Customer Reviews

The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia, Second Edition (Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs)

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This is a collection of articles that cover the entire span of the history of the Bosnian Muslims, although the quality of the individual contributions varies greatly. The first three articles, which go from the Middle Ages to 1878, are unfortunately uninformative and even tedious for anyone who has already done some reading on general Balkan history, and probably confusing and perhaps overwhelming for those who have no previous knowledge in this field. By far the best piece is the article by this volume's editor, Mark Pinson, which covers the period of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1878-1918) and its effects on the Muslim community. This was in fact a very crucial period for the Bosnian Muslims, because as Pinson points out, it was when they first became a politically aware as a community, and began to seek new ways to articulate their needs. The final article by Ivo Banac, which covers the twentieth century, is a good survey of Bosnian Muslim political history, but it lacks depth, which is disappointing given the importance of this period for understanding events in Bosnia today. There is also a useful, if somewhat dated, appendix for finding further resources on Bosnia, both in print and on the Web. This book is, thus, a generally useful reference source, but it could and should have been something much more.