Shopi

Group of people in the Balkans

Shopi or Šopi (South Slavic: Шопи) is a regional term, used by a group of people in the Balkans. The areas traditionally inhabited by the Shopi or Šopi is called Shopluk or Šopluk (Шоплук), a mesoregion. Most of the region is located in Western Bulgaria, with smaller parts in Eastern Serbia and Eastern North Macedonia, where the borders of the three countries meet. The majority of the Shopi (those in Bulgaria, as well in the Bulgarian territories annexed by Serbia in 1919) identify as Bulgarians, those in the pre 1919 territory of Serbia—as Serbs and those in North Macedonia—as ethnic Macedonians. The boundaries of the Shopluk in Bulgaria are a matter of debate, with the narrowest definition confining them only to the immediate surroundings of the City of Sofia, i. e., the Sofia Valley. The boundaries that are most commonly used overlap with the Bulgarian folklore and ethnographic regions and incorporate Central Western Bulgaria and the Bulgarian populated areas in Serbia. It is only rarely that the Shopluk is meant to include Northwestern Bulgaria, which is the widest definition (and the one used here).

According to Institute for Balkan Studies, the Shopluk was the mountainous area on the borders of Serbia, Bulgaria and North Macedonia, of which boundaries are quite vague, in Serbia the term Šop has always denoted highlanders. Shopluk was used by Bulgarians to refer to the borderlands of Bulgaria, the inhabitants were called Shopi. According to some Shopluk studies dating back to the early 20th century, the name "Shopi" comes from the staff that local people, mostly pastoralists, used as their main tool. Even today in Bulgaria one of the names of a nice wooden stick is "sopa".

Prior to 1878, there was practically no European etnographer, researcher or traveller to identify not only the Shopi, but also the Torlaks, in any other way than as Bulgarians. As early as 1502, a Dalmatian traveller by the name of Felix Petančić identified a number of places in the region, including Vakarel, Sofia and Pirot as inhabited by Bulgarians and marked the "end of Bulgaria" at the city of Nissa (Niš), a city "inhabited by Turks and Bulgarians". Stephan Gerlach, a German Protestant theologian travelling back to Central Europe from Constantinople in 1578, described the following Bulgarian towns and villages along the way: "Vedreno" (Vetren); "Ihtimon" (Ihtiman), with mixed population of Turks and Bulgarians; Kazidzham (Kazichene), a Bulgarian village; Sofia, a big city populated by Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Jews and Ragusans; Dragomanlii (Dragoman), a small, purely Bulgarian village; Dimitrovgrad, a Bulgarian village; Pirot, mostly Turkish with a minority of Bulgarians; Kuruçeşme (Bela Palanka), a purely Bulgarian village, and, finally, Nissa (Niš), where only few Christians lived, and most of them Serbs—"because this is where Bulgaria ends and Serbia begins". Another German, Wolf Andreas von Steinach, on his way home from Constantinople in 1583, placed the boundary between Bulgarian and Serbs just west of Niš. The same thing was done in the 1621 journal of yet another traveller, French diplomat Louis Deshayes, Baron de Courmemin, who emphasised that the boundary had been shown to him "by locals". In the 1590s, Austrian apothecary Hans Seidel wrote about hundreds of chopped off heads of Bulgarian villagers rolling along the road from Sofia to Niš. In 1664, Englishman John Burberry was baffled by several Bulgarian women in Bela Palanka who threw pieces of butter with salt in front of his company (probably wishing them a safe journey). In 1673, another Austrian traveller, Hans Hönze, described Pirot as the "main city of all of Bulgaria". A decade or so later, Italian military specialist in Austrian service Luigi Ferdinando Marsili described Dragoman, Kalotina and Dimitrovgrad as "Bulgarian villages". Other travellers who put the ethnographic boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians at Niš include German George Christoff Von Neitzschitz, in 1631; Austrian diplomat Paul Taffner, as part of an embassy to the Sublime Porte, in 1665; German diplomat Gerard Cornelius Von Don Driesch, sent on a mission to Constantinople on the orders of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1723; Armenian geographer Hugas Injejian in 1789, etc. etc. Several maps at the end of the 1700s also place the border between Serbia and Bulgaria around Niš, sometimes west and sometimes east of it. When traveling across Bulgaria in 1841, French scholar Jérôme Adolphe Blanqui described the population of the Sanjak of Niš and the Sanjak of Sofia as Bulgarian. The author further designated the population of Niš as Bulgarian and the Niš rebellion (1841) as a Bulgarian uprising. During his travels across European Turkey, French geologist Ami Boué also placed the boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians just north of Niš and identified the towns of Niš, Pirot, Leskovac, Bela Palanka, Dimitrovgrad, Dupnitsa, Blagoevgrad, Radomir, Sofia and Etropole as Bulgarian. He also mentioned that there are 200 Bulgarian villages around Pirot and some 60,000 to 80,000 Bulgarians living along the Nišava from Niš to Dimitrovgrad. With the launch of the Tanzimat reforms and the tentative opening of the Ottoman Empire to Europe in 1839, the Balkans attracted a large number of European ethnographers, linguists, and geographers, who wanted to study the population of European Turkey. A total of eleven primary ethnic maps of the Balkans were produced between 1842 and 1877: by Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik in 1842, Ami Boué in 1847, French ethnographer Guillaume Lejean in 1861, English travel writers Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Paulina Irby in 1867, Russian ethnographer Mikhail Mirkovich in 1867, Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben in 1868, German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann in 1869, renowned German geographer Heinrich Kiepert in 1876, British mapmaker Edward Stanford, French railway engineer Bianconi and Austrian diplomat Karl Sax, all three in 1877. With the exception of Bianconi and Stanford's maps that portrayed all of Thrace, Macedonia and southern Albania as ethnically Greek and are generally described as having a pro Greek bias, all other nine maps establish the Serbo Bulgarian ethnic boundary along the Timok, then just north of Niš and finally along the Šar Mountains, thus defining the entire Shopluk as Bulgarian. Of interest is also the retroactive study of Bulgaria's population in the 1860s by Russian philologist and dialectologist Afanasiy Selischev, which concluded that the valleys extending from Niš through Pirot and Sofia to the Gate of Trajan near Ihtiman, i. e., the central Shopluk featured the largest concentration of Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire. In recognition of this and as a result of the active participation of the Shopluk in the Bulgarian Church struggle (the first rebellion against a Greek bishop took place in Vratsa in 1828), the entire Shopluk as well as the Pomoravie were included in the territory of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 and in the Bulgarian autonomous vilayets proposed at the 1876–77 Constantinople Conference.

Until the mid 1800s, Serbs themselves did not consider either Shopi or Torlaks to be Serbs. Serbian writer and prime minister Dimitrije Davidović did not include any Torlak or Shop speaking areas in his maps of "Territories inhabited by Servians" published in 1821 and 1848, nor mentioned them in his 1848 History of the Serbian People. The border between Serbs and Bulgarians did not change much in cartographer Constant Desjardins' 1853 map of the distribution of the Serbian language, either. And in 1852, Serbian philologist and language reformer Vuk Karadžić gave the shortest and most precise definition of Torlaks by saying that they speak neither pure Serbian nor pure Bulgarian. However, all of this changed with Ilija Garašanin's Načertanije, a Serbian nationalist blueprint seeking to unify all South Slavs under Serbian rule. The Načertanije envisaged a "Piedmont" like role for Serbia on the Balkans and the restoration of the medieval Serbian Empire by indoctrinating all surrounding Slavic peoples with pro Serbian national ideology As the plan basically suggested the assimilation of all South Slavs, it was kept secret until 1906. In 1867, Serbia launched a massive campaign to open Serbian schools across the Shopluk and Macedonia, with a special focus on Torlak speaking areas. Serbia's main competitive advantage was that it offered subsidized teacher salaries, while the Exarchate financed its schools with the membership dues of its parishioners. While some towns like Pirot repeatedly thwarted Serbian attempts to establish schools, due to the proximity of the border and their many refugees in Serbia, both Niš and Leskovac buckled to the Serbian propaganda in a matter of years. By the early 1870s, the Niš eparchy was part of the Bulgarian Exarchate in name only; all Bulgarian schools had closed, and the population had adopted a Serbian identity. At the Congress of Berlin, the Serbian diplomacy managed to skillfully navigate the conflicting objectives of the Great Powers and by waiving its claims to the Sanjak of Novi Pazar in favour of Austria Hungary, it managed to gain not only Niš and Leskovac, but also Vranje and even the staunchly Bulgarian Pirot. In this connection, Felix Kanitz noted that back in 1872 the inhabitants of the city would have never imagined that they would be free of the Turks so soon only to end up under foreign rule again. Having their Bulgarian schools closed and the Bulgarian bishop expelled, a large portion of the Bulgarians in Pirot left the town and settled in Sofia, Dimitrovgrad, Vidin, etc. This success encouraged Serbian scholars to further expand their claims beyond the Torlaks and to claim even the Šopi (also known as Šopovi) as a subgroup of the Serbian ethnos, portraying them as closer to the Serbs than to the Bulgarians. For example, Serbian ethnographer Jovan Cvijić, presented a study at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he divided the Shopluk into three groups: Serbs, mixed population, and a group closer to Bulgarians. However, given that his two earlier maps of 1909 and 1913 established the boundary between Bulgarians and Serbs along the state border, his claim has been regarded as little more than a political manoeuvre to justify Serbian territorial claims against Bulgaria. Then, according to A. Belitch and T. Georgevitch, again in 1919, the Shopi were a mixed Serbo Bulgarian people in Western Bulgaria of Serbian origin. This Serbian ethnographical group, according to them, inhabited a region east of the border as far as the line Bregovo Kula Belogradchik Iskrets, thence towards Radomir and to the east of Kyustendil; to the east of that limit the Serbian population, blended with the Bulgarian element, reached the Iskar banks and the line which linked it to Ihtiman. Similarly, Bulgarian linguistics no longer claims the Serbian Torlakian dialects as Bulgarian. While they were indeed included in the Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects and the adjoining map, both the atlas and the map explicitly state that they present the historical distribution of Bulgarian dialects, i. e., where Bulgarian dialects are or have historically been spoken. Isoglosses are based on 19th and early 20th century records rather than on current data, and Transdanubian settler dialects in Banat and Bessarabia are therefore excluded. With the establishment of the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the codification of a separate Macedonian language in the 1940s, the bipartite division of the Shopluk has become tripartite. Thus, there are now Shopi who identify as Bulgarians, Serbs and Macedonians and who speak dialects identified as Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian, yet still maintain a regional or ethnographic identity as Shopi. And as modern sociolinguistics places an equally big, if not bigger, emphasis on self identification and other social factors as on purely linguistic criteria, groups of people speaking the same or similar dialects can still speak different languages—which is the case along much of the shared borders of the three countries. Most of the area traditionally inhabited by the Shopi is within Bulgaria, while the western borderlines are split between Serbia and the Republic of North Macedonia. The majority of the Shopi (those in Bulgaria, as well in the Bulgarian territories annexed by Serbia in 1919) identify as Bulgarians, those in the pre 1919 territory of Serbia—as Serbs and those in North Macedonia—as ethnic Macedonians. At the 2011 census in Serbia, they were registered as a separate ethnicity and 142 people declared themselves as belonging to this ethnicity.

In most (though not all) forms of Shopski, the stressed "ъ" sound of standard Bulgarian (which corresponds to Old Bulgarian big yus) or yer) is substituted with or Example: Shopski моя/мойо маж ме лаже (moja/mojo maž me laže), че одим навонка (če odim navonka) vs standard Bulgarian моят мъж ме лъже, ще ходя навън/ка) (mojǎt mǎž me lǎže, šte hodja navǎn/ka), (my husband is lying to me, I'll be going out). However, this is not typical either for the Northwestern Bulgarian dialects which have for both the big yus or yer, nor for the Bulgarian Extreme Northwestern dialects and the Torlak dialects in Serbia, which have for yer.

The definite article for masculine nouns varies. In the Pirdop, Botevgrad and Ihtiman dialect, it is a ( а). In the rest of the mesoregion, it is o ( о) as in northeastern Bulgaria (the Moesian dialects and unlike standard Macedonian, where it is ot ( oт). Example: otivam u grado (отивам у градо) vs standard Bulgarian otivam v grada (отивам в града), "I am going in town"
The past passive participle ending varies, depending on participle, for example, for "married" the Northwestern Bulgarian dialects, the Bulgarian Kyustendil dialect and Maleshevo Pirin dialect and the Timok Luznica dialect in Serbia use en/ jen ( ен/ йен), i. e. "женен", as in standard Bulgarian, whereas the Sofia, Tran, Dupnitsa and Elin Pelin dialects use t ( т), i. e. "женет", as in standard Macedonian. In other cases, en/ jen ( ен/ йен) is the preferred ending in most of the central and southern parts of the region, as in most southern Bulgarian, i. e. Rup dialects as well as Standard Serbian and Macedonian
In the past aorist tense and in the past active participle the stress falls always on the ending and not on the stem. Example: Shopski gle'dah (гле'дах), gle'dal (гле'дал) vs standard Bulgarian 'gledah ('гледах), 'gledal ('гледал), "[I] was watching; [he, she, it] watched"

The /x/ sound is often omitted. Despite being particularly associated with Shopski, this is actually characteristic of most rural Bulgarian dialects. Example: Shopski леб (leb), одиа (odia) vs standard Bulgarian хляб (hljab), ходиха (hodiha) (bread, they went)

The Shopi have a very original and characteristic folklore. The traditional male costume of the Shopi is white, while the female costumes are diverse. White male costumes are spread at the western Shopluk. The hats they wear are also white and tall (called gugla). Traditionally Shopi costume from the Kyustendil region are in black and they are called Chernodreshkovci — Blackcoats. Some Shope women wear a special kind of sukman called a litak, which is black, generally is worn without an apron, and is heavily decorated around the neck and bottom of the skirt in gold, often with great quantities of gold colored sequins. Embroidery is well developed as an art and is very conservative. Agriculture is the traditional main occupation, with cattle breeding coming second. The traditional Shop house that has a fireplace in the centre has only survived in some more remote villages, being displaced by the Middle Bulgarian type. The villages in the plains are larger, while those in the higher areas are somewhat straggling and have traditionally been inhabited by single families (zadruga). The unusually large share of placenames ending in ovci, enci and jane evidence for the preservation of the zadruga until even after the 19th century.

In terms of music, the Shopi have a complex folklore with the heroic epic and humor playing an important part. The Shopi are also known for playing particularly fast and intense versions of Bulgarian dances. The gadulka; the kaval and the gaida are popular instruments; and two part singing is common. Minor second intervals are common in Shop music and are not considered dissonant. Two very popular and well known fоlklore groups are Poduenski Babi and Bistrishki Babi — the Grandmothers of Poduene and Bistritsa villages.

A famous Bulgarian dish, popular throughout the Balkans and Central Europe is the Shopska salad, named after the ethnographic group. The salad was created by state tourist agency "Balkantourist" in 1955, as part of an effort to popularize a unique Bulgarian tourist brand. Thus, it has no connection with either the Shopi or the Shopluk.

In the 19th century, around Vidin, it was not unusual for a woman in her mid 20s and 30s to have a man of 15–16 years.

The Shopi — especially those from near Sofia — have the widespread (and arguably unjustified) reputation of stubborn and selfish people. They were considered conservative and resistant to change. There are many proverbs and anecdotes about them, more than about all other regional groups in Bulgaria. A distinguished writer from the region is Elin Pelin who actually wrote some comic short stories and poems in the dialect, and also portrayed life in the Shopluk in much of his literary work.

"There is nothing deeper than the Iskar River, and nothing higher than the Vitosha Mountain." (От Искаро по длибоко нема, от Витоша по високо нема!). This saying pokes fun at a perceived facet of the Shop's character, namely that he's never traveled far from his home. Once a Shop went to the zoo and saw a giraffe. He watched it in amazement and finally said: "There is no such animal!" (Е, те такова животно нема!) So even seeing the truth with his own eyes, he refuses to acknowledge it. Once a Shop went to the city, saw aromatic soaps on a stand and, thinking that they were something to eat, bought a piece. He began to eat it but soon his mouth was filled with foam. He said: "Foam or not, it cost money, I shall eat it." (Пеняви се, не пеняви, пари съм давал, че го ядем.) When money is spent, even unpleasant things should be endured. How was the gorge of the Iskǎr River formed? As the story goes, in ancient times the Sofia Valley was a lake, surrounded with mountains. The ancient Shopi were fishermen. One day, while fishing with his boat one of them bent over in order to take his net out of the water. But the boat was floating towards the nearby rocks on the slope of the Balkan Mountains. Consequently, the Shop hit his head on the rocks and the entire mountain split into two. The lake flew out and the gorge was formed. There is a saying throughout Bulgaria that the Shopi's heads are wooden (дървена шопска глава, dǎrvena šopska glava), meaning they are too stubborn. In Romania there is such saying about Bulgarians in general. Once upon a time three Shopi climbed on top of the Vitosha Mountain. There was a thick fog in the valley so they thought it was cotton. They jumped down and perished. This is to show three points: the Shopi are not very smart after all; Vitosha is very high; and, as a serious point, it is common to see Vitosha standing over low clouds shrouding the high plains and valleys of Western Bulgaria; this is a temperature inversion. Another example of the Shopi's stubbornness: Once, in the middle of summer, a Shop wore a very thick coat. When asked if it wasn't too hot, he answered: It's not because of the coat but because of the weather. The Shopi had a reputation of being good soldiers nevertheless there was a proverb: "A Shop will only fight if he can see the roof of his house from the battlefield", meaning he will only fight if he can see his personal interests in the fight. A proverb that wants to demonstrate the Shopi's selfishness, but may rather point to their conservatism, lack of interest to the outside world. Some Shop shepherds are said to have observed over 40 or 50 years from their meadows on the Vitosha mountain how the capital city Sofia situated few kilometers downhill grew from 80 000 to 300 000 in the 1930s, how new buildings and parks sprang but never took interest to go and see the city themselves. In other parts of Bulgaria all locals from Sofia are called, somewhat scornfully, "Shopi", although the majority of the city's population are not descendants of the real vernacular minority but of migrants from other regions. In addition, in other parts of Bulgaria there exists the use of the derisive form "Shopar" for Shop and "Shoparism" for untidy, outdated or primitive circumstances (which show some similarity to the employ of the term "Hillbilly" in the USA). Actually the word "shopar" in Bulgarian means "young boar" and has nothing to do with the Shopi. It is a term for untidiness, since the boar is a close relative to the pig. The sayings about the Shopi does not seize in modern day. There are popular sayings from communist period of Bulgaria such as:
Even if the gasoline price grows to $100 I'll still drive my car. Even if the price drops to a penny, I am not buying it still. I will set my house on fire so the fire spread over my neighbor's barn. They pretend to pay me decent salary; I pretend that I am working (also very common in the former USSR). I take a look behind me – nothing; I take a look around me – nothing; and I am thinking – there is something. (It shows the paranoia of the Shop that the world is out to get him/her)
A traveler came upon two Shopi sitting in the village square. Since he was traveling to Istanbul he asked one of them for directions in English. The Shopi made a clicking sound with his mouth and shook head, I don't understand. The traveler attempted the same question in French, German, Russian, Spanish and other languages, but had the same result. Aggravated, the traveler started going in one direction that happened to be wrong. The second Shopi, observing this scene, lamented to his buddy “Ah, this guy knows so many languages and you knew none of them.” The first Shopi said “And what good did it do him?”.

Shopski Cove in Antarctica is named after the Shop region.