MOLDOVA Aurelia Felea1 1 Muslim Populations the Territory Of

Aurelia Felea1

1 Muslim Populations

The territory of the present Republic of Moldova, with the exception of the land to the east of the River Nistru, was historically an integral part of the Principality of Moldavia, which was constituted in the mid- fourteenth century. Contacts between the sedentary population of the region between the Nistru, Prut and Danube rivers and the Black Sea and the populations originating in Central Asia (the Pechenegs [Patzinaks], Cumans, Tatars etc.), who later became Muslims, date back to the tenth- thirteenth centuries.2 The impact of Islam on the history of the country increased particularly under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, which annexed extensive areas in the eastern part of the principality (the fortresses of Chilia, Akker- man, Tighina (called Bender by the Turks) and Hotin and the regions sur- rounding them) in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Here, Ottoman military, administrative and religious structures were established and con- sequently Turkish and Tatar Islamic populations settled there at various times.3 The new authorities built mosques and other buildings needed for Islamic religious practice, and their remains were still evident in the first half of the twentieth century. The Dormition Church at Cauşeni is a Chris- tian monument from those times. The walls of the church, built in the

1 Aurelia Felea is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences, State Uni- versity of Tiraspol, Chişinău, Moldova. 2 Nesterov, Tamara, “Monumente de arhitectură musulmană la Orheiul Vechi (Monu- ments of Muslim architecture in Old Orhei)”, Sud-Est. Revistă de artă, cultură şi civilizaţie, vol. 2, no. 48 (2002), pp. 118–122; Chirtoagă, Ion, “Orhei”, Destin Românesc. Revistă de istorie şi cultură, vol. 1, no. 45 (2006), pp. 122–125. 3 Maxim, Mihai, “Principatele Române şi Imperiul Otoman (1400–1878) (The Romanian principalities and the Ottoman Empire (1400–1878))”, in Stephen Fischer-Galaţi, Dinu C. Giurescu and Ioan-Aurel Pop (eds.), O istorie a românilor (A History of the Romanians) (Cluj-Napoca: Fundaţia Culturală Română. Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 1998), pp. 128–147; Chirtoagă, Ion, Sud-Estul Moldovei şi stânga Nistrului (1484–1699). Expansiunea şi dominaţia turco-tătară (The South-East of Moldova and the Left Bank of the Nistru (1484–1699): The Turkish-Tatar Expansion and Domination) (Bucharest: Fundaţia Culturală Română, 1999), pp. 89–103. 398 aurelia felea second half of the eighteenth century in the region administered by the Tatars, are half-buried into the ground, in compliance with Ottoman laws, which forbade the building of Christian churches higher than mosques.4 As a result of the continuous expansion of the Russian Empire to the south, in the last quarter of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Turkish and Tatar populations from the North Pontic area fled to the south of the Danube or were resettled in Russia by the tsarist administra- tion. By the end of World War I, the region situated between the Nistru and the Prut (called Bessarabia during the period of tsarist domination) seceded from Russia and united with Romania. The census carried out by the Romanian authorities in 1930 registered 148 Muslims in the region, mostly of Turkish or Tatar descent.5 The census carried out in the Republic of Moldova on 5–12 October 2004 recorded 3,383,332 inhabitants.6 Two-thirds of Moldovans are of Roma- nian descent, the languages are virtually identical and the two countries share a common cultural heritage. With regard to religion, 3,158,015 people (over 93% of the total population) declared themselves to be Ortho- dox Christians and 1,667 people (0.05%) declared they were Muslims, of whom 1,075 were male and 592 female; 339 were children under 15. Most Muslims (1,353 people) live in urban areas, the majority in the capital of the country, Chişinău (995) and in the city of Bălţi (106); 314 live in rural areas.7 The census recorded 259 Arabs, 891 Azerbaijanians, 112 Bashkirs, 108 Chechens, 256 Kazakhs, 211 Tajiks, 974 Tatars, 269 Turks, 220 Turkmen and 416 Uzbeks.8 Although the citizens concerned are representatives of ethnic groups which traditionally claim an Islamic cultural background, this doesn’t mean that they are practitioners of Islam.

4 Ciobanu, Constantin, Biserica Adormirii Maicii Domnului din Căuşeni (The Dormition Church from Căuşeni) (Chişinău: Ştiinţa, 1997). 5 Enciu, Nicolae, “Recensământul populaţiei din 29 decembrie 1930 (The population census of 29 December 1930)”, Destin Românesc. Revistă de istorie şi cultură, vols. 3–4, no. 43–44 (2004), pp. 98–115 (105). 6 This report contains information only about the territories effectively controlled by the Government of the Republic of Moldova and does not refer to the situation in the separatist region of Transnistria, including the city of Bender, unless specifically stated. 7 Recensământul populaţiei 2004, vol. I Caracteristici demografice, naţionale, lingvistice, culturale (Population Census. Demographic, National, Linguistic, Cultural Characteristics) (Chişinău: Tipografia Centrală, 2006), pp. 476–485. 8 Recensământul populaţiei 2004, vol. I Caracteristici demografice, naţionale, lingvistice, culturale (Population Census. Demographic, National, Linguistic, Cultural Characteristics) (Chişinău: Tipografia Centrală, 2006), pp. 301–302.