If you are visiting Bosnia for the first time, especially if you didn’t do much research beforehand, you will probably be a little confused. Features of the Bosnian people are a bit complicated, but we made a summary of all the things you should know about Bosnians before you visit to help you
Bosnian population was estimated at about 3,5 million in 2018. Most Bosnians belong to one of the three nationalities: Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats, while in a religious sense they can be Muslims, Orthodox christians, Catholics, Jews or atheists.
According to the data from 2013 census, Bosniaks make up 50,11% of the population, Bosnian Serbs 30.78%, Bosnian Croats 15,45% and 2,73% don’t declare themselves as either.
Now, this is the mostly the confusing part. You have all these people who all look the same, speak the same language and behave in the same way. Truth to be told, nationality is in most cases defined by the religion, or the religion of the family a person comes from. Bosniaks are mostly Muslim, Serbs Orthodox Christians, Croats Roman Catholics.
“Bosniak” was a term that was used roughly from the 14th and 15th century when speaking about citizens of Bosnia, no matter what their religion was. However, in the 19th in the midst of strong national movements people of Bosnia started declaring their nationality as the Bosnian Serb or Bosnian Croat according to their religion, and the term “Bosniak” got lost. Collective population was refered to as Bosnians and those who practiced Islam were refered to simply as Muslims.
Bosniak was reintroduced in the 1990s to replace the Muslim and denotes a member of the Bosniak nation which is member of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Muslims are not ethnic Turks left behind by the Ottoman withdrawal. Rather, they are the descendants of the local Slavs, both Serbs and Croats, who converted to Islam after the Muslim Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in the 15th century.
Bosniaks belong per definition to the Slavic ethnic group, but their genetic make-up is a mixture of Slav settlers and descendants of pre-Slavic indigenous Illyrian tribes. Modern Bosna-Herzegovina people are Y-chromosome haplo groups in the three main ethnic groups. In addition, Celts and to a lesser extent Goths who spanned the Balkans for distinct periods, often encountering Illyrians, may have influenced today’s Bosnian population.
When it comes to age structure, 45% of the population is in between age of 25 and 54. The median age is 43. 98,5% of the population is literate. The biggest cities are Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Mostar, Tuzla and Zenica.
No matter what ethnic group they belong,the thing that characterizes Bosnian people is their warmth and hospitality. Everywhere in the Balkans Bosnians are considered to be very friendly people who will go out of their way to help you when you’re in trouble and will maybe even invite you for a cup of the strong Bosnian coffee.