Croats primarily speak Croatian, a South Slavic lect of the Western South Slavic subgroup. An example of Old Croatian used in Baka tablet. His supporters, bans John of Palisna, John Horvat and Stjepan Lackovi planned a rebellion, and managed to capture and imprison Elizabeth and Mary. [39] However, this theory has been scientifically discredited and rejected. [88] As such, Croatian name would not be an ethnonym, but a social designation for a group of elite warriors of diverse origin which ruled over the conquered Slavic population on the Avar Khaganate's boundary,[88][83][76] the designation eventually becoming an ethnonym[88] imposed to the Slavic groups. [12] This is documented in chapter 30 and 31 of Constantine VII's work. [15][71] This is further substantiated by the fact that this story is very similar to other adaptations of Herodotus (IV 33.3) "the Croatian migration did not take place, but Constantine Porphyrogenitus created it relying on the literary models traditionally applied to described the Landnahme of Scythian Barbarians. Croatia - Wikipedia [27][45] The idea was argued with the Gothic suffix mre (mer, famous) found among the names of Croatian dukes on stone and written inscriptions, as well Slavic suffix slav (famous), and that mer eventually was changed with mir (peace) because the Slavs twisted the interpretation of the names according their language. Petar Zrinski, along the conspirators, went on a wide secret diplomatic negotiations with a number of nations, including Louis XIV of France, the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, the Republic of Venice and even the Ottoman Empire, to free Croatia from the Habsburg sovereignty. By orders of John of Palisna, Elizabeth was strangled. [37] A revision of the theory, developed by Ivan Mui,[33] argues that Slavic migration from the north did happen, but the actual number of Slavic settlers was small and that the autochthonous ethnic substratum was prevalent in the formation of the Croats, but that contradicts and does not answer the presence of predominant Slavic language. The Croats (/krots/;[47] Croatian: Hrvati [xrti]) are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Croatia, western part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and other neighboring countries in Southeastern Europe who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. [40][41][42][43][44][171][46][172], Croats have also emigrated in several waves to Latin America, mostly to South America: chiefly Chile, Argentina, and Brazil; estimates of their number vary wildly, from 150,000 up to 500,000.[173][174]. [57] However, the cultural and artistic indicators of Iranian origin, including indications in the religious sphere, is somehow difficult to determine. [84] With such expansion, Croatia became the dominant power and absorbed other polities between Frankish, Bulgarian and Byzantine empire. The Croatian language is official in Croatia, the European Union[54] and Bosnia and Herzegovina. [citation needed], In Croatia (the nation state), 3.9million people identify themselves as Croats, and constitute about 90.4% of the population. The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja identifies Croats with the Goths who remained after king Totila occupied the province of Dalmatia. The Venetians soon proceeded to battle with the independent Slavic pirates of the Pagania region, but failed to defeat them. The Royal Frankish Annals mention several Bulgar raids, driving up the Sava and Drava rivers, as a result of a border dispute with the Franks, from 827. [167][168], The flag of Croatia consists of a red-white-blue tricolor with the Coat of Arms of Croatia in the middle. [33], The Gothic theory, which dates back to the late 12th and 13th century work by Priest of Duklja and Thomas the Archdeacon,[31][40] without excluding that some Gothic segments could survive the collapse of Gothic Kingdom and were included in Croatian ethnogenesis, is based on almost none concrete evidence to identify Croats with the Goths. Tarara Day is celebrated every 15 March to commemorate their "highly regarded place in present-day Moridom".[52][53]. In 1097, in the Battle of Gvozd Mountain, the last native king Peter was killed and the Croats were decisively defeated (because of this, the mountain was this time renamed to Petrova Gora, "Peter's Mountain"). Because of this pretensions, the constant struggles between Croats and Magyars emerged, and lasted until 1918. [160] Large squares named after culture heroes, well-groomed parks, and pedestrian-only zones, are features of these orderly towns and cities, especially where large scale Baroque urban planning took place, for instance in Varadin and Karlovac. In that period the stone portal of the Trogir Cathedral was made by Radovan, representing the most important monument of Romanesque sculpture in Croatia. [54] The Slavic-Iranian cultural interrelation was pointed out by modern ethnologists, like Marijana Gui who in the ritual Ljelje noticed the influence from Pontic-Caucasian-Iranian sphere,[55][56] Branimir Gui,[56] and archaeologists Zdenko Vinski and Ksenija Vinski-Gasparini. Unlike Petar Kreimir IV, he was also an ally of the Normans, with whom he joined in wars against Byzantium. Without news about the king after the battle, the then ruling Croatian ban Stjepan Lackovi and nobles invited Charles III's son Ladislaus of Naples to be the new king. [20], According to the autochthonous model, the Slavs homeland was in the area of former Yugoslavia, and they spread northwards and westwards rather than the other way round. The dynastic struggle didn't finish, and with the Ottoman invasion on Bosnia started the first short raids in Croatian territory, defended only by local nobles. In the upcoming historical events and interactions in the region of Dalmatia finished the formation of the Croatian ethnic identity and ethno-political group of people, initially held and promoted by a heterogenous political and military elite of the same name. Kreimir Galin is a Croatian ethnomusicologist who has studied the topic of early Croatian ethnology and claims that Croats originate from the territory of t. [60] Omeljan Pritsak considered early Croats a clan of Alan-Iranian origin which during the "Avarian pax" had frontiersman-merchant social role,[61] while R. Katii considered that there's not enough evidence that the non-Slavic Croats ruled as an elite class over Slavs who were under the rule of Avars. "[72] Bury considered that the White Croats' Chrobatos and Bulgars' Kubrat were the same person from the Bulgars ethnic group, as well derived the Croatian title Ban from the personal name of Avar khagan Bayan I and Kubrat's son Batbayan. [citation needed]. Croats - Wikipedia What Language Do People Speak in the Balkans, Anyway? [15] There's no doubt that Croatian language belongs to the Slavic languages, but they considered that Slavs were autochthonous in Illyricum and their ancestors were old Illyrians. On 25 March 1848, was conducted a political petition "Zahtijevanja naroda", which program included thirty national, social and liberal principles, like Croatian national independence, annexation of Dalmatia and Military Frontier, independence from Hungary as far as finance, language, education, freedom of speech and writing, religion, nullification of serfdom etc. [75], However, according to Peter tih and modern scholars,[78] Kronsteiner arguments were plain assumptions which historians can not objectively accept as evidence. Croats are predominantly Roman Catholic, and before Christianity they adhered to Slavic paganism or Roman paganism. Miroslav (945949) was killed by his ban Pribina during an internal power struggle, losing part of islands and coastal cities. Trpimir I managed to consolidate power over Dalmatia and much of the inland regions towards Pannonia, while instituting counties as a way of controlling his subordinates (an idea he picked up from the Franks). [52] In the same year, independently Fran Ramov, with reference to the Iranian interpretation of the name Horoathos by Max Vasmer, concluded that the early Croats were one of the Sarmatian tribes which during the great migration advanced along the outer edge of Carpathians (Galicia) to the Vistula and Elbe rivers. [citation needed], However, the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom was not enough well prepared and organized and the Ottoman Empire expanded further in the 16th century to include most of Slavonia, western Bosnia and Lika. [57], Early Slavs, especially Sclaveni and Antae, including the White Croats, invaded and settled Southeastern Europe in the 6th and 7th century. For the medieval Catalan currency, see. It has been estimated that the number of Croats living outside the borders of Croatia is comparable to the number living inside the country.Many ethnic Croats reside in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Croats have lived since the Slavs first migrated to the western Balkan Peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries ce.Although there has traditionally been a yearning for unification with Croatia among . [89] The assertion about the boundary is only partly true because although the Croats were mentioned on the line of Khaganate they were mostly outside and not inside the boundaries. [25] The work is considered as the foundation stone for later historiography. [46] The ethnonym Hrvat was derived from the Germanic-Gothic Hrthgutans, the hr (victory, glory) and gutans (common historical name for the Goths). The Slavs who settled in the Balkans are divided into two groups, Antae and Sclaveni. [citation needed], Branimir's (879892) own actions were approved from the Holy See to bring the Croats further away from the influence of Byzantium and closer to Rome. [75] Previously, by some Yugoslavian historians the toponym Obrov(ac) was also considered of Avar origin,[77] and according to Kronsteiner's claims, which many Nada Klai accepted, Klai moved the ancient homeland of White Croats to Carantania. [55] Croatian is a recognized minority language within Croatian autochthonous communities and minorities in Montenegro, Austria (Burgenland), Italy (Molise), Romania (Caraova, Lupac) and Serbia (Vojvodina). Small groups of Slavs had probably participated in the campaigns of the Huns and Germanic tribes since the end of the 5th century. They continued the rebellion, attacked the western Istrian towns in 876, but were subsequently defeated by the Venetian navy. Slavs were organized into chiefdoms with . [112] According to the 2015 NASU study, medieval burial grounds in Zelenche of Ternopil Oblast and in Halych region in Western Ukraine have "anthropological peculiarities" because of which are different from the near sites of Early Slavic tribes of Volhynians, Tivertsi and Drevlians, and closest "to several distant [medieval] populations of the part of the Western and Southern Slavs (Czechs, Lusatian Slavs, Moravians, and the Croatians). "The right to use the Glagolitic language at Mass with the Roman Rite has prevailed for many centuries in all the south-western Balkan countries, and has been sanctioned by long practice and by many popes" (, Learn how and when to remove this template message, revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire, Comparison of standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian, Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, Slavic Native Faith Southern and Western Slavic nations, Festivity of Saint Blaise, the patron of Dubrovnik, "Status of Croatian immigrants and their descendants abroad", "Cultural diversity: Census Information on country of birth, year of arrival, ancestry, language and religion", "Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity Highlight Tables", "Carter: NZ Celebrates 150 Years of Kiwi-Croatian Culture", " , 2011. ", Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, "Dom i svijet Broj 227 Croatia klub u Juznoj Africi", "Population by immigrant category and country background", "SODB2021 Obyvatelia Zkladn vsledky", "From the lives of Croatian faithful outside Croatia", "Croats of Czech Republic: Ethnic People Profile", 2010. [100] Croatia under Kreimir IV was composed of twelve counties and was slightly larger than in Tomislav's time, and included the closest southern Dalmatian duchy of Pagania. [67][58][68] However, although the suggestive similarity, it is etymologically incorrect. The most important purely Shtokavian dialect vernacular text is the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book (ca. Because of this the Croatian Sabor was losing its significance, and the nobility less attended it, yet went only to the one in Hungary. [59] The thesis was subsequently supported by Francis Dvornik, George Vernadsky, Roman Jakobson, Tadeusz Sulimirski, and Oleg Trubachyov. For the more generic usage, see, "Croat" redirects here. In 1102, Coloman returned to the Kingdom of Croatia in force, and negotiated with the Croatian feudal lords resulting in joining of Hungarian and Croatian crowns (with the crown of Dalmatia held separate from that of Croatia). The development of the dialects of Croatian was . [65] As such, under the ethnonym Hrvati should not be necessary seen a specific or even homogeneous tribe, yet archaic religion and mythology of a heterogeneous group of people of Iranian origin or influence who worshiped the solar deity Hors, from which possibly originates the Croatian ethnonym. Besides Shtokavian, Croats from the Adriatic coastline speak the Chakavian dialect, while Croats from the continental northwestern part of Croatia speak the Kajkavian dialect. [37][20] The social and linguistical situation that made the pre-Slavic population is hard to reconstruct, especially if one accepts the theory that the autochthonous population was dominant at the time of the arrival of the Slavs yet accepted the language and culture of Slavic newcomers who were in the minority. [122] Based on autosomal IBD survey the speakers of Serbo-Croatian language share a very high number of common ancestors dated to the migration period approximately 1,500 years ago with Poland and Romania-Bulgaria clusters among others in Eastern Europe. [15] Similarly, Thomas the Archdeacon in his work Historia Salonitana mentions that seven or eight tribes of nobles, which he called "Lingones", arrived from Poland and settled in Croatia under Totila's leadership. [107] According to the 1998-2004 craniometric studies done by Mario laus of medieval Central European archaeological sites, four Dalmatian and two Bosnian sites clustered with Polish sites, two Continental Croatia (Avaro-Slav) sites were classified into the cluster of Hungarian sites west of the Danube, while the two sites from the Bijelo Brdo culture were into the cluster of Slav sites from Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. He was crowned on 8 October 1076[101][102] at Solin in the Basilica of Saint Peter and Moses (known today as Hollow Church) by a representative of Pope Gregory VII. However, the archaeological and other historic evidence on the migration of the Slavic settlers, the character of the native population on the present-day territory of Croatia, and their mutual relationship show diverse historical and cultural influences. [105][106] It also considered the Turkic origin of Bosnian polity, which is viewed as an attempt of popularisation of links between Bosnian Muslims with Turkey. Archaeological evidence shows population continuity in coastal Dalmatia and Istria. [126] The eastern Adriatic coast was much further south. [citation needed]. Large fiefs were granted to individuals who would defend them against outside incursions thereby creating a system for the defence of the entire state. [52][34] He considered that Iranian Croats, after the Huns invasion around 370 when the Huns crossed the Volga river and attacked the Iranian Alans at the Don river, abandoned their initial Sarmatian lands and arrived among the Slavs at the waste lands north of Carpathians, where they gradually Slavicized. In the peak of the fighting, around 550,000 ethnic Croats were displaced altogether during the Yugoslav wars. In the case of the present-day Croatian nation, several components or phases influenced its ethnogenesis: The mention of the Croatian ethnonym Hrvat for a specific tribe before the 9th century is not yet completely confirmed. Standardization began in the period sometimes called "Baroque Slavism" in the first half of the 17th century,[125] while some authors date it back to the end of the 15th century. [50][51] The ethnic Tarara people, indigenous to Te Tai Tokerau in New Zealand, are of mixed Croatian and Mori (predominantly Ngpuhi) descent. Balkans | Definition, Map, Countries, & Facts | Britannica [citation needed], Croats were never obliged to use Latinrather, they held masses in their own language and used the Glagolitic alphabet. As the Turkish incursion into Europe started, Croatia once again became a border area between two major forces in the Balkans. [115][116] The distribution, variance and frequency of the I2 and R1a subclades (>60%) among Croats are related to the medieval Slavic expansion, probably from the territory of present day Ukraine and Southeastern Poland. The remaining 16,800 square kilometres (6,487sqmi) were referred to as the reliquiae reliquiarum of the once great Croatian kingdom. Kreimir II (949969) kept particularly good relations with the Dalmatian cities, while his son Stjepan Drislav (969997) established better relations with the Byzantine Empire and received a formal authority over Dalmatian cities. [citation needed], Architecture in Croatia reflects influences of bordering nations. This abbot is recorded to have travelled through Dalmatia with the help of the Croatian leaders, and he established the foundation for the future relations between the Pope and the Croats. [90][102][103] Lately, a more pro-Turkic (as White Oghurs) thesis was given by Osman Karatay. He married in 1063 Helen of Hungary, the daughter of King Bela I of the Hungarian rpd dynasty, and the sister of the future King Ladislaus I. Croats are mostly Roman Catholics. Croatia portal v t e The Croats trace their history to the 6th and 7th-century southwards migration of the Slavs, which is supported by anthropological, genetical, and ethnological studies. The oldest source confirming the coat-of-arms as an official symbol is a genealogy of the Habsburgs dating during 151218. Meanwhile, with the victories over Turks, Habsburgs all the more insistent they spent centralization and germanization, new regained lands in liberated Slavonia started giving to foreign families as feudal goods, at the expense of domestic element. In retaliation, Magyars crowned Mary's husband Sigismund of Luxembourg. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. In the south, while having periods of independence, the Naretines merged with Croats later under control of Croatian Kings. [153], Smaller groups of Croats adhere to other religions, like Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism and Islam. Balkans - Wikipedia [109], Croats stopped the Ottoman advance in Croatia at the battle of Sisak in 1593, 100 years after the defeat at Krbava field, and the short Long Turkish War ended with the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606, after which Croatian classes tried unsuccessfully to have their territory on the Military Frontier restored to rule by the Croatian Ban, managing only to restore a small area of lost territory but failed to regain large parts of Croatian Kingdom (present-day western Bosnia and Herzegovina), as the present-day border between the two countries is a remnant of this outcome. Some Balkan countries such as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia were once part of Yugoslavia. Zdeslav deposed him in 878 with the help of the Byzantines. This fact can testify for their common origin". [58], Evidence is rather scarce for the period between the 7th and 8th centuries CE. [75][76] As arguments for his thesis he considered the Tatar-Bashkir derivation of Croatian ethnonym;[75] that Croats and Avars are almost always mentioned together;[75] distribution of Avarian type of settlements where the Croatian ethnonym was as toponym, pagus Crouuati in Carinthia and Kraubath in Styria;[75] this settlements had Avarian names with suffix *-iki (-itji);[75] the commander of those settlements was Avarian Ban which name is located in the center of those settlements, Faning/Banie < Baniki in Carinthia, and Fahnsdorf < Bansdorf in Styria;[75] the Avarian officers titles, besides Mong.-Turk. ", In Austria, Croats are an ethnic minority, numbering around 30,000 people in, In New Zealand, the mixed Croatian and Mori, In Kosovo, Croats or Janjevci (Letniani), as they inhabited mostly the town of, A further, larger wave of emigration, this time for political reasons, took place after the end of the, As immigrant workers, particularly to Germany, Austria, and, The last large wave of Croat emigration occurred during and after the, This page was last edited on 22 June 2023, at 16:46. [128] Genetical results can not be used as the evidence for a specific ethnic component, but they indicate the main role of the Slavs in the Croatian ethnogenesis.[129]. The Croatian interlace (pleter or troplet) is also a commonly used symbol which originally comes from monasteries built between the 9th and 12th century. [citation needed]. [66], Scholars have hypothesized the name Croat (Hrvat) may be Iranian, thus suggesting that the Croatians were possibly a Sarmatian tribe from the Pontic region who were part of a larger movement at the same time that the Slavs were moving toward the Adriatic. The most important organizations of the Croatian diaspora are the Croatian Fraternal Union, Croatian Heritage Foundation and the Croatian World Congress. On the other hand, many of the official languages of the Balkan countries, such as Bulgarian or Croatian, belong to the Slavic language family. However, Frankish control was far from smooth. [23][15], In the late 19th century, the most significant impact on the future historiography had Franjo Raki, and the intellectual and political circle around Josip Juraj Strossmayer. [140] Its speakers largely use the Latin alphabet. Croatia-Slovenia border disputes - Wikipedia [16][17] As such, the origin of the early Croats before and at the time of arrival to the present day Croatia, as well as their ethnonym, were an eternal topic of historiography, linguistics and archaeology. [47] During World War II, the Gothic theory was the only supported theory by the regime of Independent State of Croatia (NDH). the social categories which carried the title of "Hrvat". Having been under Avar control, lower Pannonia became a march of the Carolingian Empire around 800. Are Croats really of Slavic origin? - Go to Croatia The majority of the Slavs converted to Christianity in the 9h century and occupied most of the medieval Christian states including Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Slavic languages | List, Definition, Origin, Map, Tree, History Another 553,000 live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they are one of the three constituent ethnic groups, predominantly living in Western Herzegovina, Central Bosnia and Bosnian Posavina. Media related to Croats at Wikimedia Commons, "Croatians" and "Croatian people" redirect here.