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The Pomak tribe, have you ever heard of theml?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 2nd December 2005

  Pomaks are a group of people of very fair characteristics (surprisingly blonde), talking a bulgarian dialect, being muslim in religion, people who nowdays reach around 300,000 (numbers are approximations), most live in Bulgaria and around 80,000 in Greece where they constitute the majority of the muslim population in Western Thrace (to the detriment of turkish propaganda, the other largest one are the muslim gipsies!).
  
  Of course Turkey would consider any muslim living in Western Thrace as a Turk, then Bulgarians would consider any Bulgarian talking person as Bulgarian, even he was of Scandinavian, Indian or Nigerian origins, afterall "anything does the job".
  
  Now in Greece these are named simply as muslims and due to the pressure from UK and USA (trying to set the place inflammable thus controllable), Pomaks were 'thrown' within the same kettle along with gipsy muslims and the few Turkish muslims, thus they were deliberately thrown into Turkey's sphere of influence beeing taught Turkish and sent muslim priests from Turkey (that have nothing to do with the Pomaks) something which had never been done before even after the violent islamisation in the late 18th century.
  
  Most older Pomaks remember still today the fact that they were ex-christians turned muslims relatively recently... afterall christian symbols are so common in their houses still... but there is a middle generation that has grown up being taught a foreign language, the turkish and speaking their language (bulgarian dialect) only at home, unable to be educated further in greek institutions because they know Greek mainly orally, thus feeling somehow marginalised, intolerance by the greek majority is not a fitting word in this case, Greeks were never intolerant towards them, they just had myopic policies grouping them along with the other muslims against their will, then it was also the geography they lived that isolated them - imagine that the majority of Greeks even in nearby areas largely ignored their existence (of course two generations ago they were 2ice less...they had also impressive demographics)!! There is also an increasing trend among the younger generation that vaguely realises that they are not Turks or anything like that (turks are normally not blond and if they are then their ancestors are traced elsewhere going back a few generations),so they want to open themselves, get educated and evolve within the Greek society (something which is of course very positive).
  
  Now, within that slow but increasing trend of Pomaks of Greece of going away from Turks and converging with Greeks there have been developed certain theories from Greeks 'historians' who say that Pomaks derive from ancient 'Thraecian' tribes like the Agrianes who served as archers in Alexander's army. Again Alexander e? It seems that this name attracts everybody that even if you called an Australian Aboriginal Alexander's child he would happily accept it as I found out in one talk with two young Pomaks on the train from Athens to Thessaloniki who worked in Athens (till today it was unusual for them to leave their villages since they had no relatives in other places of Greece like most Greeks do from the one corner to the other). Normally I would commence a discussion about them but it was actually them: When they found out that I knew who were the Pomaks they were so happy and proud!!! So they repeated the same story about the Agrianes and said it so innocently that I did not say anything in order not to 'spoil' them with my (complex for most people) analysis that you may see below:

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  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 2nd December 2005

  1) the Pomaks are a small tribe living between Bulgaria and Greece (mainly in south Bulgaria)
  2) they speak a bulgarian dialect with some greek words and turkish due to the fact they are muslims (and since the 1950s they are arbirtrarily taught turkish against their will)
  3) they became muslims relatively recently in the 18th century and it is the first time we have heard of them (previous records of them do not exist probably because they were confused with other Bulgarians)
  4) they have very fair characteristics
  
  Having the occasion to see a large number of Pomaks in the army. These were young pomaks from various villages and did not know each other prior to the army service (thus not one special village)
  Their fair characteristics were not only fair. They had largely blue-grey eyes and very blond hair, some white-blonde. What was more interesting was that these people had very intense mongolic characteristics. Very blonde and increasingly mongolic characteristics, high cheeks - imagine faces like a young blonde Vladimir Putin on the more mongolic side ... ehehehe... if that phrase can be allowed to use in an innocent way).
  
  Now, the mongolic feature was certainly not a Turkish characteristic since only few Turkish have only so few traces of mongolic characteristics not to mention that their islamisation was very recent and was not followed by heavy contact with the Turkish.
  
  My second thought was the Bulgarians. However, which Bulgarians? Modern Bulgarians are not exactly the blondest of the Slavs. Yes you may find Bulgarians that seem as they have arrived fresh from Siberia (however with not such intense characteristics), and many quite very blond but the average Bulgarian is not like the Pomaks, not to say that Bulgarians of south Bulgaria are more dark due to intermixture with the mediterranean Greeks.
  
  The third thought, the Thraecians was out of question. Despite the fact that Pomaks use certain very old Greek words within their language as well some of their names are not usual muslim names (Meker=Makarios - if there is a muslim name that sounds like that then I gave the wrong example, cos I do not the historian I read it from)
  
  Now went back and read again the history of Bulgarians...
  
  Bulgarians were a mongolo-slavic tribe that came from east Russia...
  
  Actually this is not exactly the case. Bulgarians were a slavic tribe that came as serfs of the mongolic tribes of Avars (late 6th century - early 7th century) and Petzenegks (7th century). Avars raided all over the place, tried to raid cities then Konstantinoupolis but failed, then were dispersed (some given lands in modern Bulgaria), then the Petzengks had the same fate. However their ex-serfs, the Bulgarians continued to exist as aslavic tribe citizens of the empire,well after the dissolution of Avars and Petzenegks tribes and soon retook the offensive against the Byzantines who were more occupied in the east till resettled down in the 11th century.
  
  What I personally believe is that modern Pomaks are largely the last descendants of Avars and Petzenegks. That also explains the fact that they use certain quite very old Greek words that ceased to be used in Greek since late middle ages. Hence, they give us a rough idea of how Tourano-slavic tribes of the late roman times early byzantine ones looked like.
  
  Maybe I am doing an over-generalisation. But I cannot think of any better explanation of the Pomaks - that is why anthropology is always useful than other overgeneralisations (based on religion or language or what we want them to be or even what they want themselves to be!).

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