Islam in North Macedonia: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in North Macedonia

Islam entered Macedonia when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire between 1371 and 1395 mostly under the reign of Sultan Murad ben Orhan (ruled from 1363 to 1389 and was the third king of the empire). The Muslim rule ended in 1913 after the Balkan Wars. However, it was then divided among Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia. Eventually parts of Macedonia became one of the six socialist republics forming the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963. It then gained its independence in 1992 forming the Republic of Macedonia with an area of 25,713 sq km; which is less than half of historical Macedonia. The country changed its name in 2019 to the Republic of North Macedonia.

Based on census data, the Muslim population decreased from 32.4% in 1921, to 24.1% in 1961, due to wars and hardships targeting the Muslim population. The situation improved after the formation of Yugoslavia, prompting a constant increase to 25.1% in 1971, to 28.6% in 1981, to 30.9% in 1991 just before the breakup of Yugoslavia. The percentage of Muslims continued to increase after independence to 30.4% in 1994, and reaching 33.3% in 2002, due to the settlement of Muslim refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo, who fled the ethnic cleansing by Orthodox Serbs. This was the percentage of Muslims ninety years earlier, just before the Ottoman Empire lost control over Macedonia. The Muslim population then reached 0.6 million or 34.7% in 2021.

The data for 1921, was calculated as follows: total population from [MK], Muslim population from data in [YU21] for Serbia and Montenegro (which included current Kosovo and Macedonia), minus data in [VV] for current Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro. When inferring religious adherence from ethnicity in 1948 to 1991, the following were assumed Muslims: Albanians, Turks, Gypsy (Roma) and Muslims by nationality. The numbers of these ethnicities recorded in each census is provided in Table 4.1.8b. In Yugoslavia times, Bosnians used to declare themselves as Muslim by nationality, and Bosnian ethnicity was first collected in the 1994 census. So as the number of declared Bosnians increased, the number of Muslim nationals increased. Table 4.1.8b also shows that the difference is minimal between inferring religious adherence based on these ethnic affiliations and the result of the religion question in post-independence censuses.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue to increase by one percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to reach 0.7 million or 38% by 2050 and 0.5 million or 43% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for North Macedonia

The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.