Poor Pomaks

Abstract

The present work represents a translation of a brochure named Poor Pomaks from Ottoman Turkish to Bulgarian. This brochure gives very interesting information about the forced conversion in Christianity of the Pomaks in 1913. Printed in the publishing house Hayriye and its associates, the only surviving copy of the brochure is preserved in the archive of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. There are a number of brochures printed by this publishing house. Between the years 1912-1915, 4 brochures with the similar topics were published. The brochure Poor Pomaks is the fourth one. The author of the Poor Pomaks brochure is not known. The brochure consists of 29 pages. The first 8 pages of the text contains the author's opinion about Bulgarians and Turkish-Bulgarian relations. In the other twenty-two pages, the author gives a place for stories about the torture and cruelty experienced by 150,000 Pomaks who were subjected to forced conversion in 1913. The important thing in this account, which is a valuable source of conversion, is that it testifies to real-world events, villages, and sacrifices. The territorial coverage of the conversion in the regions with numerous Pomaks populations and mainly the villages of today's Plovdiv, Smolyan, Pazardzhik, Kardzhali and Blagoevgrad regions in Bulgaria and the northern parts of Western Thrace in Greece are clearly outlined. The last two pages of the brochure include a letter and an epilogue. In the epilogue, the author makes a critical assessment of the behavior of the big states and of the Balkan allies during the Balkan War. Two photos are also featured in the brochure, one of which has a great historical value because it is one of the few preserved to our day authentic photographs of the victims and the baptists.