Socialist Yugoslavia & Identity Under Pressure

Socialist Yugoslavia, its violent dissolution and the Dayton settlement.

1 chapter

1912 - 1945

In October 1912, Montenegro seized Plav and Gusinje during the First Balkan War, ending over four centuries of Ottoman governance. The military administration that followed killed over 1,800 local residents (mostly Muslim) and forced approximately 12,000 conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy by March 1913—a rupture whose memory still shapes communal identity and festival narratives. The 1919 Plav Rebellion against inclusion in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes showed continued resistance. World War II brought further devastation: the Sandžak Muslim militia operated alongside Chetniks and Partisans in internecine conflict, and the Bihor massacre of January 1943 killed thousands of civilians in the broader Lim valley area (casualty figures vary widely across sources). Throughout these upheavals, mosque congregations maintained prayer cycles—Bayram, Ramadan, Jumu'ah—creating a ritual continuity that outlasted every political regime. The Gusinje Old Town and its tribal mahallas bore the physical and human imprint of these successive ruptures, while the Ganić Tower (built 1797, later converted to a museum) preserves material memory of the frontier-defense era and its WWII afterlife.

1991 - 2006

The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the end of the 'Muslim' ethnic category (replaced by 'Bosniak' after 1993) opened space for explicit ethnonational self-identification. In Montenegro, this took a civic-integration path rather than the autonomy referendum pursued on the Serbian side of Sandžak in 1991. The Bosniak Party (founded 26 February 2006, headquartered in Rožaje) formalized political representation for Bosniak minority interests within Montenegro's parliamentary framework. Mosque congregations became sites where the shift from 'Muslim' to 'Bosniak' identity was enacted in daily practice—through language choice in sermons, the display of Bosniak national symbols alongside Islamic ritual, and the reassertion of the Meshihat's authority over the Hijri calendar. The Vezir's Mosque in Gusinje, which had maintained continuous prayer life through Ottoman, socialist, and transitional periods, stood as a symbol of this ritual continuity now coupled with renamed identity. Montenegro's independence referendum of 2006 completed the transition, placing the region's Bosniak communities within a newly sovereign state.

1878 - 1912

The Congress of Berlin (1878) ceded Plav and Gusinje to Montenegro, triggering armed resistance led by Ali Pasha Shabanagaj—a landowner, Ottoman official, and military commander of the League of Prizren—who defeated Montenegrin forces at the Battle of Novšiće on 4 December 1879. Ali Pasha's legacy remains contested: celebrated in the Albanian epic Lahuta e Malcís as a national hero, remembered by Bosniak congregations as a local Muslim defender, and marked in the landscape by Ali-pašini izvori (Ali Pasha Springs) near Gusinje—a toponymic anchor that survives beyond ideological frames. Austro-Hungarian troops occupied the wider Sandžak as a garrison from 1878 to 1909. The Sultanija Mosque (1907–1909, built under Sultan Abdul Hamid II) and the New Mosque Radončića in Gusinje (1899) were the last major Ottoman-period religious buildings, closing an era of mosque construction that had shaped the region's spiritual architecture for over four centuries. The Hijri-governed Bayram calendar continued as the primary communal gathering rhythm, but the political order that had sustained it was unraveling.

From 2006

Since Montenegro's independence in 2006, the Sandžak Bosniak municipalities have experienced a cultural renaissance driven by new institutional frameworks. Prokletije National Park was established in 2009 on the territory of Plav and Gusinje, creating a protected landscape around the Grebaja and Ropojani valleys that retraces historic corridor routes. Two new municipalities—Petnjica (2013) and Gusinje (2014, split from Plav)—enabled local cultural programming. The Sultan Murat II Mosque was fully rebuilt in 2008 with five domes and two minarets, its expanded form physically manifesting the community's renewed confidence. The Sebilj fountain, a replica of Sarajevo's iconic structure, was erected in Rožaje's main square in 2018—a deliberate Bosniak-national symbol grafted onto the urban landscape. The Bihor carpet tradition was revived through EU-funded projects (HeriCraft, COMMHERITOUR, DanubeCrafts), and the Petnjica Mosque—housing over 500 unique handmade carpets—became both a repository and a research center where weavers study historic patterns. Plav's Cultural Autumn (Plavska kulturna jesen), organized by Centar za kulturu 'Husein Bašić,' runs annually in early October with literary meetings and art colonies, while Gusinje's summer season (Gusinjsko ljeto) offers municipal-sponsored programming. Bayram prayers at every mosque remain the primary communal gathering ritual, governed by the Hijri calendar and Meshihat timetables—yet the shift of secular cultural events to fixed Gregorian dates signals an ongoing negotiation between ritual continuity and modern institutional frameworks.