 Roma are deemed to have arrived in the territory of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina by the 14th–15th centuries, and to have adopted Islam as the majority confession during the times of Ottoman rule (15th–19th centuries).Already then, Roma were stigmatised and had to live in settlements outside city boundaries.Rousseau, as French consul in Bosnia and Herzegovina, estimated in 1866 a number of 9,965 or 1.1 percent of the population were Romani.