Bosniac Poet Zekerijja Sukkeri and His Epigraphic

Abstract

Very little data are known so far on the Bosniac poet Zekerijja Sukkeri, primarily because, until publishing of the Goelpinarly’s Catalogue it was unknown where his Divan (Collection of poetry in qualitatttiv aruz metrics) was. In the view to clarifying his biography, in this article, we tried to develop and translate into the Bosnian language his tarihs (epigrams) starting from the first one dated 1072, to the poet’s arrival to Istanbul in 1082.

In a codex which has been known and preserved so far, in which Sukkerija’s Divan was kept, 22 tarihs were preserved in total, 20 of which were written in the Turkish language, and 2 in the Persian one, 17were created prior to the poet’s arrival and settlement in Istambul, while 5 tarihs v/ere created after he arrived to Istambul. Thematically, they could be classified into tarihs on the historical events, tarihs on construction of particular objects, tarihs on growing a beard, a tarih on devastation of Sarajevo in the fire, in 1073, and tarih on the death of several Sukkrija’s contemporaries.

On the basis of the tarihs dedicated to his contemporaries and country fellows such as Mustafa Katibija Chelebija, a calligrapher and a poet, Sarajevo muftija and šeih Ibrahim Bistrigija, muezzin in the Bey’s mosque, then devastation of the Sarajevo čaršija (bazaar) in the fire, than tarih dedicated to the Bosnian govemor and some others, we are free to present a presumption that the author happen to stay in his homeland, more precisely, in Sarajevo. From Sukkrija’s tarihs, we also learn about the two interesting data: the first is on devastation of Sarajevo in the fire, on which event we did not find data with the previous research workers; namely, the fire that devastated Sarajevo čaršija (bazaar) in 1073 (1662/63.) was in question, and the rhymes by which the author đescribed the event prove that he was the witness of the calamity of his city in ’the fire of God’s doom". The second interesting data has been derived from the tarih on building of the mehkema (court building) from 1080 (1669/70), and for which, on the basis of previous tarihs and identifications of particular personalities, we proved a presumption that the most probably the building of Sarajevo mehkeme was in question, which was so far unknown.