Upon Manuscript Sources of Kadić’s Tārīḫ-i Enverī

Abstract

The manuscript collection of the Oriental Institute, used to contain 5263 manuscript codices in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. It was one of the most precious in the Balkans. Especially recognizable in it are numerous works of Bosniak authors written in Arabic, Turkish or Persian, as well as manuscripts that were copied by copyists from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The destruction of the Oriental Institute on May 17, 1992, in addition to literary manuscript material, caused disappearance of many thousands of historical documents that testified about the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. It used to represent the first class original sources for the study of both general and cultural history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the very same day, it were destroyed six of the 28 volumes of are first-class historical source and manuscript work of Bosniak Muhammad Enverî Kadić under the title Tārīḫ-i Enverī / The History by Enverî. It was a copy that Kadić left to his heirs, and it was bought by the Oriental Institute for its manuscript collection. So, after the burning of the Institute are preserved only 22 volumes (OIS, R-29/2-10 i 16-28, previous number 4702/1-28). In the literature it is known as Kadić’s Chronicle, and it covers the period from the 766 to 1346 h.g. (1364/65-1927/28). Each volume covers the period of 4-5 years and contains about 400 pages, making a total of more than 11,000 pages of handwritten text (30 × 18 cm). Kadić’s Chronicle is written in Ottoman, with some fragments in Arabic and Persian, while one part that relates to the Austro-Hungarian occupation is written and in Bosnian languageand in Latin script. Kadić wrote his works using grease pencil, and he did it in three copies using carbon paper. One copy is kept in the Gazi Husrev-bey library and it is the primary autograph (GHB, Tārīḫ-i Enverī (TE), R-7301-7328). Its third copy is assumed to be preserverd in one of Istanbul’s libraries, however, it is still neither located in any Istanbul libraries nor it is listed in any catalogues of Istanbul libraries.