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Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks (natively: Bošnjaci) are Slavs who were converted to Islam during the Ottoman period (15th-19th century). Bosniaks are named after Bosnia, the westernmost Balkan region held by the Turks. Most Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina declare themselves ethnically Bosniak, and also some Muslims of Serbia and Montenegro (in the Sandžak region).
Don't confuse them with other Balkan Muslims, namely Albanians and Turks.
There are conflicting claims whether these Bosniaks were willingly or forcibly converted to Islam. A large segment of Bosnian population at the time were members of the Bosnian Church and were considered heretics by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, and they are said to have willingly embraced Islam. Many Christian children became Muslims by getting forcibly enrolled as janjičari into the Ottoman army. Janjičari, however, had no right to marry until 1566, and before and after that were used throughout the Ottoman Empire; their descendants do not comprise major part of Bosnian population.
Being part of Europe and influenced not only by the oriental but also by the occidental culture, Bosnian Muslims are considered to be some of the most advanced Islamic peoples of the world. The nation takes pride in the melancholic folk songs sevdalinke, the precious medieval filigree manufactured by old Sarajevo craftsmen, and a wide array of traditional wisdoms that are carried down to newer generations by word of mouth, and in recent years written down in numerous books.
Economically, at the end of the Ancient Regime, they were the majority of the landlords, with Christians being peasants.
They speak Bosnian language, one of the official versions of the Serbo-Croatian language, currently written in the same form of the Latin alphabet, formerly in Aljamiado-style Arabic script. The main difference of this variant is that it contains many borrowings from Turkish - many of them being Arabic and Persian in origin - due to the Islamic faith of Bosniaks.
See also: History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina. See Muladi, Morisco and renegade for other cases of Europeans converting to Islam.