EMIGRATION OF BOSNIAKS AND RISALA O HIDŽRI BY MEHMED TEUFIK AZABAGIĆ

The second half of the 19th century was one of the most difficult periods in the long history of Bosniaks. Upon withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire and occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Bosniaks were left on their own, at the risk of turning from a constituent to a peripheral factor in their own homeland.

Bosniaks responded to the change of authorities, which had far-reaching consequences, in different ways. A small part of them put up armed resistance to Austro-Hungarian troops, thus exposing Muslim population to repressive measures of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, while most part of Bosniak population, due to lack of information, confusion, shock and perturbed state of mind took a passive attitude toward all the events of the late 19th century. A large part of the population found the solution in leaving their centuries-long hearths and emigration to the regions which were still part of the Ottoman Empire. It is estimated that, in three waves of mass emigration from 1878 to 1910, around 150,000 inhabitants left Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even the slogan went around that sultan himself said: “Who is mine, let him come to me”. Same as in any turmoil, profiteers and petty souls rubbed their hands happily while amassing wealth on reselling huge beys’ estates.

Emigration of Bosniak population suited almost everybody, except the true, self-aware and vision-oriented patriots. Indeed, at the Congress of Berlin Austro-Hungary got the mandate to subdue Bosnia and gain order in the country. They did not like spreading of the news that Muslim population is dissatisfied and that their emigration was widespread. Intending to conceal actual scale of emigration, they did not even keep regular and transparent records of emigrating persons until 1906. However, the emigrating movement certainly benefited them, since it was how they could very cheaply obtain valuable and fertile land for their settlers and, on the other hand, they got rid oa a part of population that put up very tough resistance to its administration.

Ottoman authorities also saw their interest in the process. They presented the issue of emigration as interior colonization of Turkey, i.e. they intended to populate the population who emigrated at the borders with Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece “for keeping the balance of the Christian element”.

In bigger cities, Bosniak Muslim remained perturbed, disoriented, left at the mercy of strokes of fate, which was extremely uncertain and unpredictable. Only few individuals, seeing the complexity of the newly arisen circumstances, attempted to act and with their activity help others to more easily and more painlessly overcome the spiritual break between Oriental heritage and Western perspective. Among them, we can single out the principal of Sarajevo and Tuzla ruždija (middle school), Tuzla qadi and mufti, the first principal of Sharia court school and, later on, the second raisu-l-ulama Mehmed-efendi Teufik Azabagić.

He drew origin from the feudal class, and by education he belonged to the traditional school of Islamic ulama. At the decisive moment, when Bosniaks were at risk of being reduced from the main to the marginal position among the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was not an obstacle for him to place himself at the head of the progressive forced who led Bosniaks forward to the transition into Western cultural and civilizational trends. Mehmed-beg Kapetanović Ljubušak rightly includes him among enlighteners of his time.

In 1884, to dull the edge of mass emigration and explain to people that there were no religious reasons for emigration, i.e. Hijrah, Azabagić, as Tuzla mufti, wrote the well-known epistle “Risala o hidžriˮ (A Brochure about Hijrah), where he provided arguments about the danger of emigration and disastrous consequences that emigration had for Bosniak population. In the epistle, he used Sharia and practical arguments to contest attempts to present the emigration as a religious obligation (farz). “At our time, emigration (Hijra) is equal to suicide, doom, and disappearance of Bosniak Muslims from these regions,” mufti Azabagić was resolute. Due to this view, he suffered attacks by advocates of the theory of the necessity of emigration; however, he persevered “as a leader of indivisible Bosniak loyalty to Islam and Bosnian vatan (homeland)”.

Azabagić’s encyclopedic education, exceptional vision and invaluably positive role in one of the hardest periods in Bosniaks’ history cannot be contested or denied. A traditionalist, conservative and critic of rais Azabagić– Sakib-ef. Korkut recorded, on the occasion of Azabagić’s death, that the whole kutubhana (library) died with him. These words seemed too modest to him, and therefore he added “a kutubhana and a half”. Azabagić was born in 1838 and died in 1918. He lived for 80 years, in two centuries, mostly in the 19thm and eighteen years in the 20th century. He received his education in Bosnia and Istanbul in the period and in the system of the Ottoman Empire; he was educated for one time and worked at another. He was a link between two centuries, a bridge between two cultural-civilizational zones, Oriental-Islamic and Western-European, a witness and participant of the direct contact between Islam and Christianity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With his activity even after the retirement, rais Azabagić laid new landmarks in further development of many associations, journals, movements and initiatives. He was one of the first Bosniaks of indisputable learning and high-positioned rank, whose career and life were committed to helping his compatriots to get more easily involved in the political and civilizational environment of modern Europe as a space of authentic living of Islam.