BOSNIAK POLY-HISTORIAN MUHAMED HADŽIJAHIĆ

Muhamed Hadžijahić is labeled as a historian, bibliographer, chronicler and sociologist. It is not a mistake to label him in this way as a scholar, since he excelled in all these disciplines as a researcher and author of works of extreme competence, erudition and creativity.

The scope of topics and academic value of his historiographic works are described by findings by Mustafa Imamović: „There is practically no area of history, from literature, ethnography, architecture, anthropology and religion to law, politics and economy, and no era of Bosnian history, from pre-history to modern times, that Hadžijahić did not deal with to a greater or lesser extent and left a trace and impact in science.“ Besides his historiographic works, Muhamed Hadžijahić made precious contribution to humanities and social studies with the most important Bosniak bibliographies, with the most encouraging sociological overviews of Bosnian Muslims' religiosity, with original interpretations of current social phenomena. He spent most part of his career performing tasks of a professional jurist, beyond academic institutions and centers. Therefore, his biography is impressive to the extent to which his bibliography is confusing and fascinating.

He was born in Sarajevo in 1918, from an ulama family that draws origin and Bosnian tradition of high Islamic learning from Mustafa Muhlisija, a kadi and poet in Oriental languages. He attended the primary school and classical high school in Sarajevo, and studied law and took a PhD degree at the University of Zagreb. His beginnings as a writer remind of the beginnings of young German geniuses from the late 18th and early 19th century: at the age of fifteen, he published three stories about heroes of Bosniak oral legends in the journal Novi Behar, and by the age of twenty he already had about a dozen of published articles about Bosniak poetry and significant aljamiado poets.

In his mid-thirties, in the third year of the Second World War, he illegally wrote and, in the form of a memorandum, secretly sent to the West, to the Allies in the struggle against the Axis Powers, a historically important text about suffering of Bosniak people. The text present history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, tragic destiny of Bosnian Muslims under ustasha rule and genocide crimes over Muslims committed by chetniks and others. Based on documents and thoroughly verified data, the central section of the text presented monstrous slaughtering of Muslim women and men, children and old people, which were committed on a mass scale in east Bosnia, east Herzegovina and in Sandžak by chetniks. However, this text by Hadžijahić of priceless value remained unknown in socialist Yugoslavia, which immediately established and persistently maintained a state policy of minimizing and covering up chetniks' crimes over Bosniaks and Croats; the text was published after the fall of Yugoslavia and five years after the author's death.

On the road of a scholar and engaged intellectual, Muhamed Hadžijahić moved embodying the existential unity of life and academic work, and advocating intellectual interweaving of issues of the past with those of the present and the future of Bosniak people and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was a historian of an extremely broad historiographic and cultural scope and an author with style, with knowledge and sensitivity for differences in the language of expressing different “topics”; he based his works on a wide range of literature and materials, and embedded phenomena, events and personalities into wider worlds of historical sense, maintaining their individuality and respecting their connection in relations without subordination. In his approach, the past of Bosnia and Bosniak people was not a storage of past things, something in the state of non-living option which can be studied same as people study history of ancient Egypt. In his works, cultural and political heritage of Bosnia and Bosniak people, starting from the early Middle Ages, appear in a state of original movement, mysterious, diluted and blurred, ceasing and reviving, though a movement which is uninterrupted and where all participants are significant: assembly in the Duvno field and the „Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja“, Bogomils, stećaks and Bosnian Church, towns and roads, the four Bosnian scripts and temples of the four religious communities, pre-Islamic customs of Muslims, Bosnian syncretic elements and Muslim resolutions from 1941, crafts and legal norms, Hamzevi movement and Bosnian translators of the Qur'an, Mehmed-pasha Sokolović and Hamza Bali Orlović, Bašeskija and Umihana Čuvidina, Skender Kulenović and Tahir-beg Dautbegović, an exponent of Spinoza's philosophy and Kulenović's spiritual authority from Donji Vakuf.

With a vast abundance of topics, findings and ideas, with tireless development and communication of historical insights and new knowledge, Muhamed Hadžijahić expanded areas of research of the history of Bosnia and Bosniaks thus proving that these areas are broader and more expressive than mainstream framework of their historical. It is for this reason that he suffered resistance and covering up in the traditional Yugoslav historiography, which rested upon Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian conceptualizations of the history of South Slavic peoples from the time of formation of the first Yugoslavia, and overcame obstacles of the system of the second Yugoslavia at the times of social restrictions and relativization of historical rights of Bosniaks compared to other peoples, and of Bosnia and Herzegovina compared to other republics. The sacrifice he accepted as the price for persisting in academic work is impressively revealed in the fact that he published a significant number of texts, all having a significant style and content, under different pen names.

His works “Od tradicije do identiteta” (From tradition to identity) and “Islam i muslimani u Bosni i Hercegovini” (Islam and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina) were published during his lifetime. Works “Građa za bibliografiju o nacionalnoj problematici bosanskih Muslimana” (Materials for bibliography on national issues of Bosnian Muslims) and “Bibliografska građa za proučavanje historije naroda BiH srednjovjekovnog i turskog perioda” (Bibliographic materials for studying history of peoples of BiH in the medieval and Turkish period) were mimeographed. Muhamed Hadžijahić died in 1986, and the manuscript of “Posebnost Bosne i stradanje Muslimana” (Distinctiveness of Bosnia and suffering of Muslims), manuscript of the study on ethnogenesis of Bosniaks “Porijeklo bosanskih Muslimana” (Origins of Bosnian Muslims) and the work “Povijest Bosne u IX i X stoljeću” (History of Bosnia in the 9th and the 10th centuries) were published posthumously. These works, as well as many studies and treatises published in journals and various proceedings have been woven into processes of social, economic and cultural rise of Bosnia and Herzegovina and recognition of Bosniak people: they have made a direct contribution to the knowledge of the past of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of Bosniaks as the most certain and most definite emancipation, as a necessary prerequisite for actions in the present and goals in the future.