Dianatomia
Regular Member
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You are equating Balkans Slavs with Croats and Serbs. Minor Slavic tribes already existed in the Western Balkans before the arrival of the Serbs and Croats. Of-course these Slavs would find refuge in Bosnia where the terrain is very mountainous, during the Croat/Serb migrations.
As for the question of whether the inhabitants of Bosnia were really Croat or really Serb in 1180, it cannot be answered, for two reasons: first, because we lack evidence, and secondly, because the question lacks meaning. We can say that the majority of the Bosnian territory (in 1180) was probably occupied by Croats - or at least, by Slavs under Croat rule - in the seventh century; but that is a tribal label which has little or no meaning five centuries later. The Bosnians were generally closer to the Croats in their religious and political history; but to apply the modern notion of Croat identity (something constructed in recent centuries out of religion, history, and language) to anyone in this period would be an anachronism. All that one can sensibly say about the ethnic identity of the Bosnians is this: they were the Slavs who lived in Bosnia.
I am not equating medieval Balkan Slavs with the 'modern' notion of Serbs and Croats (AND Bulgarians if you will), because the modern notion of nationhood has developed in the last two centuries. Moreover, during that time some groups (like the Bosniacs and Macedonian Slavs) have developed modern identities of their own.
In medieval times the notion of being Serb, Croat or Bulgarian may have been vague. But, this does not alter the fact that all modern Slavic nations in the Balkans can trace their roots to medieval Croats, Serbs, Bulgarians. It is no coincidence that Ottoman documents, a few centuries after your reference(1180), refer only to Croats, Serbs and Bulgarians. Not simply Slavs and certainly not Bosnians.
So I guess my point is that, in between the Balkan Slavs and the modern Serbs and Croats, there have also been Serbs and Croats with a vague medieval ethnic connotation. Many ancestors of the Bosniacs belonged to that group.