# Serbian (BCS): Sandžak



## lazarus78

Dear all,

Sandžak is the region divided between Montenegro and Serbia that was a former Turkish province. 

I've been doing a little research (basically wikipedia) and I found out that the word "sandžak" derives from _sancak_ in Turkish. This word means flag or banner, and refers to the ensign that the militar administrator received when appointed to a territory in the borders of the empire.

What I wonder is the following:

1. If _sancak_ in Turkish is written like that. 

2. Sandžak nowadays refers to this region between Montenegro and Serbia, but what's the word used in Serbian language for referring to other _sancaks_ from the Ottoman times? Can we also talk about the sandžak of Herzegovina? The difference is only on the capittal letter? 

3. Does anyone know if _sancak_ transcribes into English _sanjak_?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Warm regards,

Lazarus


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## Athaulf

lazarus78 said:


> What I wonder is the following:
> 
> 1. If _sancak_ in Turkish is written like that.



Apparently, it is. 



> 2. Sandžak nowadays refers to this region between Montenegro and Serbia, but what's the word used in Serbian language for referring to other _sancaks_ from the Ottoman times? Can we also talk about the sandžak of Herzegovina? The difference is only on the capittal letter?


Yes, _sandžak_ can also be used as a common noun to refer to the historical sanjaks of the Ottoman Empire. Here's an example from a Bosnian government website:

_Od 1470. godine iz Bosanskog sandžaka izdvojen je Hercegovački sandžak sa sjedištem u Foči._



> 3. Does anyone know if _sancak_ transcribes into English _sanjak_?


I don't think there's any sort of formal standard for English transcription of words of this sort. In my opinion, _sanjak_ is the most logical transcription, and judging by the results of Google, also the most common one in practice. Some people also transcribe it as _sanjaq_, perhaps to give it a more Middle-Eastern flavor.


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## lazarus78

Dear Athaulf, you always impress me. Thanks a lot for the information, especially for the link to the Turkish dictionary. 

Very warm regards

Lazarus


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## sokol

I might add, as in Turkish 'c' is [dž] phonetically the best English transcription indeed would be 'sanjak' and I wouldn't recommend 'sanjaq' as this would only emphasize that the word is derived from arabic (which is not the case)

sanjak for the political units of the Ottoman Empire is used outside of Former Yugoslavia, too - from historicians, of course; the reason for the sanjak in Serbia still being named like the general term of the smallest political unit in the Ottoman Empire (and not the name of the unit itself; for example, there was too a sanjak Macedonia, roughly covering the province of Macedonia - no one would call it 'sanjak' nowadays ...) is quite simple: the term of _Sanjak of Novi Pazar_ was shortened to Sanjak only, and the name stuck (even after the province became divided between Serbia and Montenegro and, later on, became part of Yugoslavia) - and the reason why the name could stick at all being it's ethnical mixture (with a considerable muslim majority in the sanjak at the time - I'm not quite sure if there's still a muslim majority there nowadays)

BTW, this has happened elsewhere, too - the sanjak Alexandrette too sometimes is/was referred to as 'sanjak' only (if clear in the context), with similar background: this time a sanjak with (some time ago) a considerable Sunni majority, so ethnically diverse like the sanjak in Yugoslavia

Cheers, Herman


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## lazarus78

Thanks a lot for your comments, Herman!

I have another related question (I think is not worthy to open a new thread, I'll do it if Mods tell me to).

I've heard several times the sentence "everything started and everything will finish in Sandzak". The sentence is full of mistery. I even don't know if it refers to Sandzak or to sanjak (sanjaci ?) in general as provinces of the Empire.

The issue is that at the beginning I thought Sandzak encomprised part of Kosovo and South of Herzegovina. Now I know that it doesn't, but only some municipalities in South-West Serbia and some in North-East Montenegro. The area has always been a hotspot for ethnic tensions, and in the early nineties even some leaders asked for autonomy or even independence from Serbia and Montenegro. 

I wonder what is the meaning of this enigmatic sentence... If it included Kosovo, I would think on the battle of Kosovo Polje (1389), but if it doesn't, then, what started there?

Has anybody any clue? I'm really interested on knowing the meaning of the sentence.

Warmest regards and thanks for your comments.

Lazarus.


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## sokol

I can't answer your question as this is the first time I've seen, heard or read this sentence in conneciton with the Sandžak of Novi Pazar. But I get the feeling that this is a _bonmot _also used elsewhere (in literature, or generally in society, I'm not sure), don't sounds 'new' to me, if you know what I mean

anyway, would fit mentality down there - more melancholic, seing oneselves as victim rather than offender, and so on (on both or, rather, 'all' sides as there were several at the time of the Yugoslav secession war - or whatever you'd like to call it): as for the meaning, this one, in the context of the Sandžak of Novi Pazar, might (if you'd like) be interpreted literally as 'conflict started here in Sandžak, and it will end here' - which of course would not be true in the real sence, but could be true historically

you see, the Ottoman Empire divided the Serbo-Croatian speech community, it was cause for Serbian tribes wandering west into Croatian territory, as a consequence Serbo-Croatians [historically, this term don't makes any sense as at the time there were only 'tribes' speaking closely related dialects which later on were subsumed under 'Serbo-Croatian'] did convert to Islam, and as the Ottoman/Austro-Hungarian border ran straight through the Serbo-Croatian 'territory' (with changing borderlines according to luck in wars) the division had deep impacts on the speech community which still aren't overcome (and most likely never will be as Serbs, Croats and Bosnians - and Montenegrians - have started to drift apart from each other again)

and, most importantly, Muslim population, which means the Sandžak, symbolically stands for the Ottoman Empire (and the Turks)


you know, there were Muslimic Slavs in greater numbers in Serbia too, but with the Serbian independence war in the 19th century those 'Turks' (as the Muslimic Slavs were called then) were either killed or forced to emigrate, so there was a kind of 'ethnic cleansing', as it was called in our enlightened days ... Sandžak, however, was spared such 'ethnic cleansing', and Bosnia-Hercegovina too: both were occupied territories of Austria-Hungary and only later incorporated into Serbia


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## Athaulf

lazarus78 said:


> I've heard several times the sentence "everything started and everything will finish in Sandzak". The sentence is full of mistery. I even don't know if it refers to Sandzak or to sanjak (sanjaci ?) in general as provinces of the Empire.
> 
> The issue is that at the beginning I thought Sandzak encomprised part of Kosovo and South of Herzegovina. Now I know that it doesn't, but only some municipalities in South-West Serbia and some in North-East Montenegro. The area has always been a hotspot for ethnic tensions, and in the early nineties even some leaders asked for autonomy or even independence from Serbia and Montenegro.
> 
> I wonder what is the meaning of this enigmatic sentence... If it included Kosovo, I would think on the battle of Kosovo Polje (1389), but if it doesn't, then, what started there?
> 
> Has anybody any clue? I'm really interested on knowing the meaning of the sentence.



Are you sure that the sentence was about Sanjak, and not Kosovo? I can't remember ever hearing this sentence about Sanjak, but I've heard and read it many, many times about Kosovo (see e.g. this, this, or this Google search; you'll get zero hits if you search for identical phrases with "Sanjak" instead of "Kosovo"). 

This saying about Kosovo was very popular in the 1990s. Its point was that the terminal crisis of the former Yugoslavia started (or at least first manifested itself openly) in Kosovo with the ethnic conflicts between the local Serbs and Albanians, and that the final round of the 1990s wars in which Serbia was involved would also take place there. Another point was that the events in Kosovo in the 1980s were the key to the political rise of Slobodan Milošević, and that the final events there would also spell the end of his career. The saying was especially popular after the hostilities in Kosovo escalated into a full-scale war in which NATO intervened against Serbia.

On the other hand, I can't think of any sense that the same saying about Sanjak might have. I don't know of any greatly significant events there in the 1990s or at any time in the earlier history of Serbia. There's a pretty good history section in the Wikipedia article about Sanjak. Unlike Kosovo, the history of this region, while certainly not bland and peaceful, didn't have any events so dramatically significant that they would warrant a saying like this, at least to the best of my knowledge.


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## sokol

Yes, Athaulf, you're right! This must have been about Kosovo, the mentioning of this sentence - would explain too why it sounds so familiar to me.

And Kosovo indeed was the beginning of the crisis.


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## lazarus78

If the sentence refers to Kosovo, then everything is more than clear. Not only because of the famous battle of 1389, but more recently, the famous speech of Milosevic in 1989, which many people considers to be the starting point of the crisis and wars of the nineties. That everything will end up there is obvious: Kosovo is the unfinished issue in the ex-Yu, and whatever happens there will have consequences in the region, more likely in B&H, as it will feed the independentist claims of the radical Serbs in Republika Srpska.

The confussion comes because I heard the sentence as referring to Sandzak. I've asked in some other forums and some other people told me that they also heard it. Anyway, maybe was created by the Muslim separatists in the region (in 1991 they even did a referendum) or adapted to call attention on their demands. 

Such a topic. And such a problematic region. Hopefully everything will go on pacefully.

Thanks and regards, pals.
Lazarus.


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## Juri

Sandjak seems to be more used, as I see in http://bazantai.p.chez-alice.fr
about the conflict of nationalities in the sandjak d'Alexandrette 1934-39.


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## dudasd

sokol said:


> you know, there were Muslimic Slavs in greater numbers in Serbia too, but with the Serbian independence war in the 19th century those 'Turks' (as the Muslimic Slavs were called then) were either killed or forced to emigrate, so there was a kind of 'ethnic cleansing', as it was called in our enlightened days ... Sandžak, however, was spared such 'ethnic cleansing', and Bosnia-Hercegovina too: both were occupied territories of Austria-Hungary and only later incorporated into Serbia


 
With all the respect, this piece of information is utterly untruthful and can be offensive for some members. The additional explanations and historic facts would be off-topic, so instead of starting a discussion, in the name of good will, I suggest you to delete that part, and I hope our admin will delete my post after that as well. I have a multinational family myself, including Serbian Turks and Moslem Serbs, so I am acting as a neutral side and as someone who knows that period of Serbian history very well.

Thank you in advance.


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