1990s, they also form a significant diaspora with several Bosniak communities across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

Slavs settled the present-day territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 7th to 9th centuries amid the Migration Period. By the 12th century, they had formed an independent Bosnian state that would evolve into a kingdom by the late 14th century. Throughout the High Middle Ages, the Bosnian state was characterised by a disorganised Christian religious plurality, often accused of heresy due to a weak church organisation, brought about by rugged, mountainous terrain and poor communications with both Rome and Constantinople. Following the Ottoman conquest of the Kingdom of Bosnia in 1463, a distinct, native community of Bosnian Muslims began to form as the local Slavic population embraced Islam, mainly in the 16th century. Despite an initially steep increase upwards to three-fourths of the Bosnian population at its height, wars and plagues would later, throughout Ottoman rule, decimate the Bosnian Muslim population, who, in contrast to their rural Christian counterparts, lived in more densely populated urban centres and were obligated to partake in Ottoman military campaigns. In the late 17th and early 18th century, Bosnia received a large influx of around 130,000 Muslim refugees from Ottoman territories lost in Hungary, Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia.