"Are Bulgarian and Macedonian different languages?" "Is there a Macedonian language, or is it just a dialect?" "Is it closer to Serbian or to Bulgarian?" "Do you understand one another when everybody speaks his or her native tongue?" When discussing the Macedonian imbroglio with people from other countries, citizens of Bulgaria and of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia are often asked such questions. They may seem naive, and some of them are surely improperly formulated. But they are representative of a certain pattern of thinking. In fact, these questions presuppose a certain commonsensical idea of identity, which takes for granted the direct link between linguistic classification, ethnic belonging and nationhood.
This study deals with scholarly interpretations of a specific vernacular house type that is widespread in the Balkan countries and which has been traditionally labeled either an “Ottoman house” or a “Balkan house.” The focus here is on the construction of national interpretations of the vernacular residential architecture in question, meaning symbolic appropriations or “nationalizations” of a common cultural heritage from the Ottoman era. Although dedicated to a certain form of traditional architecture, this text does not present the outcome of research in the field of art/architectural history or ethnography. Instead, it takes a critical meta-position with regard to these disciplines, which have been crucial in the development of a certain idea of “national heritage” and, in particular, of “national architecture” in the post-Ottoman Balkans. Thus the present work invites a critical rethinking of the national approaches in the broader field of traditional culture and material heritage that still seem so authoritative in the Balkan countries. It also provides a comparative analysis of the development of Balkan theories of vernacular architecture regarding not only their connections to the broader European context but also the mutual influences among them. This work is thus intended to shed light on deeper transformations of the cultural contexts within Balkan countries since the late nineteenth century and on phenomena that have rarely been studied together and in terms of their interactions.
“[. . .] the Thracian race is the most numerous, except the Indians, in all the world—and if it should come to be ruled over by one man, or to agree together in one, it would be irresistible in fight and the strongest by far of all nations, in my opinion [. . .]” Today, this excerpt from Herodotus is practically obligatory to quote in monographs, articles and even in novels dedicated to the paleo-Balkan peoples known under the common ethnonym Thracians (referred to in Ancient Greek as Thra[i]kes, Thrēikes, etc.). This is especially true in Romania and in Bulgaria, where scholars, writers, journalists and political propagandists have created an immense library of writings dedicated to these ancient populations. These countries have even institutionalized a specific field of Thracian studies—or “Thracology”—that covers a series of disciplines: archaeology, history and art history, classical philology, epigraphy and linguistics, the history of religions, Indo-European studies and ethnography.