Islam in Romania is followed by only 0.4 percent of the population, but has 700 years of tradition in Northern Dobruja, a region on the Black Sea coast which was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries (ca. 1420-1878). In present-day Romania, most adherents to Islam belong to the Tatar and Turkish ethnic communities and follow the Sunni doctrine. The Islamic religion is one of the 18 rites awarded state recognition.
According to tradition, Islam was first established locally around Sufi leader Sari Saltik during the Byzantine epoch. The Islamic presence in Northern Dobruja was expanded by Ottoman overseeing and successive immigration, but has been in steady decline since the late 19th century. In Wallachia and Moldavia, the two Danubian Principalities, the era of Ottoman suzerainty was not accompanied by a growth in the number of Muslims, whose presence there was always marginal. Also linked to the Ottoman Empire, groups of Islamic colonists in other parts of present-day Romania were relocated by the Habsburg expansion or by various other political changes.
After Northern Dobruja became part of Romania following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the community preserved its self-determining status. This changed during the communist regime, when Romanian Muslims were subject to a measure of supervision by the state, but the group again emancipated itself after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Its interests are represented by the Muftiyat (Muftiyatul Cultului Musulman din România), which was created as the reunion of two separate such institutions.
Demographics and organization
According to the 2022 census, 76,215 people, approximately 0.4% of the total population, indicated that their religion was Islam,"Populaţia rezidentă după grupa de vârstă, pe județe și municipii, orașe, comune, la 1 decembrie 2021" (XLS). National Institute of Statistics. marking an increase from 2011, when 64,337 people declared adherence to Islam.Irina Vainovski-Mihai, "Romania", in Jørgen Nielsen, Samim Akgönül, Ahmet Alibašić, Egdunas Racius (eds.), Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, Brill Publishers, Leiden, 2014, p.499. The vast majority of Romania's Muslims are Sunnis who adhere to the Hanafi school. Ethnically, they are mostly Tatars (Crimean Tatars and a lesser number of Nogais), followed by Turks, as well as Muslim Roma (as many as 15,000 people by one estimate),Ana Oprișan, George Grigore, "The Muslim Gypsies in Romania" , in International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter 8, September 2001, p.32. Retrieved June 2, 2007. Albanians (as many as 3,000),George Grigore, "Muslims in Romania" , in International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter 3, July 1999, p.34. Retrieved June 2, 2007. and groups of Middle Eastern immigrants. Members of the Muslim community inside the Roma minority are colloquially known as "Turkish Roma". Traditionally, they are less religious than people belonging to other Islamic communities, and their culture mixes Islamic customs with Roma social norms.
Ninety-seven percent of the Romanian Muslims are residents of the two counties forming Northern Dobruja: eighty-five percent live in Constanța County, and twelve percent in Tulcea County. Adina Șuteu, "Europa merge pe sârmă între islamizare și radicalizare" , in Adevărul, January 24, 2008 The rest mainly inhabit urban centers such as Bucharest, Brăila, Călărași, Galați, Giurgiu, and Drobeta-Turnu Severin. Cultul musulman , at the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs' State Secretariat for Religious Affairs. Retrieved February 28, 2008. A single municipality, Dobromir, has a Muslim majority. Cristian Delcea, Mihai Voinea, "Satul islamic. Reportaj din singura localitate majoritar musulmană din România", in Adevărul, November 22, 2015
In all, Romania has as many as eighty mosques, or, according to records kept by the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, seventy-seven. The city of Constanța, with its Grand Mosque of Constanța and the location of the Muftiyat, is the center of Romanian Islam; Mangalia, near Constanța, is the site of a monumental mosque, built in 1575 (see Esmahan Sultan Mosque).Thede Kahl, "Die muslimische Gemeinschaft Rumäniens. Der Weg einer Elite zur marginalisierten Minderheit", in Europa Regional, 3-4/2005, Leipzig, p.94-101 The two mosques are state-recognized historical monuments, as are the ones in Hârșova, Amzacea, Babadag and Tulcea, together with the Babadag tombs of two popularly revered Sufi sheikhs—the supposed tomb of dervish Sari Saltik and that of Gazi Ali Pașa. There are also 108 Islamic cemeteries in Romania.
The nationwide Islamic community is internally divided into 50 local groups of Muslims, each of whom elects its own leadership committee. Members provide funding for the religious institution, which is supplemented by state donations and subsidies, as well by assistance from international Islamic organizations.
The Muslim clergy in Romania includes imams, imam-hatips, and muezzins. As of 2008, the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs recognizes 35 imams. The Constanța Mufti, who is the community's main representative, is elected by a secret ballot from among the imams. He is assisted by a synodal body, the Sura Islam, which comprises 23 members and offers advice on matters of administration and discipline. The current Mufti is Murat Iusuf.
History
Early presence The first significant numbers of Muslims arrived in Romania with the Pechenegs and Cumans. Around 1061, when the Pechenegs ruled in Wallachia and Moldavia, there was a Muslim minority among them, as was among the Cumans. Dan Toma Dulciu, "Prezențe musulmane în spațiul românesc" , in Revista Sud-Est, 2002/2/48. Retrieved June 2, 2007. The Cumans followed the Pechenegs in 1171, while the Hungarian kings settled the Pechenegs in Transylvania and other parts of their kingdom.
Muslim presence is traditional in Dobruja, and partly predates both Ottoman rule and the creation of the neighboring Danubian Principalities. Both the Pechenegs and Cumans were present in the area, where they probably established a number of small communities. Constantin Rezachevici, "Găgăuzii" (part I) , in Magazin Istoric, May 1997 Around 1260, two Rûm Seljuq community leaders, the deposed Sultan Kaykaus II and the mystic Sari Saltik, were allowed to settle the region during the reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos, ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Kaykaus, who arrived in Dobruja with his brother and co-ruler Kilij Arslan IV, was reportedly followed by as many as 12,000 of his subjects. Researchers such as Franz Babinger and Gheorghe I. Brătianu endorse the view that Saltuk and his followers were in fact crypto-Shiite Alevis who were regarded as apostates by the dominant Sunni group of central Anatolia, and who sought refuge from persecution.
The exact location of their earliest area of settlement is disputed: a group of historians proposes that the group was probably tasked with defending the Byzantine border to the north, and settled in and around what later became known as Babadag, while another one centers this presence on the Southern Dobrujan strip of land known as Kaliakra (presently in Bulgaria). In addition, various historians argue that this Seljuq migration was the decisive contributor to the ethnogenesis of the Gagauz people, which, some of them believe, could also have involved the Cumans, Pechenegs, Oghuz and other Turkic peoples. The Gagauz, few of whom have endured in Dobruja, are majority Eastern Orthodox, a fact which was attributed to a process of religious conversion from Islam.
The presence of Tatars was notably attested through the works of Berber traveler Ibn Battuta, who passed through the area in 1334. In Ibn Battuta's time, the region was regarded as a westernmost possession of the Tatar Golden Horde, a khanate centered on the Eurasian Steppe. Archeology has uncovered that another Tatar group, belonging to the Golden Horde, came to Dobruja during the rule of Nogai Khan, and were probably closely related to the present-day Nogais. Following Timur's offensives, the troops of Aktai Khan visited the region in the mid-14th century and around 100,000 Tatars settled there.
Before and after the Golden Horde fell, Dobrujan Muslims, like the Crimean Tatars, were recipients of its cultural influences, and the language in use was Kipchak. The extension of Ottoman rule, effected under Sultans Bayezid I and Mehmed I, brought the influence of Ottoman Turkish, as Dobruja was added to the Beylerbeylik of Rumelia.
The grave of Sari Saltik, reportedly first erected into a monument by Sultan Bayezid, has since endured as a major shrine in Romanian Islam. The shrine, which has been described as a cenotaph, is one of many places where the Sheikh is supposed to be buried: a similar tradition is held by various local communities throughout the Balkans, who argue that his tomb is located in Kaliakra, Babaeski, Blagaj, Edirne, the Has District, Krujë, or Sveti Naum.Alexandre Popovic, "Morts de saints et tombeaux miraculeux", in Gilles Veinstein (ed.), Les Ottomans et la Mort: Permanences et mutations, Brill Publishers, Leiden, New York & Köln, 1996, p.98-99. Other accounts hold that Saltuk was buried in the Anatolian city of İznik,Sari Saltuk Tomb , on ArchNet. Retrieved February 29, 2008. in Buzău, Wallachia, or even as far south as the Mediterranean island of Corfu or as far north as the Polish city of Gdańsk. The toponym Babadağ (Turkish for "Old Man's Mountain", later adapted into Romanian as Babadag) is a probable reference to Sari Saltik, and a Dobrujan Muslim account recorded by chronicler Evliya Çelebi in the late 15th century has it that the name surfaced soon after a Christian attack partly destroyed the tomb.
The oldest madrasah in Dobruja and Romania as a whole was set up in Babadag, on orders from Bayezid II (1484); it was moved to Medgidia in 1903. From the same period onwards, groups of Muslim Tatars and Oghuz Turks from Anatolia were settled into Dobruja at various intervals; in 1525, a sizable group of these, originating from the ports of Samsun and Sinop, moved to Babadag. Bayezid also asked Volga Tatars to resettle into northern Dobruja.
In late medieval Wallachia and Moldavia
In the two Danubian Principalities, Ottoman suzerainty had an overall reduced impact on the local population, and the impact of Islam was itself much reduced. Wallachia and Moldavia enjoyed a large degree of autonomy, and their history was punctuated by episodes of revolt and momentary independence. After 1417, when Ottoman domination over Wallachia first became effective, the towns of Turnu and Giurgiu were annexed as kazas, a rule enforced until the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829 (the status was briefly extended to Brăila in 1542).
For the following centuries, three conversions in the ranks of acting or former local hospodars are documented: Wallachian Princes Radu cel Frumos (1462–1475) and Mihnea Turcitul (1577–1591), and Moldavian Prince Ilie II Rareș (1546–1551). At the other end of the social spectrum, Moldavia held a sizable population of Tatar slaves, who shared this status with all local Roma people (see Slavery in Romania). While Roma slavery also existed in Wallachia, the presence of Tatar slaves there has not been documented, and is only theorized.Viorel Achim, The Roma in Romanian History, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2004, p.28. The population may have foremost comprised Muslim Nogais from the Budjak who were captured in skirmishes, although, according to one theory, the first of them may have been Cumans captured long before the first Ottoman and Tatar incursions.