Islam in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus

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Kingdom of Halych as a vassal of the Golden Horde

With around 30,000 Muslims in Poland , the strongly Catholic country is one of the EU countries with the lowest Muslim population (less than 0.1%). A small minority of native Muslims , the Lipka Tatars , have lived in Poland for 600 years, around 5,000 in number. Small groups of this ethnic group still live in Lithuania and Belarus .

Tatars in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

While the Mongols were still shamanistic when they first devastated Poland in 1240/41 , during the later incursions of 1259 and 1279/85 they were under the leadership of Muslim khans such as Nogai Khan . The eastern Polish cities of Chełm and Lublin , which at that time belonged to the Russian principality of Halych-Volhynia (Galicia) and which (despite an attempted church union under Daniel Romanowitsch of Galicia ) initially remained Christian Orthodox, had, like Halysch, fallen under the domination of the Golden Horde founded by the Mongols (1245–1323), who gradually became Muslim after 1252.

Far away from Poland, on the Volga , from 1380 the rule of the Golden Horde was severely shaken by a partial defeat against the Muscovite Russians and a campaign of extermination by Timur . The Grand Duchy of Lithuania intervened in the ensuing intra-Tartar power struggles, especially from 1397 onwards . After Timur had driven out the Tatarenkhane allied with Lithuania, his general Edigü restored the Golden Horde. With the help of the Lithuanians, ex-Khan Toktamisch tried to return, but the united Lithuanian-Tatar army under Grand Duke Vytautas was decisively defeated by Edigu in the Battle of the Worskla in 1399 .

Toktamish Tatars found acceptance in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had only become Catholic in 1387, his son Jalal ad-Din helped the Poles to defeat the heavily armored German knights with his light cavalry in 1410 in the Battle of Tannenberg . After further unsuccessful attempts to enthrone Jalal ad-Din or his brothers as khans on the Volga, Poland-Lithuania made peace with Edigü in 1418. Around 1500, Poland even formed an alliance with his successors against the Crimean Khanate, which has now become a slave to the Ottomans, and against the Russian Grand Duchy of Moscow , but could not prevent the Crimean Tatars from destroying the Golden Horde in Sarai in 1502. In the period that followed, the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars advanced several times as far as the Polish heartland and Lithuania.

After the Russian conquest of the Tatar khanates on the Volga and the driving back of the Crimean Tatars, more Tatars and Nogaiians came into the country in the 16th century, and in the 17th century their number is said to have already reached 200,000. As Polish auxiliaries, 15,000 of them fought desperately against Russians, Swedes and Ukrainian Cossacks in the Second Northern War , but only the alliance with the Crimean Tatar Khanate (1654) saved Poland-Lithuania from partition. The immigrant Tatars took Polish, Belarusian and Lithuanian women without giving up Sunni Islam. Derived from the old Crimean Tatar word "Lipka" for Lithuania, they were called Lipka Tatars , i.e. Lithuanian Tatars , and were given land near Brest-Litovsk and Grodno .

Gradually the Tatars were almost completely assimilated, Polonized and westernized. In the 20th century they fought on the Polish side against Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany; today they have about 5,000 descendants, mainly in the Białystok region . Several thousand more Polish Tatars live in Lithuania and Belarus , always in peaceful neighborhood with Polish Catholics and with complete equality for religious and political women who are even community officials. However, the majority of Polish Tatars have migrated from the countryside to the major cities of Warsaw , Gdansk , Wroclaw , Lublin , Poznan and Białystok in search of work , where they increasingly mix with Muslim immigrants. Only 500 of them still consider themselves “pure” Tatars instead of Poles and speak a Belarusian dialect .

Lipka rebellion

Effects on Ukraine : As a result of the Lipka revolt, other areas in the south (yellow) in addition to Jedisan (green) fell to the Khanate of the Crimean Tatars (orange).
Tatar mosque in Bohoniki , Poland

After Poland-Lithuania lost its Ukrainian access to the Black Sea ( Jedisan ), which it had acquired around 1400, to the Ottoman Turks in 1526 , the Turks tried in vain to conquer Ukraine in 1620–1621 and 1633–1634.

Under the pressure of Catholicization (which had continued since 1596), when the war between Poland and the Ottoman Empire broke out in 1672, part of the 3,000-strong Tatar Lipka regiment defected to the Turks and gave them the Ukrainian cities of Bar and Kamieniec-Podolski . Others, however, stuck to their brotherhood in arms with the Poles, for which King Jan Sobieski gave them two eastern Polish villages ( Bohoniki and Kruszyniany , later also Sokółka ) near Białystok as a settlement area in 1679 and issued a general amnesty for all Tatars. Poland had her back free for the battle for Vienna in 1683 and the war for Hungary . In 1699 it finally regained Podolia .

The Lipka rebellion formed the background for the historical novel " Pan Wołodyjowski " by the Polish national poet Henryk Sienkiewicz .

During the Turkish Wars 1768–1772, the Ottoman Empire supported an uprising of Polish patriots who had come together in the Confederation of Bar against Russia and their own (pro-Russian) king ( Stanislaus II ). Since Austria wanted to diminish Russia's victory over Turkey , Prussia (which had concluded an alliance with the Turks in 1762 and 1791) "mediated" the partition of Poland , in 1807 (and 1939) Białystok also came to Russia. In 1945 part of the Tatar settlement area in Poland fell to the Soviet Union ( Poland shifted to the west ); Poland got Białystok back.

Polish converts in exile

Even before the Christianization of Poland, Slavs who had converted to Islam had made careers at Andalusian courts. Since then, individual Poles had repeatedly accepted Islam and posts, especially in the Ottoman Empire, for example Albert Wojciech Bobowski alias Ali Ufki (1610–1675), a Polish church musician and Baroque composer who became the sultan's treasurer (finance minister).

After the defeat in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49 and the Polish legions fighting on the Hungarian side , they went into exile in Turkey, where a number of Polish officers and soldiers were converted. The remnants of the revolutionary army defeated by the Russians and Austrians had converted to Ottoman territory and Islam under General Josef Bem (1794–1850). Together with Bem, 72 officers and generals as well as 6,000 Hungarian and Polish soldiers converted, some of whom rose to become army leaders or governors etc. in the Ottoman Empire, for example

  • Abdülkerim Pascha (1807–1885), Polish-Ottoman general
  • Seweryn Bielinski alias Nihad Pascha (1815–1895), Polish-Ottoman general
  • Konstanty Borzęcki (1826–1876) alias Mustafa Celaleddin (Celalettin) Pasha, Polish-Ottoman general, Turkologist and grandfather of Nazim Hikmets .
  • Feliks Klemens Breanski alias Schahyn Pascha (1794-1884), Polish-Ottoman general
  • Michail Czajkowski alias Mehmet Sadik Pascha (1804–1886), Polish-Ottoman general
  • Antoni Aleksander Ilinski alias Iskender Pascha (1814–1861), Polish-Ottoman general

According to the Polish Muslim Union, between the end of communism in the country and 2004, up to 1,000 Poles converted to Islam.

Muslim immigrants

Tatar chapel in Nemezis (Lithuania)
Flag of the Muslim Tatars of Belarus

The majority of Muslims in Poland are not Tatars or converts, but primarily immigrants. Around 25,000 foreign Muslims live in Poland today, most of them from Asia and North Africa.

Unique for Europe is a Catholic-Islamic Council , formed in 1997 , which advocates an interreligious dialogue and is sponsored by both Polish bishops and the Saudi royal family. However, this influence did not affect politics. Poland was z. B. (besides Denmark) the only country in the US-led " Coalition of the Willing " that formally declared war on Iraq in 2003. After the Americans and the British, Poland was the third most important occupying power in Iraq until the very end, and in Poland itself Muslim prisoners suspected of terrorism were tortured in secret CIA prisons .

In the Polish capital Warsaw, where almost half of all Muslims live with 13,000 believers, a second mosque is being built, mainly with Saudi money. It is to receive an 18 meter high minaret and an Islamic cultural center.

Islam in Lithuania and Belarus

Up to 3,000 Tatars live in Lithuania . Raižiai in the Alytus district in southern Lithuania has been their traditional settlement area for 600 years. Many of them now live in or around the capital Vilnius .

In Vilnius itself, at least since the Soviet era, all mosques and traces of the Lipka Tatars and Islam in Lithuania have disappeared (except for the Tatar Museum founded in 1929). The city government still refuses to allow a new mosque to be built. Instead, also in the interwar period, on the occasion of the birthday of the Tatar-friendly Grand Duke Vytautas , a mosque was built in Kaunas , the Lithuanian capital of the interwar period.

Instead of Polish or Lithuanian, the Lithuanian Tatars also speak a Belarusian dialect, which is why they are occasionally (also in Poland) incorrectly counted as part of the Belarusian minority (46,000 Belarusians, but up to 63,000 Belarusian speakers in Lithuania, Lipka Tatars make up a large part of the difference from 17,000). Together with Muslim immigrants (including 5,000 Tatars from Russia) and Lithuanian converts, 8,000 Muslims make up 0.23% of the population in Lithuania (according to other data, 21,000 and 0.6% respectively).

Lithuanian Tatars have also lived in the Belarusian capital Minsk , since 1428 in the Tatarskaja Slabada district and in the Hrodna (Hrodsenskaja Woblasz) area bordering Białystok in the cities of Lida (70 km west of Minsk) and Nawahradak . In the whole of Belarus there are fewer than 10,000 Tatars (12,500 according to Turkish data) plus several thousand Azerbaijanis and Muslims from other CIS republics . According to their own information, only 30,000 Muslims live in the country and thus make up around 0.5% of the total population of Belarus. They used the Belarusian Arabic alphabet . There are mosques in the cities of Smilavichy , Iue , Slonim , Nawahrudak , Klezk and Widsy . Another mosque was opened in Minsk in November 2016 with financial help from Turkey .

Summary (timetable)

  • 10th century - Poland's first contacts with the Caliphate of Córdoba , rise of Muslim Slavs in Andalusia and North Africa ( Saqaliba )
  • 15th century - settlement of allied Volga Tatars
  • 16th century - Crimean Tatars and Nogaiians immigrated
  • 17th century - Tatars fight for Poles against Swedes, Germans, Russians, but Lipka rebellion
  • 18th century - Polish patriots ally with the Ottoman Empire
  • 19th century - some Polish soldiers and officers in exile convert to Islam
  • 20th century - the Lipka Tatar settlement area was divided between Poland, Lithuania and Belarus

Others

The ancestors of the actor Charles Bronson were Lipka Tatars from Lithuania who emigrated to the USA. The Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz also has Tatar ancestors. Jakub Szynkiewicz was an important figure in Islam and the first Grand Mufti in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s .

See also

Footnotes

  1. a b Meyer's Large Pocket Lexicon in 24 Volumes, Volume 17, Page 5931. Mannheim 2006. ( also Brockhaus ( Memento from June 23, 2006 in the Internet Archive ))
  2. ^ A b Stella Brozek: Religious Freedom - Islam in Poland (Report by Human Rights Without Frontiers, 2004)
  3. Zeit online from December 10, 2014: US torture report - CIA is said to have made Poland "flexible" with millions
  4. Spiegel online from December 10, 2014: Debate over CIA report - Poland's ex-president grants approval to prisons
  5. Spiegel online from January 24, 2014: Combating Terrorism - CIA paid Poland 15 million dollars for a secret prison
  6. W Warszawie buduje się z nowoczesny meczet Restauracja
  7. Meyer's Lexicon online (discontinued March 2009)
  8. a b Autocrats among themselves: Erdogan near Lukashenko
  9. Article: Muslims in Belarus Prepare to Celebrate Muhammad's Birthday ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on belarus-misc.org, accessed August 4, 2016  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.belarus-misc.org

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