In the first century BCE, the Greek geographer Strabo noted that the inhabitants of the Balkan interior were both poor and tattooed, “as other Illyrian tribes.” The remark is among the earliest written references to a practice that would later take on particular meaning in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Known locally as sicanje (or bocanje), literally meaning “to prick,” the tattooing tradition gained prominence during the often brutal Ottoman rule (1463–1878). Over time it developed a distinctive role among the region’s predominantly ethnically Croatian Roman Catholic population.

For the autochthonous Croats of Bosnia, what may once have been a tribal ornament evolved into a visible testament to suffering, resilience and survival through four centuries of Ottoman domination.

Crosses, circles, dots and comb-like bands were pricked into the hands, arms and sometimes chests of children in rituals blending devotion, protection and communal identity. The tattoos were most commonly applied to young girls — though sometimes to boys as well — beginning as early as six years old. Skin became a portable archive, proof of belonging carried into uncertainty.

Girls were marked more frequently. Parents hoped that visible Christian symbols might deter abduction or forced marriage. Whether such hopes were fulfilled remains doubtful; historical evidence is sparse. Yet the intention is legible in the designs themselves. Each mark was less an embellishment than a declaration.

By the early twentieth century, ethnographers were documenting what they described as “common tattooing.”

Croatian historian Ćiro Truhelka and physician-anthropologist Leopold Glück observed that while tattooing as a marker of affiliation existed elsewhere, it was especially prevalent among Catholic women in central Bosnia — around Sarajevo, Travnik, Fojnica and neighboring towns.

Both hands were typically marked, often with the left more densely tattooed than the right. Arms bore patterns above and below the elbow; some women carried fine lines along the sternum or a small sign on the forehead. In extreme cases, the blue-green tracery grew so dense that the natural colour of the skin nearly disappeared.

After the Second World War, when Bosnia became part of socialist Yugoslavia, the social climate shifted. The new communist state promoted a secular, supra-ethnic identity, and conspicuous rural religious customs were discouraged.

The practice of sicanje declined sharply. By the latter half of the century it survived mostly on the hands of elderly women, their faded markings resembling maps to an earlier social order.

Yet the lines endured — thin, bluish, stubborn. They recall Strabo’s ancient observation and underline a broader truth: in Bosnia’s layered history, identity was often inscribed not only in archives and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)