The research presented in this article was financed by the grant of the Polish National Science Center: Social Changes of the Muslim Communities in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Bulgaria in the Second Half of the 19th and at the Beginning of the 20th Century: Comparative Studies (2020/39/B/HS3/01717). For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.

After the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the Austro- Hungarian government, in an effort to appease the local, especially Muslim population, proclaimed that the existing customs and laws would be preserved, for the purpose of achieving a gradual social transformation, without major setbacks. This paper seeks to re-examine the promise the new government on the example of the status and later fate of former Ottoman officials and military personnel, who were mostly locals in the occupied territory. Unpublished archival sources, which can be used to reconstruct the basic direction of Austro-Hungarian administration in the irst years following the occupation, are used to show how former Ottoman officials, principally Muslims, were temporarily or permanently incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian administrative system in Bosnia and Herzegovina.