Islam in Hungary

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The former mosque in Pécs from the Ottoman period .

The Islam in Hungary dates back to the 10th century. The Muslims who were brought into the country with economic privileges at the time remained largely to themselves. This did not change after the military conquest of large parts of the country by the Ottomans in the 16th century, although Hungary underwent an optical Muslim transformation due to the extensive displacement of Christian life from the public and the installation of mosques . With the complete return of the country under Habsburg rule, the Islamic influences of Turkish rule were pushed back again.

10th to 13th centuries

The first Muslim merchants immigrated to Hungary in the 10th century at the behest of the Hungarian Grand Duke Taksony . He commissioned the newcomers to settle in the area of ​​the former Roman fort Castra Aquincum , from which Buda , now part of the capital Budapest , developed. He also left the Muslims to monitor the Danube ferry between the two places Buda and Pest. As a result, the Arpad rulers supported this policy, as reported in the first Hungarian chronicle, the Gesta Hungarorum .

“... so the venerable men Billa and Baksh came here with numerous Muslims from the land of Bular. The duke (Geza, father of Stephan I ) assigned them property in different regions of the country and also a castle called Pest ... "

- Duke Stephan I : Gesta Hungarorum

Due to its location and the Danube ferry, the early plague gained a certain importance for long-distance trade. The Muslim merchants did not limit themselves to oriental luxury goods, but were actively involved in Hungary's lucrative wine and salt business in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Muslim theologian and travel writer Abu Hamid al-Gharnati was in contact with the Islamic diaspora in Hungary around 1150 .

The Muslim geographer Yāqūt ar-Rūmī (d. 1229) also reports on Muslims in Hungary. He treats them in his geographical dictionary Muʿǧam al-Buldān under the keyword Bāschghird , explaining that this is an area between Constantinople and the Bulgarians. Yāqūt's account is based on information he received from Hungarian Muslims whom he met in Aleppo between 1216 and 1229 . He reports that these men, whom he calls al-Bāshghirdīya , had very blond hair and a very fair complexion and belonged to the Hanafi madhhab . They told him that behind Constantinople they lived in the area of ​​a Franconian people called al-Hunkar and that they owned thirty villages there. Each of these villages was almost the size of a small town. When Yāqūt asked his informant why they had converted to Islam even though they lived in the middle of the areas of disbelief , the man replied that, according to his ancestors' report several generations ago, seven Muslims from the area of ​​the Bulgarians ( bilād al-Bulġār ) came to them, settled with them and converted them to Islam. The men told Yāqūt that they had come to be trained in fiqh so that they would be honored by the people and entrusted with religious offices when they returned home.

The Árpáden allowed the Muslims who had become influential to hold important positions in the country's financial system. So they got the right to lease the royal income and collect it independently. But at the beginning of the 13th century, calls for restrictions against Muslims and Jews were voiced for the first time. The Hungarian nobles, the servientes regis , had their privileges revoked by royal decree. As a result, the nobility wrote the Golden Bull of 1222 in which it is complained that the locals are forbidden to accept the office of chambergrave, to exchange money and to be active for customs revenue or salt trade. Since the Hungarian crown did not want to forego the lucrative business with the Muslims, the nobility increased the pressure on the royal family with a renewal of the bull and with the help of the church. In 1232 all Muslim merchants and financiers were forced to leave. All Saracens living in Pest also left the country. Instead of the Muslims, Germans were now brought into the country, who closed the resulting economic gaps.

Turkish occupation of Central Hungary

In 1526, after the battle of Mohács , the Turks began to occupy and externally Islamic transformation of Hungary. From 1541 the conquerors had direct power over central Hungary. They installed five pashas , each with an administrative district ( paschaliks ) under the control of the Belerbeg , the pasha who was seated in Buda . The administration of the occupying power remained a foreign body for the residents despite their relative national and religious freedom, especially since the larger and more important churches in the country that had been preserved during the war were either destroyed or taken away from the Christians in order to convert them into mosques. The towers, deprived of their bells, received a wooden collar from which the muezzin called to prayer. In other places mosques were also built as new buildings.

The balance of Turkish rule was devastating for Hungary. The once richest areas in southern Hungary and the central lowlands were devastated and the population wiped out by the middle of the 16th century. Before the Battle of Mohács, the inhabitants of Hungarian origin made up around 75 to 80 percent of the estimated 3.5 to 4 million people, which had fallen by 1600 to only 2.5 million. After the withdrawal of the Turks around 1720, the country had regained its late medieval status for the first time. The Magyars not only suffered from the heavy fighting, but were also sold to the Orient as coveted slaves.

During the Ottoman occupation of Hungary, some Muslim personalities were born in Hungary. For example, the Grand Vizier of Croatian descent, Kanijeli Siyavuş Pascha, who was born in Nagykanizsa and held this office three times between 1582 and 1593, but also the Mevlevi dervish Pecsevi Árifi Ahmed Dede, a Turk born in Pécs .

Modern times

In the 19th century, after the collapse of the revolution in 1849, over 6,000 Poles and Hungarians emigrated into exile in Turkey before General Josef Bem . For example, the Hungarian officers Richard Guyon (Kurshid Pascha), György Kmety (Ismail Pascha) and the Honved Colonel Baron Maximilian Stein (Ferhad Pascha), who later became Turkish generals. Guyon is considered to be the first Christian with the rank of pasha and a Turkish military degree who was not forced to convert , which is seen as a signal of the modernization of Ottoman society in the 19th century.

present

There are three public Muslim places of prayer in the capital, Budapest, all in the city center. One of them, “Dar-es-Salam”, is not far from the Liberty Bridge . Financed by donations, a large mosque has been built since 2008 to bring together the three Muslim communities in the capital.

Before the significant migration movements since 2014, the number of Muslims in Hungary was less than 6,000 according to a 2011 census.

In the course of the refugee crisis, Hungary's very small number of Muslims increased significantly - in 2014 and 2015, added up, over 200,000 refugees applied for asylum in Hungary. The vast majority of the refugees come from the predominantly Muslim countries of Afghanistan and Syria .

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katalin Gönczi: Hungarian town law from a European perspective. The development of urban law in late medieval Hungary using the example of the oven. Vittorio Klostermann, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3465029011 , pp. 50-56.
  2. ^ A b Katalin Gönczi: Hungarian town law from a European perspective. The development of urban law in late medieval Hungary using the example of the oven. Vittorio Klostermann, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3465029011 , p. 51.
  3. ^ Gesta Hungarorum , Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-7995-2910-1 , chapter 57
  4. ↑ See Lewicki: "Ma dj ar. 1. In pre-Ottoman period" in EI² Vol. V, p. 1019.
  5. ↑ See Ferdinand Wüstenfeld: Jacut's Geographical Dictionary from the manuscripts in Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London and Oxford, at the expense of the German Oriental Society FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1866-73. Vol. I, p. 470. The report begins on p. 469. Digitized
  6. ↑ Katalin Gönczi: Hungarian town law from a European perspective. The development of urban law in late medieval Hungary using the example of the oven. Vittorio Klostermann, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3465029011 , p. 52.
  7. ↑ Katalin Gönczi: Hungarian town law from a European perspective. The development of urban law in late medieval Hungary using the example of the oven. Vittorio Klostermann, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3465029011 , p. 53.
  8. ^ Paul Lendvai: The Hungarians. A thousand years of history. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-00218-7 , p. 121.
  9. ^ Thomas Winkelbauer: Austrian history. Ueberreuter publishing house. 2003, ISBN 3800039885 , p. 75.
  10. ^ Zsolt Szabóky, György Száraz: Budapest. Corvina, Budapest 1984, p. 81.
  11. ^ László Kósa: The Hungarians. Your history and culture. Akadémiai Kiadó. 1994, ISBN 9630567024 , p. 314.
  12. ^ Paul Lendvai: The Hungarians. A thousand years of history. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-00218-7 , p. 117.
  13. ^ Paul Lendvai: The Hungarians. A thousand years of history. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-00218-7 , p. 119.
  14. ↑ Claudia Römer (Hrgr.): Ottoman Sultansurkunden. Investigations into the recruitment and salaries of Ottoman soldiers in the time of Murād III. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3515065423 , p. 198.
  15. ↑ Központi Statisztikai Hivatal. In: ksh.hu. Retrieved May 13, 2015 (Hungarian).
  16. ↑ ec.europa.eu File: Number of (non-EU) asylum seekers in the EU and EFTA Member States, 2014 and 2015 (thousands of first time applicants) YB16-de.png In: Eurostat , accessed on April 3, 2017 .