BOSNIAN WORLDS OF SUFISM

The history of Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the Balkans is inseparable from the history of Sufism in these regions. The news about the existence of a tekke and famous sheikhs Ajni-dede and Šemsi-dede before the entry of the Ottoman army in Sarajevo confirm the widely spread claim of local and international historians that Sufi missionaries greatly contributed to the fast expansion of Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that the Bosnian and Herzegovinian case is not an isolated one.

The oral legend about the holy crosier which was handed by the last Bosnian did (bishop) to the first Mevlevi sheikh of the tekke at Bentbaša, which was recorded by Rusmir Mahmutćehajić in his Dobra Bosna, indicates the symbolic inauguration of Sufis as new spiritual heads of Bosnia. The crosier was lost after the demolition of the Mevlevi tekke in 1958; however, as a token of the memory of ties between Sufis and the spirituality of medieval Bosnia, in the newly constructed Mevlevi cultural center on Jekovac in Sarajevo the interior of semahana, the central part where Masnavi is explained, is illustrated with calligraphic works written in Bosančica – the authentic medieval script of Bosnia. 

Reports of Sufis' devoutness, learnedness and moral superiority, of their contribution to the defense of Bosnia in wars, of social care for the poor and the weak, and particularly of encouraging the local population to adopt education, ethical improvement and elevation above so frequent formalism and the pursuit of the crown spiritual values of Islam indicate the scope of effects that Sufis have had on the development of their own community.

This segment of Sufi presence is the most evident and is doubtlessly recognized as an extremely important part of the overall Bosnian experience of living Islam. However, the Sufi heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina is so great, rich and multilayered that – despite dozens of the already conducted studies on the topic – it is necessary to scratch under the surface of the Orientalist notions of Sufism on the one hand and understanding Sufism as a side social phenomenon on the other, to properly evaluate our Sufi heritage. It is so significant that it can be classified into several separate groups and analyzed from the position of ethnology, archeology, folklore studies and anthropology through their contribution in architecture, music, culture of literacy, calligraphy, the phenomenon of praying sites (dovištes), Aljamiado and contemporary literature.  All the listed aspects of the culture of living have refracted differently depending on the particularities of different Sufi fraternities that have been active in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in turn additionally makes the analysis of Sufi heritage more complex. In his seminal study Derviški redovi u jugoslovenskim zemljama (Dervish orders in Yugoslav countries)  Džemal Ćehajić  analyzes seven Sufi orders and their contribution to the overall Islamic heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Mevlevi, Naqshbandi, Khalwati, Qadiriyya, Rifa'yya, Bektashiyya and Hamzevia. Today, most Sufis in Bosnia mostly belong to the Naqshbandi, Mevlevi, Qadiriyya or Rifa'yya order.

By building mosques, madrasas, inns, musafirhanas (free accommodation for travelers) and caravanserais, and particularly distinctive kinds of buildings which are the differentia specifica of Sufism – such as tekkes, zawiyaas, khanqas and turbes (tombs) – Sufis have enriched the coloring of the overall Bosnian building heritage. In her remarkable study Graditeljstvo Bosne i Hercegovine kroz stoljeća (Construction in Bosnia and Herzegovina through Centuries) Sabira Husedžinović provides an overview of representative buildings from ancient times until the end of the Austro-Hungarian administration in Bosnia, and among the outstanding architectural buildings dr. Husedžinović discusses eleven tekkes, three khanqahs and seventeen turbes. Some of these structures have been included in the list of national monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Indeed, dervishes are missionaries of Islam and it is a fact that they used to come to our regions before the conquest of Bosnia by the Ottomans, building shelters for the poor, for travelers, in the form of musafirhanas, which would later become cores for the formation of Muslim settlements. (...) Following the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia and Hum, many tekkes were soon established (two Bektashiyya, three Mevlevi, four Qadiriyya, fourteen Naqshbandi, one Rifa'yya and ten Khalwati)”, Husedžinović wrote, pointing out that, based on previous research, one can establish with certainty that the first tekke in Bosnia was built in 1462. It is a tekke of Isa-beg Ishaković, the founder of the city of Sarajevo. This tekke was also the first house in Sarajevo, built on the east side of the city to welcome all the travelers, strangers and friends of the city. 

Foundation of the tekke established the tradition of narrating and interpreting Masnavi by the great Mavlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, the founder of the Mavlavi Sufi order and one of the most prominent representatives of the classical Oriental-Islamic literature. “Naturally, Masnavi had lived much before Sarajevo, but this encounter between the book and the city is a cultural phenomenon which can bring pride to the inhabitants of this blessed basin on both banks of the Miljacka. One gets the impression that the city developed when people began to open Masnavi, to leaf and narrate it, leaf by leaf, lane by lane, verse by verse, house by house. What a lovely scebe, a city grows from the pages of a book. (...) Isn't it magnificent, that the age of a city is measured by the age of a book”, writes Šaban Gadžo in his research paper Tradicija prevođenja, kazivanja i tumačenja Mesnevije u Sarajevu i nekim drugim mjestima u BiH (The tradition of translating, narrating and interpreting Masnavi in Sarajevo and some other places in BiH).

Narrating and interpreting Masnavi continued in the following centuries as well, and a similar tradition could be seen in Mostar, Livno, Visoko, Travnik and Tuzla. Still, it is only in Sarajevo that it has been preserved until this day, with mesnevihan (interpreter of Masnavi) Mehmed Karahodžić, thus positioning Sarajevo as the only city in the world where narrating and interpreting this extraordinary work of Oriental-Islamic literature have not stopped for longer than half a millennium. This continuity was interrupted even in Konya, the cradle of Masnavi. When Fejzullah ef. Hadžibajrić went to hajj in 1969, Gadžo writes, he visited Konya. He was very sad when he found out that classes in Masnavi had not been taught in Konya for almost forty years and that, except for mufti, only few people could speak Persian.

Besides mesnevihans, many prominent poets and alims were involved in studying Mavlana and interpreting his works. In his work Književni rad bosansko-hercegovačkih muslimana (Literary Activity of Bosnian nd Herzegovinian Muslims), Mehmed Handžić listed Šami, Sudi, Habibi-dede, Derviš-pasha Bajezidagić, Abdullah Bošnjak, Muhtešim Šabanović, Ali-dedo Bošnjak, Leduni and others. Interestingly, members of the ulama class often included prominent representatives of Sufism, even mesnevihans. In the early 20th century, Raisu-l-ulama was a mesnevihan in Sarajevo, mufti Husni ef. Numagić a mesnevihan in Visoko, same as Qadi Ahmed ef. Mešić somewhat later. 

Out of all the forms of culture that Sufis contributed to, their contribution to the literary heritage of Bosniaks and Bosnia and Herzegovina is perhaps the most significant. Out of almost four hundred authors who wrote in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman during the Ottoman rule in Bosnia, a great majority were Sufis. It would not be wrong to say that all the authors of divan literature, an elite literary expression in the body of our heritage in Oriental languages, were Sufis. It is obvious from their biographies, and even more from the content of their works. One contemporary poetic categorization of divan literature classifies this literature into Shariatic, Tatiqatic, Marifatic and Haqiqatic – the signifiers which doubtlessly draw their origin from Sufi linguistic register and which are more than suitable for the intra-textual analytic and interpretative approach to the rich heritage of Bosniaks' divan literature. 

Sufis have also given a great contribution to the Aljamiado literature, written in Bosnian though in the Arebica script, by writing patriotic and rebellious poems. Sufis' greatest contribution t the Aljamiado literature is tekke nasheed as one of the most mature poetic expressions of Aljamiado literacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as an extremely important cultural form which inherited maqamat – a structural system of scales in the Oriental-Islamic music. The most significant authors of tekke nasheed are Sufi sheikhs as well: Abdulvehab Ilhamija, Abdurrahman Sirrija and Muhammed Mejlija. Over the recent decades, the melopoetic heritage of Sufi tekke nasheed will engender a new generation of authors (Šaban Gadžo, Džemaludin Latić, Dževad Ibrahimović) whose works would take an important position in the overall Bosniak culture. 

By joining developments in the Western European cultural circle upon the arrival of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bosniak literature began to take new forms, although Sufi topics and motifs would have an important, sometimes even a prominent place in works by authors of Bosniak and Bosnian and Herzegovinian lyric poetry of the Bosniak Renaissance age such as Safvet-beg Bašagić and Musa Ćazim Ćatić. Later on, expressionists such as Hamza Humo found their inspiration in Sufi poetic heritage. The most significant novel of Bosniak literature in general, a novel which brought our literature into the focus of Yugoslav and broader European interest, is fully based on Sufi heritage: from the title, through characters and ambience here the plot proceeds, to the linguistic expression enriched by lost wisdom of Sufis. It is the famous novelDerviš i smrt (The Dervish and Death)byMehmed Meša Selimović. Despite the rooted interpretations that Sufism is only the scenery which recedes in the reader's mind to give way to the figures of modernity, and despite the readings which indicate the betrayal of the fundamental Sufi postulates in this work, Meša's novel has still aroused an enormous interest in Sufi heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This interest has not waned until today, which is confirmed both by authors such as Dževad Karahasan and Asmir Kujović, and by numerous researchers who want to better understand a living tradition and its influence on shaping Islamic paradigms in Bosnia and Herzegovina.