MUHAMED HEVAI USKUFI BOSNEVI

Muhamed Hevai Uskufi Bosnevi is a bright name of Bosnian Culture: our history, science, theology, poetry and lexicography. According to the available literature, he was born near Tuzla, in the village of Dobrnja, which is now situated along the state road from Šiće to Srebrenik, in 1601. These data on the place of his origin are based on Hevai's verse from his poem Poziv na viru (Invitation to Religion), where he says about himself: “Dobrnjatan, Doljno Solan / radi Hevai je viran, / pomoć učin', Bože Jedan (From Dobrnja, Doljno Solan / Hevai is religious, / help me, the One God)”, which implies that he was born in Dobrnja (and it is possible that an error occurred when reading this world, and that the transcribed form reads 'Dobrnjatan'). An additional argument for the correctness of the ubication is provided by the phrase 'Doljno Solan', which points to the term 'Donja Tuzla' which in turn, according to the available data, implies present Tuzla. The last historical sources about him date back to 1651, as was recorded in the poem Poziv na viru: „Kad hiljada i šezdeset, / i još jedan god bi uzet, / pismo ovo dade pamet. (When one thousand and sixty / plus a year passed, / this writing mas made)“ Some researchers believe that, after he returned from his service with the Ottoman government, he worked as a qadi in the Zvornik sanjak.

The real name of this author, i.e. his family origin, is not presently known, and there is no information about when exactly he died and where he was buried. However, besides his real name– Muhamed (or perhaps Mehmed?), there is now no doubt about his poetic and professional nicknames. His nickname Hevai was related to the Arabic word häwā', i.e. air, which in turn indicates that his nickname Hevai means 'airy', 'ethereal'. Hevai mentions his nickname in verses in Bosnian, in the poem Bože Jedini, Ti nas ne kinji (Our only God, don't torture us), where he wrote: “Misao Hevai u dne i noći, / Da Te je naći, / Teb’ da je doći (Hevai thought day and night, / that he would find you, / that I will come to you)”, or in his poem Višnjemu Bogu, Koji sve sazda (To God Almighty, who made everything): “Nije li, Hevai, vrime te naći, / dosta ne bi l' mu od tebe zaći... (It is high time that Hevai finds you / he has been looking for you long enough...)”. He also used his name hypocoristically, in a verse of his poem Molimo se Tebi, Bože (We pray to you, God), where he wrote: “Moli ti se Hevo jedan! (A Hevo prays to you!)”. Nickname Uskufi, which was discussed by Ismet Smailović, who believed that it might indicate the place of his origin – Uskoplje, now Gornji Vakuf, was interpreted differently by Alija Nametak, who believed that uskuf  “is a kind of gilded cap pointed toward the top, which was born by janissary officers and servants in the imperial court (...), and uskuf is also a kind of cap with round top, which is typically worn by inhabitants of islands in the Mediterranean Sea. It is knitted of red wool, and it is the basis of fez”“ Thus, it can be claimed that he got nickname Uskufi because of his distinctive professional orientation, while nickname Hevai is his pen name. These pen names reveal that Muhamed Hevai Uskufi had two distinctive titles. Hevais used nickname Bosnevi, which can be read in the foreword to his Dictionary, and which is derived from its Arabicized form, to underscore his ethnic, i.e. regional belonging, since it means Bosniak or Bosnian: “The poor me, Uskufi Bosnevi, / am a servant of the ruler of rulers...” It is in this context that Nametak's explanation of nickname Uskufi supports the assumption that it was related to the service at the sultan's court, and that the explanation of the meaning of pen name Uskufi is related to the kind of janissary cap and not to Uskoplje.

With respect to his works, Hevai Uskufi Bosnevi is known by his several poems in Bosnian, which are mostly found in all the well-known collections of Bosnian Aljamiado literature (by Kemura, Ćorović, Hadžijahić, Nametak and Huković): Bosanski da vam besedim, bratani; Molimo se Tebi, Bože; Bože Jedini, Ti nas ne kinji; Višnjem Bogu, Koji sve sazda; Poziv na viru, while versions of poems Moje srce, and particularly Savjet ženama are disputable in terms of their author. His poems typically rely on the spirit of devout poetry, while his socially engaged poem Poziv na viru is considered one of the oldest and best-known poems which highlight the spirit of interreligious communion (although some literary historians believe that Hevai invites his contemporaries to adopt Islam), which was particularly prominent in Bosnian society of the 17th century, and certainly later on as well: “Otac jedan, jedna mati, / prvo bi nam valja znati. / Jer ćemo se paski klati? / Hod'te nami vi na viru (One father, one mother, / is the first thing we should know. / Shall we slaughter each other as dogs? / Join the religion)”, and then: “Pamet nije bit se, klati, / već na viri biti brati, / vrlo pravo, virno stati, / hod'te nami vi na viru (It is not wise to fight, to kill / but to be brothers in religion, / stand up upright, devoutly).” Within shorter poems, one should single out Hevai's Dova / Molitva (Prayer), where he poetically prays to the Sublime God, which in a way corresponds both to Hevai's devoutness and to the need to look for the common word among members of different religions:

“Bože jedini, ti nas grešno robje oprosti, i vrli žitak, i na jedin navod’ i bili raj, i tvoje lipo milostivo lice. I svaki čas što je tvoja zapovida držimo. Ukaži da ne hodi među nami opačina, ni laž, ni nevira. Ti nas sačuvaj od omraze, i od muke, i od crna pakla, i od zla svakoga čina, i neprilike, i ovsin tebe drugoga robstva. I što se do sada po neviri robilo i od roda i od plemena po nemilosti vodilo, ti mir i prost učini svaku. Kano si od jednog kolina stvorio, onako na bratstvo utviruj (?), ne po viri od istoka i zapada sa svije strana svojoj milosti i rodu i prijateljem po putu sastav’. Bože milostivi, tebi se molimo, teb’ se klanjamo, ti među nami opačine ispravi, da ne čine zamet, da uzmu viru i pamet, amin (Our only God, forgive your sinful slaves. You are our joy, and white heaven, and your beautiful graceful face. And we always obey your commandments. Don't let evil, lies or disbeliefs be among us. Save us from hatred, pain black hell, and any evil deed, and misfortune, and any slavery but to you. And forgive everybody who served in disbelief, and suffered misfortune, and make peace with the. As you made everything from one kind, bring brotherhood to us. God Gracious, we pray to you, we bow to you, please correct evil among us, let everybody adopt faith and common sense, Amen.)“

What Hevai is both the best-known and famous for as one of the most important South Slavic lexicographers is the fact that he is the author of widely famous poetic dictionary Makbuli-arif, also known under the title Potur-Šahidija. It is a Turkish-Bosnian and Bosnian-Turkish poetic dictionary where Hevai, observing strict requirements of Oriental – or more accurately Arabic poetic form – which was an additional problem since the syllabic structure of Bosnian and Turksih is completely different from Arabic – managed to compose a dictionary and wrote, in his foreword in Turkish: “Relying upon God, / I mused / and it occurred to me / to collect a dictionary in Bosnian / and let it be a kind of light”. He wrote the dictionary after the model of the Turkish-Persian dictionary collected by Ibrahim Šahidija, which he also described in the foreword to his Dictionary as follows: “Briefly, I write in the manner of Šahidija, /But, god forbid, I have no objections about him!” Describing the complexity of his intellectual enterprise, which implies poetic linking of lexical equivalents in Turkish and Bosnian into the molds of Arabic metric pattern, whereby the sequence of the use of lexemes in these two languages is not strictly based due to the syllabic structure of words from different languages, Hevai wrote: “Let one hemistich be in Bosnian, / And the other in Turkish if a rhyme can be found”. Underscoring the intellectual complexity of his work, Hevai pointed out: “Since Bosniaks have stout bodies, / You should know that their words are also stout, / And they should be reduced to a meter. / It is an iron bow which cannot be stretched.” The dictionary is divided into 13 conceptually- associative chapters: 1. God and the man; 2. Colors, agriculture and days; 3. Elements of nature; 4. Life in the village; 5. Courtyard; 6. Love life and marriage; 7. The body and diseases; 8. Death and journey; 9. The field and the house; 10. Plants and animals; 11. Family; 12. Game and forest, and 13. Numbers and other. In these chapters, Hevai wrote in allusions, which he confirmed in the foreword: “I wrote some witty Bosnian jokes, / And those who see them can say: „Well, they're really nice!”. They would be first discussed by Prussian consul Otto Blau in Sarajevo in 1868. A part of the poetic Dictionary is followed by a short afterword in Ottoman Turkish. According to incomplete data, at this moment different institutions in the world hold about forty manuscript versions of the Dictionary, most of which can be found in Gazi Husrev-beg's Library.  

Bosnian language in Dictionary and his poems is unusual from the viewpoint of the development of this language, though one gets the impression that the author paid great attention to the way of expression. His Bosnian is not burdened by unnecessary Oriental words, and in his Dictionary he was particularly careful to use words which are semantically and by language registers adjusted and present in both languages – Turkish and Bosnian.

References:

• Hadžijahić, Muhamed (1974), “Neke karakteristike stare bosansko-muslimanske književnosti”, Starija književnost, Sarajevo: Zavod za izdavanje udžbenika.

• Hevai Uskufi, Muhamed (2001): Maqbūl-i 'Arif (Potur-Šahidiya), Tuzla: Općina Tuzla, Behram-begova biblioteka i Narodna i univerzitetska biblioteka u Tuzli.

• Huković, Muhamed, Kasumović, Ahmed, Smailović, Ismet (1990): Muhamed Hevai Uskufi, Tuzla: Univerzal.

• Huković, Muhamed (1997), Zbornik alhamijado književnosti, Bošnjačka književnost u 100 knjiga, knj. 11, Sarajevo: Preporod.

• Kemura, Sejfudin, Ćorović, Vladimir (1912), Das Serbokroatische Dichtunger bosnischer Moslims aus dem XVII., XVIII. und XIX. Jahrhundert, Zur Kunde der Balkanhalbinsel, II, Quellen und Forschungen, Sarajevo.

• Nametak, Abdurahman (1981), Hrestomatija alhamijado književnost, Sarajevo: Svjetlost.

• Nametak, Alija (1968), Rukopisni tursko-hrvatskosrpski rječnici, Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetosti.

• Škaljić, Abdulah (1973),  Turcizmi u srpskohrvatskom jeziku, treće izdanje, Sarajevo: Svjetlost.