Mustafa-Bey Atlagić’s Poem in Turkish About Ibrahim-Bey’ S Defence of the Livno Fortress in the Early 18th Century

Abstract

The paper discusses a poem (qasida) written in the Ottoman-Turkish language by Mustafa-bey Atlagić in praise of the alaybey Ibrahim-bey. We know that the poet čame from the Bosnian feudal family Atlagić from the town of Livno and that he died in about 1740. The Qasida about Ibrahim-bey, which is the first presentation of the poetic opus of the Bosnian poet Atlagić, has been offered in transcription and translation into the Bosnian language on the basis of two manuscripts. One of the manuscripts is kept at the Gazi Husrev-bey Library in Sarajevo. The other was kept in the collection - mağmü‘a of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Sarajevo until 1992, when it burnt out in the war actions along with the rest of the manuscripts in that institution. In this paper, we also used the photocopy of that other manuscript made before the war and saved in a private possession.

The paper analyses the Ottoman-Turkish language of this qasida which has the characteristics of the simpler language of divan poetry. It also analyses the occurrence of code switching achieved by quoting the vvords of others (not the poet’s) in the local language, and the occurrence of code mixing. Short sentences in the Arabic language (one of them was taken over from the Qur’an) have been rated as the manifestation of the faith of the character in whose speech they are integrated.