BULGARIA: Bulgarian Muslims in remote mountain village, have retained traditional wedding ceremonies through decades of communist rule

Record ID: 745597

  • Title: BULGARIA: Bulgarian Muslims in remote mountain village, have retained traditional wedding ceremonies through decades of communist rule
  • Date: 8th February 2008
  • Summary: WOMEN WALKING AND LOOKING AT DOWRY
  • Embargoed: 23rd February 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bulgaria
  • Country: Bulgaria
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVA4CCLKAMR62JL5A9FSY4RCVWXY
  • Story Text: The remote village of Ribnovo, set on a snowy mountainside in southwest Bulgaria, has kept its traditional winter marriage ceremony alive despite decades of Communist persecution, followed by poverty that forced many men to seek work abroad.
    The village is home to some 3,500 Bulgarian Muslims, who about 20 times a year dress up in traditional costumes and perform the horo dance to celebrate weekend-long weddings.
    17-year old Fikrie Sabrieva, will marry with her eyes closed and her face painted white, dotted with bright sequins. She lives in a place sometimes referred to as the end of the world, tending a hardy Muslim culture in largely Christian Bulgaria.
    Bulgaria is the only European Union nation where Muslims' share is as high as 12 percent. The communist regime, which did not tolerate any religious rituals, tried to forcibly integrate Muslims into Bulgaria's largely Christian Orthodox population, pressing them to abandon wearing their traditional outfits and adopt Slavonic names.
    The wedding ritual was resurrected with vigour among the Pomaks -- Slavs who converted to Islam under Ottoman rule and now make up 2.5 percent of Bulgaria's 7.8 million population -- after communism collapsed in 1989.
    But today it is still performed only in the closed society of Ribnovo and one other village in the Balkan country. Young men, who after the EU membership often have seasonal jobs in Greece, Spain or Portugal to earn money return from abroad to the crisp mountain snows, just for the winter weddings.
    People in Ribnovo identify themselves more by their religion, as Muslims, than by their ethnicity or nationality, and the wedding ceremony is an expression of their piety. The village has 10 clerics and two mosques for 3,500 inhabitants.
    Fikrie's family have been laboriously piling up her dowry since she was born -- mostly handmade knit-work, quilts, coverlets, sheets, aprons, socks, carpets and rugs.
    On a sunny Saturday winter morning they hang the items on a wooden scaffolding, 50 metres long and three metres high, erected specially for the occasion on the steep, muddy road of scruffy two-storey houses that leads to her home.
    Nearly everyone in the village comes to inspect the offerings: Fikrie's tiny homeyard has been turned into a showroom for the furniture and household appliances the bride has to provide for her new household.
    The girl and her husband-to-be, Moussa, then lead a traditional horo dance on the central square, joined by most of the village's youth.
    But the highlight of the ceremony, the painting of the bride's face, comes at the end of the second day.
    In a private rite open only to female in-laws, Fikrie's face is covered in thick, chalky white paint and decorated with colourful sequins. A long red veil covers her hair, her head is framed with tinsel, her painted face veiled with and silvery filaments.
    Clad in baggy pants and bodice shimmering in all the colours of the rainbow, the bride is presented by her future husband, her mother and her grandmother to the waiting crowd.
    Fikrie is not permitted to open her eyes wide until a Muslim priest blesses the young couple. Alcohol is forbidden at the wedding receptions and sex before marriage is taboo.

    "Other villages nearby tried traditional marriage, but the custom somehow died out," forest guard, Ali Mustafa Bushnak, who was attending the wedding ceremony said.

    "Maybe we are at the end of the world. Or maybe people here are very religious and proud of their traditions. We like to live the way our predecessors did. We keep the old traditions alive," he added, as with other men from the village he looked at photos of their predecessors.
    Some experts say clinging to the traditional wedding ceremony is Ribnovo's answer to the persecutions of the past.

    "The so-called 'revival process' during communist times provoked the opposite reactions from the local population after the fall of communism.
    The people revived old traditions, including weddings that had been banned by the totalitarian authorities," country mayor, Akhmed Bashev said.
    Ethnographers say it is hard to date the bridal painting ritual, as the communist regime did not encourage studies into minority ethnic and religious groups.
    Experts say Pomaks had identity problems and faced more challenges than the majority of Muslims in Bulgaria, who are ethnic Turks.
    Ribnovo's inhabitants used to make a living from tobacco and agriculture, but low incomes in the poorest EU country forced men to start seeking jobs in cities in Bulgaria or in western Europe -- not least to raise money for a wedding.
    Outside influences have been slow to reach Ribnovo and young people rarely marry an outsider. Another Fikrie, 19-year-old Fikrie Inuzova, suggested the women, for whom the acceptable bridal age is up to 22, are not in a rush to modernise.

    "My brother is a man, so he is left alone. It is different with men," Inuzova said.

    "I would like to marry and have a family, like the other girls," she added.
    County mayor Bashev said progress is slowly coming to Ribnovo. The big holes in the road leading to the village have been filled with the help from EU funds, and there are fears that traditions will die out in Ribnovo, as it has done in other Bulgarian Muslim villages.
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