what is Bosnian literature?
Bosnian cultural tradition is quite long, even if arguably it suffered severe interruptions. It is a territory that has a share in the Graeco-Roman legacy. The autochthonous Illyrian tribes, living in contact with ancient Greeks, were conquered by the Romans, who built in Bosnia some of their beautiful villas decorated with mosaics. Also, Christianity in Bosnia dates back to late Antiquity; it found its most typical medieval expression in the form of stećak (sculpted cross used as a tombstone). The early Bosnian state organization, the Banate of Bosnia, left written vestiges from as early as the 12th century (the famous Chart of Ban Kulin, a trade agreement with the Ragusan Republic, i.e. Dubrovnik). Medieval Bosnia even created its own variant of the Cyrillic script, the so-called Bosančica (Bosanica) widely used on the Dalmatian coast. Curiously, this borderland between Western and Eastern Christianity had its own, independent Bosnian Church, considered heretical by both competing sides; it disappeared after the Ottoman conquest, allegedly through a mass conversion to Islam. Up to the 15th and 16th centuries, there existed in Bosnia a tradition of producing richly illuminated manuscripts, still preserved in Sarajevo. Among those monuments of the culture of writing are both Christian and Muslim books, such as Hrvojev missal and Hval's Codex, as well as a lavish 16th-c. copy of the Quran.
Bosnian literature in the modern sense developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Kingdom of Bosnia already ceased to exist. The Ottoman period started in 1463, but it did not imply an immediate Islamisation. Among the founders of the early-modern Bosnian literature, there is still a Franciscan friar, Matija Divković (1563-1631), author of the Christian Doctrine for the Stavic Peoples. Overall, the Slavic Muslim community developed spontaneously (rather than by forced conversions) and flourished under Ottoman rule, when the first library of Sarajevo was created (this is why, against the grain of History, the city still hosts an important collection of medieval and early-modern manuscripts). The city also had madrassas and Sufi lodges. This is how Bosnia contributed to Sufi literary and scholarly culture with such figures as Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi Bosnevi, the author of a Muslim Call to Faith in Serbian, and various Slavic-speaking nasheeds (Muslim religious songs).
Bosnia and Herzegovina ceased to be a part of the Ottoman Empire after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Nonetheless, the formulation of Bosniak identity under the Habsburg rule was far from obvious. In 1909, the Austrian annexation of the country was an attempt at solving an increasingly complex question once and for all. This is how Bosnia received its constitution from the emperor Franz Joseph in 1910. Four years later, a member of a Young Bosnia movement, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the heir of the Austro-Hungarian throne. This is how the old city of learning, Sarajevo, became known as the place where the Great War began.
Across various conflicts of the 20th century, Bosnia navigated as a part of a larger state, first the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Till the Bosnian War of 1992-1995, when today's independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged. Often associated with Islam, this present-day state is Muslim and Christian almost half in half.
Among the Yugoslavian Bosnian writers, Meša Selimović (1910-1982) deserves a mention for his novel Death and the Dervish (1966). The dervish in the title is Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish from an 18th-century Sufi monastery somewhere in Bosnia whose brother has been arrested by the Ottoman authorities. It is of course an allusion to the climate of oppression in contemporary Yugoslavia; Selimović failed to rescue his brother executed by the communist partisans without any trial. The general theme is malodušnost, moral decadence of the society, valid as much for the late Ottoman and Yugoslavian times. Mulla Yusuf, a disciple whom Nuruddin admitted to the tekke as an orphan, ends up spying on him and his brother. Very little remains from the ideal of fighting in defense of the faith (by Nuruddin as an Ottoman asker and by the Yugoslavian idealistic communists). Finally, Nuruddin discovers why his brother Harun was arrested. As a trusted secretary of a kadi, he found compromising documents, the confession of an accused, prepared even before the hearing. Yusuf betrayed him. The affect that overwhelms the religious man from that moment on is hate and the thirst for revenge. It gives him unexpected strength that elevates him to the position of new kadi, master of his own spies. Deeds promoted with bad intentions increase his reputation and prestige more than the noble ones. He becomes a man of the system, so typical for any communist society.
Bosnian literature in the modern sense developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Kingdom of Bosnia already ceased to exist. The Ottoman period started in 1463, but it did not imply an immediate Islamisation. Among the founders of the early-modern Bosnian literature, there is still a Franciscan friar, Matija Divković (1563-1631), author of the Christian Doctrine for the Stavic Peoples. Overall, the Slavic Muslim community developed spontaneously (rather than by forced conversions) and flourished under Ottoman rule, when the first library of Sarajevo was created (this is why, against the grain of History, the city still hosts an important collection of medieval and early-modern manuscripts). The city also had madrassas and Sufi lodges. This is how Bosnia contributed to Sufi literary and scholarly culture with such figures as Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi Bosnevi, the author of a Muslim Call to Faith in Serbian, and various Slavic-speaking nasheeds (Muslim religious songs).
Bosnia and Herzegovina ceased to be a part of the Ottoman Empire after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Nonetheless, the formulation of Bosniak identity under the Habsburg rule was far from obvious. In 1909, the Austrian annexation of the country was an attempt at solving an increasingly complex question once and for all. This is how Bosnia received its constitution from the emperor Franz Joseph in 1910. Four years later, a member of a Young Bosnia movement, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the heir of the Austro-Hungarian throne. This is how the old city of learning, Sarajevo, became known as the place where the Great War began.
Across various conflicts of the 20th century, Bosnia navigated as a part of a larger state, first the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Till the Bosnian War of 1992-1995, when today's independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged. Often associated with Islam, this present-day state is Muslim and Christian almost half in half.
Among the Yugoslavian Bosnian writers, Meša Selimović (1910-1982) deserves a mention for his novel Death and the Dervish (1966). The dervish in the title is Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish from an 18th-century Sufi monastery somewhere in Bosnia whose brother has been arrested by the Ottoman authorities. It is of course an allusion to the climate of oppression in contemporary Yugoslavia; Selimović failed to rescue his brother executed by the communist partisans without any trial. The general theme is malodušnost, moral decadence of the society, valid as much for the late Ottoman and Yugoslavian times. Mulla Yusuf, a disciple whom Nuruddin admitted to the tekke as an orphan, ends up spying on him and his brother. Very little remains from the ideal of fighting in defense of the faith (by Nuruddin as an Ottoman asker and by the Yugoslavian idealistic communists). Finally, Nuruddin discovers why his brother Harun was arrested. As a trusted secretary of a kadi, he found compromising documents, the confession of an accused, prepared even before the hearing. Yusuf betrayed him. The affect that overwhelms the religious man from that moment on is hate and the thirst for revenge. It gives him unexpected strength that elevates him to the position of new kadi, master of his own spies. Deeds promoted with bad intentions increase his reputation and prestige more than the noble ones. He becomes a man of the system, so typical for any communist society.
I have read... nothing ...
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I have written... nothing ...
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