The Budapest Imam: An Attempt to Integrate the Bosnian Muslims (1909–1911)

Abstract

In the early years of the 20th century, Bosnia assumed an increasingly important place in Hungary’s plans for great-power status. The aim of the Hungar- ian government was to connect the province to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by virtue of the ancient right of the Hungarian crown, thereby bringing Bosnia into the Hungarian economic sphere of interest and gradually under the control of the Hun- garian state. As part of this strategy, the authorities in Hungary decided to convert the dilapidated tomb of Gül Baba into a mosque and a place of pilgrimage and to set up an associated Muslim congregation for Turkish and Bosnian Muslims living in or visiting the city. A trained hodja, that is, an imam, from Turkey and a müez- zin from Bosnia would then lead this congregation. By purchasing and renovating the buildings around the proposed mosque and place of pilgrimage, the Hungar- ian government would set up a residential school to enable, through scholarships provided by itself, the city of Budapest and the Turkish government, at least thirty Turkish and Bosnian students to study there, and they would be the seeds from which Hungarian–Bosnian–Turkish intellectual, economic and cultural relations would grow. However, the imam brought from Istanbul, Abdullatif, did not live up to expectations, and the government was unable to provide the necessary infrastruc- ture, frustrating the plans for setting up a Muslim congregation in Hungary. The original vision of Bosnia’s religious and intellectual integration into the Hungarian sphere thus failed to materialize. The only substantial outcome was the Hungarian Parliament’s decision of January 1916 to designate Islam as one of the recognized religions in Hungary.