The Many Ways of Being Human

9.6

Slavs and the Balkans

In Sarajevo's Ferhadija street a line in the paving divides Ottoman cobblestones from Habsburg slabs, and within fifteen minutes' walk stand a mosque, an Orthodox church, a Catholic cathedral, and a synagogue. The chapter argues that the Balkan fault line is no clash of civilizations but three filing systems, laid down by empires and stacked on one another.