MIRZA ABDURAHMAN (MILIVOJ) MALIĆ (1897-1935)

Mirza Abdurahman M. Malić is one of outstanding Iranists from the South Slavic region from the first half of the 20th century, who presented the literary and spiritual heritage of Bosniaks to the West. He was born in Imotski in 1897. Upon completing commercial academy in Sušak (Croatia) in 1915 and short employment in banks, he decided to set out to the wide world to get education in Oriental studies. They captured his youthful curiosity while he read works about philosophy, theology and philology as a student.

Thrilled about the Orient and everything related to the Orient, Malić converted to Islam at the age of 25 and took on the name Mirza Abdurahman. He explained his decision as follows: “I have realized that Islam is the religion which I actually perceived as the most perfect in my imagination and, after sufficient consideration and studying, I decided to adopt Islam.” (Nametak, “Merhum Dr. Mirza Abdurahman M. Malić”, Novi Behar, p. 114) He tried to continue his studies in Spain, “as once the most cultured country of the West”, and eventually, searching for the place where he would satisfy his intellectual hunger for new knowledge in the area of Oriental studies, found himself in Paris, where he received a degree in Oriental studies, with the scholarship of French Ministry of Justice. To become familiar with culture and spirit of the East, he spent some time among Muslims in Morocco, Algeria, Tripoli, Egypt and Syria, attending lectures at Al-Azhar in Cairo, Ez-Zitouna in Tunis and other universities.

He was a polyglot in the true sense of the word. He could use French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, Persian, English, Turkish, Polish. Czech, Bulgarian and Arabic. At Sorbonne, he applied for doctoral dissertation on the topic “Critical translation of work Bulbulistan by Fevzi Mostarac (Blagajac) from Persian into Turkish” (Bulbulistan du Shaik Fevzi de Mostar — poete herzegovinien de langue persane). He borrowed a Persian copy of the work from Bratislava, from the collection of Safvet-bey Bašagić, PhD.

By translating and critically presenting Fevzi's Bulbulistan, Malić attempted to make the Western public familiar with the man of Bosnia and Herzegovina, his mentality, way of thinking, as well as literary and, generally, intellectual creations of Bosniaks of the 18th century.

Faced with financial problems during his studies, and with harassment by official representatives of Yugoslav authorities in France, Malić fell ill at a very young age. He was paralyzed for seven months, and was brought to the Sorbonne University on a stretcher to brilliantly defend his doctoral dissertation in 1935. The work was published in Paris in the same year, by publisher Librairie L. Rodstein, and half a century later it was translated and published in Bosnian in Sarajevo. In his review of the French edition of Bulbulistan, Tajib Okić noted that “on the European scale, after the study of Jan Rypka on Sabit Užičanin, the study of Malić is the only academic work which deals with the role of South Slavs  in the literary history of the Middle East.” Fifty years later (in 1986), Jasna Šamić had Divan de Ka'imi published, as the following monograph about a local poet in one of the European languages.

Besides presenting a Bosnian poet from the 18th century to European public, the study of Malić discusses historical, social and cultural circumstances in Bosnia at the time when Bulbulistan was written. Besides the author, shaykh Fevzi Mostarac (Blagajac), Malić was one of the first who provided arguments and academic foundations to present the contribution of authors of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European cultural community. He was very familiar with European and Oriental circumstances. He translated and wrote a lot. His extensive work “Why I converted to Islam” has remained in the manuscript form.

In a letter to Malić's sister Nevenka, a close friend of his, Abdurahman Nametak, says the following about this work: “It was a collection of notes, of about two thousand pages. Abdurahman Mirza Malić would say that these notes, if published, would stun Europe”.

During his studies, he was permanently in contact with prominent personalities of public and religious life of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Džemaludin Čaušević, Edhem Mulabdić, Abdurahman Nametak, Ismet Muftić, Osman Sokolović, Husein Đogo, Tajib Okić, and Mehmed Begović. The personal archives of Abdurahman Mirze M. Malić, which consists of 170 envelopes of various materials in several languages, is stored at Gazi Husrev-bey Library in Sarajevo. The archives also include his published and some of unpublished works: Španjolska osvajanja i njihovo širenje kulture (Spanish conquests and spread of their culture); Šta je to uzrok našem nazatku i zaostalosti u prosvjetnom polju (What is the cause of our retrogression and backwardness in the area of education); Da ne mislite da sam sam (Do not think that I am alone); Stari Jugoslaveni u starom svijetu (Old Yugoslavs in the old world).

Abdurahman Mirza M. Malić died on 12 October 1935 and was buried in his native town.

References

• Archives of Mirza Malić, Gazi Husrev-bey Library

• Milivoj Mirza Malić i Fevzijev Bulbulistan na univerzitetu Sorbonne, Sarajevo: Institut za islamsku tradiciju Bošnjaka, 2016,

• Muftić, Ismet – “O Mirzi Maliću”, Muslimanska svijest V/1940, (2 November 1940), no. 88-89, p. 9.

• Kemura, Ibrahim; “Malićeva kolekcija u Gazi Husrev-begovoj biblioteci”, Anali Gazi Husrev-begove biblioteke u Sarajevu, 1972. vol. I, pp. 103-105.

• Manojlović, Zorica, “Dvije tihe obljetnice”, Znakovi vremena, Summer-Fall 2015, pp. 11-32.

• Karahalilović, Namir, “O doktorskoj disertaciji Milivoja Mirze Abdurahmana Malića”, Znakovi vremena, Summer-Fall 2015, 33-53.

• Nametak, Abdurahman, “Merhum Dr. Mirza Abdurahman M. Malić”, Novi Behar, year IX/1935-36, no. 7.