GET-TOGETHERS AND PICNICS

In our regions, human need for socializing and entertainment was satisfied in different forms since earliest times. Besides religious and family gatherings, people socialized at get-togethers, picnics, sohbet-halvas, coffee-houses and reading rooms, bees and ćetenija-making.

Gathering around the sofra (table) have been favorite kinds of socializing. Such kinds of socializing included sijelos (evening get-togethers) and sohbet-halvas, and teferičes (picnics) also had a special place.

At get-togethers, people served food, played with the accompaniment of saz, sang sevdalinkas, told jokes, and riddles and puzzles were also popular. Such forms of socializing typically took place at homes, though some were also organized in hans (inns). The food served at get-togethers was homemade, prepared in the household for this occasion, with obligatory coffee and sweet dishes, as well as fruit. It was typically members of the immediate and extended family and neighbors that took part at get-togethers. Such a tradition of gathering has survived until this day.

Unlike get-togethers, sohbet-halvas were somewhat different. Sohbet is an Arabic word which means conversation, and on this occasion people served a particular kind of halva – a simple sweet dish made of flour, ghee and sugar. Sohbet-halvas implied gathering of a particular company, a group of friends with similar interests. They took place once a week, every time at another host's place. In his Yearbook (second half of the 18th century), Mula Mustafa Bašeskija wrote about this kind of socializing, and also noted that some groups gathered even four times a week. Sohbet-halvas differed by the content of socializing, and implied religious and intellectual contents; after the evening prayer, participants would sit in a circle, read excerpts from books and finally talked while eating halva and drinking coffee.

Besides these, there were sohbet-halvas where parlor games were played. Bašeskija also described lavish sohbet-halvas where, besides halva, various dishes were served, with 20 to 30 courses. On such occasions people played the naj (reed fife), sang, made jokes and even danced.

Picnics (teferičes) were the most favorite form of entertainment and socializing. They took place in the period from May to October. Picnics included large meals, entertainment and music. This custom has been known in our region ever since the Middle Ages. We know it from the folk poem about Herceg Stjepan, who brought water to a particular place to be able to go there and have fun. Rich individuals used to build the so-called cottages outside the city, where they would spend summers with their family and organize picnics. Most people went to a day, as well as to several-day picnics. Food and drinks were brought on these occasions, and in the case of several-days' picnics, even tents. Music was a constituent part of picnics: people would take a saz player and, more recently, an accordion player as well. Picnics also included various games, such as rock throwing, lifting stakes, wrestling, etc.

Kušanmas, a special kind of picnics, were organized in the period from the 17th to the late 19th century. Kušanma, or a big rice dish, is a celebration which were organized in summer, by craftsmen or individual guilds to honor of promoting young masters and journeymen, after the completed training with a master of a given craft. A lot of people gathered at these events, both from a given guild and from other ones as well. They would start in the morning, in a ceremonial procession through the town to the place designated for the picnic. Tents were raised in advance at the site, and cooks would bring and prepared food. Lamb on a spit was one of the favorite dishes, which is still the case at picnics and gatherings by cottages. Still, the big pilaf was the main course. Historian Hamdija Kreševljaković described about 40 kušanmas from the period 1621-1894. He found these data in guild registers.

The calendar of “Napredak” association from 1934 noted that “a picnic is organized where there is shade and near a spring”. The same calendar from 1912 noted that “bey Privolica invited Murat Maljković to the picnic at Plitvica to sing, play the tambura, raise spirits and entertain guests with various riffs and jokes”.

In his text “Kultura teferića (Culture of Picnics)” from 1939, architect Dušan Grabrijan wrote: “Teferič (picnic) is a cult of nature in a family circle. Teferič and English picnic, or American weekend, have some similarities, although they are products of different cultures. While in Bosnia teferičes have been organized from the Middle Ages to this day, in the rest of Europe it was only in the 18th century that Rousseau initiated the movement of returning to nature, which encompassed only court circles. “Picnics are popular even today in rural communities.

Bees were another form of popular, as well as useful, socializing. They are often practiced even today. When doing major works in a household, e.g. building a house, repairs, work in the fields, harvests, sowing and other works, people would help each other. To make work easier, it was accompanied by singing and making jokes. It is described in folk poems as well:

Na Obhođi prema Bakijama

Moba žanje age Fazlagića

Sto momaka trista djevojaka

I pedeset djece vodonoša,

I pred njima Fata Fazlagića,

Sama žanje, sama snoplje veže,

Sama pjeva, sama pripijeva:

Mošćanice vodo plemenita,

Usput ti je selam ćeš mi dragom.

(At Obhođa toward Bakije

Agha Fazlagić organizes a harvesting bee,

A hundred of boys and three hundred of girls,

And fifty children waterboys,

They are led by Fata Fazlagić,

She reaps by herself, binds sheaves by herself,

Sings by herself:

Mošćanica, the noble water,

It's on your way, send greetings to my sweetheart.)

It should also be noted that women and girls organized a special form of socializing in winter. It implied making ćetenija, a kind of sweet dish of flour and sugar syrup, which was made on the snow, in the way that women would stand in a circle and stretch the dough to obtain threads as thin as possible. It was always accompanied with singing and laughing, and rhythmical turning of the pan. This custom is re-gaining popularity, particularly in rural environments.

References

• Kreševljaković, Hamdija (1991), Izabrana djela II, Esnafi i obrti u Bosni Hercegovini (1463-1878), Veselin Masleša, Sarajevo

• Lakišić, Alija (1999), Bosanski kuhar: Tradicionalno kulinarstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini, Svjetlost, Sarajevo

• Serdarević, Mevlida (2009), Bošnjačka kultura ponašanja, Art 7, Sarajevo