Antov's study is an attempt to contextualize the overlapping processes of Turcoman colonization, ethno-religious change and urbanization in the north-eastern Balkans, more precisely the Dobrudja and Deliorman region, from the initial period of Ottoman conquest in the mid-fourteenth to the late sixteenth century. Given the complexity of the relevant source material (administrative, fiscal, legal, and narrative), and the debates around their interpretation, Antov has chosen a composite model of presentation so as to arrange the disparate materials into an articulate text organized in seven interwoven chapters. Comparative case studies enable the author to offer a detailed and circumstantiated analysis on both rural and urban spaces by highlighting the particularity of each case and avoiding any generalization, still a common reflex in Ottoman studies, not only about the formation and historical development of Muslim communities in the Balkans but, quite often, in the analysis of overall processes.
The author argues that the Ottoman settlements had some significant continuity with pre-existing patterns, but each differed considerably in its development, reflecting the heterogeneous nature of Ottoman society. Most of the new settlers from Anatolia seem to have migrated of their own free will, responding to socioeconomic and political pressures in Anatolia. However, while the central administration was far from in control of these population movements, it was not slow, at least from the second half of the fifteenth century onward, to adapt to and even to alter, in some instances, the new demographic configuration. As for relations between the so-called colonizing dervishes and the Ottoman state, the latter did not seem to have initiated, and even less controlled, dervish groups, but rather these mystical enterprises tried actively to negotiate tax exemptions and other privileges once they had settled in a new area. While initially the presence of Islam was much associated with newcomers from Anatolia, by the mid-sixteenth century, according to Antov, Islam had become a culturally internalized part of the Balkan religio-cultural landscape; local-born Muslims participated in and patronized urban Islamic culture, and the Sufi cult of saints was able to produce its own leading figures – the sixteenth-century saint Demir Baba, born in Deliorman, being the most prominent example. While treating the res vitae of these saints imbued with supernatural elements, Antov convincingly narrates in chapter 6 the arrival of Istanbul-based and orthopraxy-minded new Sufi brotherhoods at the expense of the local ones.
Students of conversion and the growth of Islamic communities in the early modern period will benefit from this book, which ties together evidence from various sources and offers a detailed analysis of differentiation at the meso-level. Antov's command of the primary and secondary sources is notable and this enables him to resituate societal processes of diverse nature and explain them convincingly. Since the treatment of supernatural elements together with the official documents and chronicles interest both Ottomanists and scholars from other disciplines, Antov's contribution is of considerable interest not just for its treatment of several forms of Islamic presence in early modern Bulgaria, but also a good example of what rigorous and circumstantial analysis of sources can achieve in the field of Ottoman history.
