Enslavers and the enslaved

ENSL AVERS AND THE ENSL AVED

Or how ignorance of the facts and of history are once again being used to stir up religious intolerance in the Rhodopes

Ivan BEDROV

I

n a few months, the reconstruction of the highest-altitude temple ever built in Bulgaria will be complete. At 1993 meters above sea level, Freedom Peak is where the ·tyurbe” (tomb) of Enihan Baba is located. Nobody knows the exact date on which it was erected, but various sources put it in the range of the 14th-15th century. The tomb was destroyed for the first time when the region became part of Bulgarian territory in 1912. There were two more pogroms against the site: one in the 1970s, during the forced name-changes of the ethnic Bulgarian Muslims, and again in the 1980s, when the Turks suffered the same fate during the so-called ·Revival Process.” At that time it was discovered that there really was a person buried inside it. This was a common purpose for the Alevi Muslim monuments in this country, also called ·tekkes.”

Experts say that this particular monument is indeed an Alevi one, although most of the Sunni Muslims living nearby didn’t even know of it.

Immediately after the fall of Communism, the Muslims in the closest village, Davidkovo, quickly reconstructed the tomb, using whatever materials were at hand. Two years ago, they decided to rebuild it completely. In the Rhodopes this peak is known as a holy, healing place, visited by Muslim and Christian pilgrims alike. If the place were not called Enihan Baba, there wouldn’t be any problem today. But as it is, there are two.

The first problem arose from the fact that the very name Enihan has a negative connotation, associated with the Ottoman military commander in Anton Donchev’s novel Vreme Razdelno (·A Time of Division”). The writer himself has stated in interviews that the character was purely fictional, and not based on any genuine historical figure. Historians have also stated that there is no evidence that such a leader ever really lived. However, none of that stood in the way of the protest declarations that have been echoing for the past 10 months or so against ·the raising of a temple to the enslaver of the Rhodopes,” nor newspaper headlines from referring to the ·temple of the enslaver.” The campaign began before the parliamentary elections, when activists mainly from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organi-

zation (IMRO) organized protests, held in the Smolyan region on April 23, during which they climbed the peak and left a plaque in memory of Momchil Voyvoda, after whom the peak was once named, at the summit. The elections passed, the leading candidate on the list of the Bulgarian Socialist Party - Stoyan Beshirov - was not elected, and the campaign died away. So both memorials, the tomb and the plaque, coexisted peacefully for several months.

Whether or not by coincidence, the topic once again came up in the media during the next elections, at the beginning of November. Once again the IMRO raised the alarm, claiming that the plaque in memory of Momchil Voyvoda had been destroyed. Five days later the organization announced that someone had raised it again. That is, the plaque was once again in its place, but what exactly happened during those five days is hard to establish. No report of any incident on Freedom Peak was filed with the police. But in an interview with the Focus News Agency, the IMRO MP Boyko Vatev said, ·The construction of a new tekke is an insult to Bulgarian dignity, because you can’t build a monument to an enslaver.” And added the following, which requires no comment: ·The IMRO has long arms. The IMRO moves slowly, but it does not forget. The perpetrators should shiver in fear. We will find them.”

This is the usual style and familiar position for the party in question, and is probably where it gets its popularity from. For the people in the Rhodopes, who are used to living together, this is just the latest crude meddling from outside, attempting to impose a dividing line among them.

But the fault also lies elsewhere. Wide coverage was given in the Smolyan press to disputes over the sale of some land to the board of trustees of the mosque in Davidkovo for an extremely low price. The opinion was aired that the deal was made possible due to the intervention of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms party. There is still no adequate explanation for such suspicions. Construction of the tomb began without the proper documentation, and was once halted by the regional building supervisory body. This also added grist to the mill of those who call themselves nationalists. And as far as documentation goes, the plaque commemorating Momchil Voyvoda was also raised without any documentation.

And so, with too much political interference and too little adherence to regulations, yet another scandal arose in the Rhodopes, pitting people against each other along religious lines.

The so-called nationalists are fighting against something that their statements would seem to indicate they know nothing about. They are waving their battle flag against the ·enslavers,” but the enslaver in this case is ignorance.