400 Mosques in Central Europe? Probably, in XVII century!
By: Michał Kłosowski
Tags: Commonwealth, Muslim, Poland, Europe, Islam

The central part of Europe has been often seen as a territory without cultural and national divergence: region based on Christianity and solid, mono-national societies, not changed from many decades. The first part of the sentence is true, but the fact is that before the II World War it was one of the most multicultural and multi-religious regions of the Continent. Everything because of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, established in 1385.

Almost 815 000 square kilometers and 10 million inhabitants. In the XVI Century in the middle of Europe exist a country of the size of a modern-day country of Nigeria, bi-confederation called Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a unique form of a state, even if seen from the perspective of today’s European Union, marked by high levels of ethnic diversity and by relative religious tolerance, guaranteed by the Warsaw Confederation Act signed in 1573. Plenty of different cultural and religious groups lived here in peace for many centuries.

Armenians, Jews, Muslims, Orthodoxes, and Protestants peacefully built an enclave, when in Western Europe religious conflicts erupt often.

The unique and still exist group is a Tatar community, living in a few parts of Poland. Ethnologists define three features that make them a distinctive minority. First of all, like no other specific group in Poland, Tatars are Muslims and it is mostly thanks to their religion that they have managed to preserve their separate culture and identity. However, Tatar’s version of Islam, derived from Sunni Islam, is a bit different than the one we know from the Middle East, due to the long-standing influence of Catholicism. Scientists are highlighting how Tatars have treated endogamy (keeping marriages within the community) as an important practice, have similar physical characteristics, and how they strongly believe in their shared descent from common ancestors.

A very important component of the Tatar’s identity is their Polishness.

Because the Tatar community has lived in Poland for more than 600 years, Polish Tatars speak Polish as their native language, identify with Polish history and have built their own military mythology upon the participation of Tatar soldiers in the most important moments of Polish and Polish-Lithuanian history. There are approximately 2,000 Tatars living in Poland nowadays, more than half of in the area of Białystok and called themselves Lipka-Tatars

Almost a hundred years ago, in 1917 Polish-Tatars government was formed, headed by the Polish Tatar, General Maciej Sulejman STANKIEWICZ. It was on the Crimean Peninsula, from many years inhabited by Tatars. His government also included other Polish Tatars: Aleksander Achmatowicz (Minister of Justice) and General Aleksander Miłkowski (military affairs). From June to October 1918, the Polish Tatars dominated the political and cultural life of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars, and if the state independence of Crimea could survive, perhaps it would be organized and directed analogously to Israel, in the past organized and directed through Eastern European Jews. Eventually, the end of the Tatar state brought a new invasion of the Russian Red Army in Crimea in 1920. Have you ever heard about Magdalena ABAKANOWICZ or Charles BRONSON? Yes, their families had Polish Lipka-Tatar roots.

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