autonomy as specified in the San Stefano Treaty. Mazhar's biggest obstacle in this regard was his own deputy Konstan Pasha, a Greek man of Orthodox faith who was uniformly described amongst the foreign consuls in Sarajevo as the only Christian to hold high office in the Ottoman civil administration in Bosnia. The petitioners' demand to eliminate all Christians would thus have removed Konstan from office and secured the Muslim Mazhar's post had the San Stefano agreement been implemented. When several upper-class Muslims as well as some Serbian Orthodox leaders learned of the petition, they urged its redrafting without the explicitly anti-Christian demands, all of which was done and a new version, written by an Ottoman official, began to be circulated. The new petition, formally submitted to governor Mazhar on 2 June 1878, was seen as a win for the leading Muslim landowners who managed to purge it of its anti-Christian and anti-reform provisions. Its only two points were now a demand that a popular assembly rule the land and an appeal to all groups to unite in opposition to Austro-Hungarian occupation. Formation of the People's Assembly In the days following the petition's formal submission to the Ottoman governor, members of Sarajevo's Muslim elite undertook further mediation steps in order to build consensus among the factionalized local players. They managed to persuade representatives of lower-class Muslims, including religious leaders, to join a single all-Muslim assembly, followed by succeeding in getting governor Mazhar to allow the assembly to meet in the government headquarters building, the Konak. The new body, called the People's Assembly (Narodni odbor), met for the first on 5 June with an all-Muslim membership consisting of thirty individuals from the Muslim landowning elite and thirty lower-class Muslims (religious functionaries, artisans, and shopkeepers). In an appeal to the central Ottoman government, the assembly blamed Bosnia's woes on Istanbul's mismanagement and the government's failure to respond to individual complaints. The assembly's address continued by claiming that the distant government had driven them to form their own representative body to address local needs with local officials, and warned that the population is would defend their land with their lives in the event of a war. It was necessary, the appeal went on, to retain permanent garrisons of Ottoman troops in the Bosnia Vilayet, and in any case the government could neither feed nor clothe its own troops. Finally, the appeal protested the punishment