Literary Heritage of Bosnian Muslims Writien in Oriental Languages in the Lightof European Oriental Studies

Abstract

The present paper is the author's review of the works concerning literary heritage of the Bosnian Moslems which were written by European orientalists. The author's intention was not to give a bibliographical inventory of the data about all the relevant works, but to present metodological development of that studies in Europe, and to mark the noticable differences in the European standpoints of the heritage in question.

A survey of the beginning of the researches is given, as well as the review of the most important philological works (catalogues and critical editions), monographies and articles treating this problem. As for the oriental studies literature, the first reviews ofthe literary works of Bosnian Moslems are found in the great historical surveys of Turkish poetry and Arabic literature written by Hammer, Gibb and Brockelmann. Among the monographies published in Europe two are distinguished: J. Rypka's monography about Sabit of Užice, from 1924, and the book of Jasna Šamić about Hasan Kaimi-baba, from 1986.

Up to the Alexandre Popovic's works, European oriental studies have treated these literary works as an integral part of the Ottoman Iiterature. Popovic started a number of metodological questions concerning the study of this literature. Apart from that, he is being engaged for a many years in the all-inclusive prosographical and literary-historical researches ofthe literature written in orientallanguages in South-East Europe and Balkans.