BULGARIAN-SPEAKING MUSLIMS - Lalev

wedding as distinctly Pomak tradition, i.e. typical of the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims of the
Rhodopes.
Chapter VI revives the memory of Salih Aga of Paşmaklı, the Pomak governor of the Ottoman
kaaza of Ahı Çelebi between 1798 and 1838. He was a remarkable person who not only secured
stability in Ahı Çelebi in turbulent times for the Ottoman Empire, but also established a social order
of a new type – one based on equality between Muslims and Christians despite a discriminating
Shari’a (the normative law of the Ottoman Empire). 32 As Nikolay Haytov – one of the most
nationalistic Bulgarian writers – sums it up, the governor’s most remarkable legacy lies in “the fact
that he elevated the status of the Christians to that of the Muslims in both civil and political
aspect[.]” 33 To this day, however, the heritage of Salih Aga remains obscure and unrecognized in local
public history, because he was a bureaucrat of the former Ottoman “oppressor,” and, moreover, a
Pomak. This chapter utilizes the methodology of microhistory to recreate the life story of a
remarkable person, whom the annals of Ottoman imperial history overlook as petty local governor
and Bulgarian historiography neglects quite purposely as “Turkish tyrant.”
32 See Chapter II and VI for details.
33 Nikolay Haytov, “Smolyan: Tri vurha v srednorodopskata istoriq”/“Smolyan: Three Pinnacles in the History of
the Middle Rhodopes”/ (Sofia: Izdatelstwo na Nacionalniq Suvet na Otechesvenia Front /National Council of the
Fatherland Front Publisher, 1962), 27.
14