The Calendar Rites of the Muslim Bulgarians — at the Crossroads of the Сultures

Abstract

The paper presents some preliminary results of the field research conducted by the author during the ethnolinguistic expeditions
in the Middle Rhodopes in southern Bulgaria in 2012—2014. The field research was aimed at collecting materials on the traditional calendar of the Bulgarians Muslims (Pomaks) who live in Bulgaria where Orthodox Christianity is its main religion. The expedition’s task was also to detect traces of mutual influences and interference in the texts of traditional culture, its archaic and borrowed reservoirs; to determinate assessment mechanisms of “their” and “foreign” language and culture, to analyze the completeness of different cultural codes in the culture of the Muslim Bulgarians.
As a result of the data analysis, the author came to the conclusion that in the national calendar of the Pomaks there are a number of phenomena similar to those cultural phenomena of the neighboring Christian population, due to their common ethnic origin. In the traditional Muslim culture, however, a more compact calendar—in comparison to the extensive system of Christian Orthodox calendar rites—has a compensatory mechanism, which operates on the principle of substitution and intensification of magical acts in various rituals and beliefs.