Dangers d’ici-bas, promesses d’au-dela. Essai d’anthropologie religieuse des Confins bosniaques au XVIIe siècle
Dangers on Earth, Assurance in Heaven. Religious Anthropology of the Bosnian Borders in the 17th Century

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with “a strange and comical story” related by Evliya Çelebi in his Seyahatname which shows the discrepancy between the Muslims from the Bosnian Borders and the Turks from the Ottoman army in their attitude towards the Christians. After a battle, a Muslim warrior manages to save a Christian prisoner’s life, arguing that they have “exchanged their religion”. The Bosnian leaders get into painstaking explanations about the Balkan custom of pobratimstvo. They are hardly understood by the Turkish pasha, because the Serbo-croat word vjera means both religion and given word. If this is deciphered, their discourse shows very clearly that the Bosnian border warriors, whether Muslims or Christians, shared the same code of value and believed in the reversibility of merits.

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