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Sicanje (The Catholic tattoos of Croats)-
The Croat women in Bosnia and Herzegovina have a thousand years-long tradition of tattooing their hands.
The origin of this custom lies with the Illyrian and Celtic tribes of the area -continued-
The Croat women in Bosnia and Herzegovina have a thousand years-long tradition of tattooing their hands.
The origin of this custom lies with the Illyrian and Celtic tribes of the area -continued-
and predates both the slavic migration to the area and Christianity. This custom was revived among the Ethnic Croatian Catholic women in Bosnia who under the Ottoman rule suffered under the turks.
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Many women were forcibly converted to Islam, frequently raped and they're children were taken as slaves. In response to such violations, women took to tattooing themselves on their hands, fingers, chests, and foreheads with crosses and other ancient ornaments.
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(They believed such practices would create a spiritual guard that would ward off the Turks, or would at least let people know they were once Catholic before undergoing a forced conversion.) The symbols and patterns are often designed as discreet crosses. -continued-
Women mostly did them, and they were doing the act of tattooing on holy days. Although this traditions outlasted he Ottoman oppressors, communist authorities made tattooed women targets of hate campaigns. Threatened and treated like criminals -continued-
they would often lose their jobs due to their religious allegiances. Eventually women stopped tattooing their children out of fear and the practice was more or less extinct by the 1950s.
