chapter 5 The Ribnovo Wedding: A Pomak Tradition

Introduction

The Western Rhodope landscape, sheltering the village of Ribnovo, encom- passes picturesque undulating hills sporadically covered with age-old trees, thick shrubs, tobacco and corn fields, or grassy patches that move in waves with every gust of the wind. For most of the year, the climate is pleasant, rang- ing from moderately cold in the winter to occasionally hot in the summer. The region harbors communities who still work the land for a living: largely small- scale tobacco farming for cash and fruit and vegetable growing for private con- sumption. Ribnovo is one of those agricultural communities. From early spring to late fall, from sunrise to sunset, the villagers are busy planting, chopping, picking, and processing the tobacco while simultaneously cultivating pota- toes, corn, and various fruits and vegetables on small patches of arable land. Come winter, however, there is time for respite and weddings. The Ribnovo wedding is, above all, an opportunity for public merrymaking whereby everyone in the community partakes either by being intimately asso- ciated with the family-and-friend circle or simply by dancing, observing, and gossiping as a member of the general village population. Only second to being a public celebration is the Ribnovo wedding an elaborate ritual, a vibrant tra- dition, saturated with colors and excitement. Almost invariably, the wedding festivities take place in the fall or winter, just after the farm work is completed. The Ribnovo wedding is a unique Pomak ritual surviving only in Ribnovo today as a living testimony to the richness of bygone traditions. The process of the wedding is an intricate historical blending of what is purely local under- standing of life necessities and aesthetics—including in dress, in the purpose and way of celebration, as well as in the usefulness of the dowry—on one side, and the Islam-influenced belief system, on the other. Thus, the Ribnovo wed- ding, as most Pomak customs, is the result of an intensive interaction between three sets of elements: religious, linguistic, and ethno-cultural. As a Muslim community, the Pomaks are inextricably linked to the ethnic Turks with whom they shared the status of Ottoman Umma1 in the not-so-distant past of Bulgaria as an Ottoman domain. As a Slavic-speaking people, they are connected to the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Christian majority as well, which has caused

1 The totality of Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004272088_��6 176 chapter 5 them to be singled out for religious and cultural assimilation on more than one occasion since Bulgaria’s independence of 1878.2 However, the relatedness to both Turks and Bulgarians via religion and language complicates the Pomaks’ status as an ethno-cultural minority. Although religion unites them, their dif- ferent mother tongue also sets the Pomaks apart from the Turkish-speaking Muslims of Bulgaria. On the other hand, even though they share language with the Bulgarian majority, the Pomaks profess a religion that has been histori- cally construed as the “enemy’s faith” by the predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian Bulgarians. Thus, the Rhodopean Muslims have been placed in a pre- carious ethno-cultural position that simultaneously connects and distances them from the two dominant contenders for their identity within Bulgaria: the ethnic Turks and the ethnic Bulgarians. The lack of clear sense among most Pomaks as to just what ethnic group they belong, deepens the identity quag- mire they are pushed into by various external forces, assigning them identities not necessarily accepted by the community.3 Yet, those shaky grounds have been conducive to the development of a heritage that is uniquely Pomak— Rhodopean, local, typical of the Rhodope Muslims. The Ribnovo wedding is one of many exquisite expressions of Pomak culture that needs preservation. This chapter contributes to promoting, documenting, and preserving it as a Pomak heritage. The purpose of this chapter about the wedding tradition in Ribnovo is mul- tifold. First, I provide a step-by-step analysis of one truly remarkable ritual, as part of the Pomak culture, which is by no means unknown.4 This section of the

2 Detailed accounts of the assimilation of Pomaks in Bulgaria are provided in chapters two, three, and four. 3 Although I discuss this matter elsewhere in the book, I will briefly mention that the main contestants in the dispute over Pomak identity are Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece. While Bulgaria puts forth linguistic arguments about the Bulgarian ethnicity of the Pomaks, Turkey points to shared religion as the main indicator of cultural identity. At the same time, because of the strategic location of the Rhodopes between northern Greece and southern Bulgaria, Greece insists that the Pomaks belong to the Greek ethnicity since they descend from ancient Thracian tribes that had been once Hellenized, subsequently Romanized, Slavicized, then Ottomanized, and finally Bulgarianized. In addition, both Bulgaria and Greece point to physical appearance—the predominance of fair skin and blue eyes among the Pomaks—as proof of the Pomaks’ Bulgarian and/or Greek origin. (Ali Eminov, Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities in Bulgaria, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 102 & passim.) 4 Because of the uniqueness of the bridal make-up, not only (Bulgarian) national- and inter- national media have broadcasted the Ribnovo wedding, but also journalists, local interest groups, and individuals have broadly used Internet to publicized it via photographs, videos, or films. Among these media are bTV, a leading Bulgarian television, the Bulgarian National