Between the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and the ‘Third Balkan War’ of the 1990s: The memory of the Balkans in Arabic writings

In 1996 Muhamed Mufaku al-Arnaut, doubtless the current leading authority on Balkan Islam in the Arab world, published a book on the cultural history of Islam in the Balkans. The book was intended to acquaint the Arab reader with the rich Muslim heritage of the Balkan Peninsula and with the region’s historical connections with the Arab and the Muslim worlds and civilizations.1 In the introduction to the book, al-Arnaut’s publisher, the Tunisian scholar Abd al-Jalı¯l al-Tamı¯mı¯, lamented the ignorance prevailing in the Arab world towards the Balkans and its Muslim populations. He compared the dearth of interest in the Balkans in Arab academic circles with the vital academic activity on this region seen in the West over the last five decades, but al-Tamı¯mı¯ was at a loss to explain this indifference of the Arabs. Nevertheless, he did note that interest was reviving in the Arab world with regards to the Balkans, due to the wars that ravaged the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.2