NERKEZ SMAILAGIĆ: A DIGNITARY OF EASTERN WISDOM AND WESTERN THOUGHT

Nerkez Smailagić is a personality who holds an outstanding place in Bosniak, Bosnian and Herzegovinian, Croatian and Yugoslav spiritual and historical landscapes of the second half of the 19th century. As an original thinker and political engaged and hindered scholar, university professor and author, editor and translator of works of epic significance, Nerkez Smailagić by far exceeded the standard borders of academic classifications and socio-cultural identifications, due to his appearance, conduct and works.

He was born in Banja Luka in 1927, from a family with deep Muslim roots and early Bosniak openness to achievements of modern civilization. He attended the primary and high school in his hometown, took his bachelor's degree in Sarajevo and a master's degree in political sciences in Nancy and in Paris. He chose a life path of complex thinking and activity, a path of Bosnian Muslim scholar who takes his thought and activity, his life destiny, to the highest level of personal existence and an active attitude toward the outside world and his inner world.

His life and work reveal embodiment of high ideals of the East and the West, which rarely appear in the actual living association, a modern Western ideal of an intellectual as a hero of the outside world and a classical Eastern ideal of a sage as a hero of the inner world. Indeed, in his life and work, in building the unity of his own life and work on the deepest bases of reality and in unique dignity, Nerkez Smailagić revived the classical Islamic model of a thinker who unites inner moving powers of the soul with external active power of the mind, who expresses himself creatively by a view toward the outside and toward the inside.

He treated the outside world of social happenings, political actions and activities of the mind actively and efficiently, by participating in them and by working on their causal or targeted clarification. He was a participant in important events and an important builder of the historical sense of the events, an interpreter and advocate of institutions which unite people on the road to the common good and happiness. At the same time, in a widely spread personal relations and communications, he acted as a dignitary of the profound, pacifying wisdom, he raised awareness of the last bases of life and reality, encouraged sensitivity for deeper mental states and strivings, manifested the artistry of endurance and the ability of making sacrifices. In the circumstances of one-party limitations of political thinking and individual freedoms, and unitarian failing of the principle of federalism and equality of nations, he devotedly advocated ideas and institutions of justice, order, lawfulness, and persistently defended uniqueness of the person, life and destiny of each individual.

Nerkez Smailagić did not live to the old age, he dies at the age of fifty-nine. He marked his path of a thinker and researcher with important written works and translations of contemporary and classical literatures of the West and the East, as well as with many academic and professional works. He published the following works: Politička vizija Dantea Alighieria (Political Vision of Dante Alighieri) Historija političkih doktrina (History of Political Doctrines) I and II, Klasična kultura islama (Classical Culture of Islam) I and II and Uvod u Kur'an (Introduction to the Qur'an). Among other things, he left behind the manuscript for the Lexicon of Islam, which was published five years after his death, and doctoral dissertation about the theoretician of anarchism P.J. Proudhon. He translated from several languages, and his significant translations are following: Uvod u sociologiju (Introduction à la sociologie) by A. Cuvillier, Mit o Sizifu (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) by A. Camus, Savremeni poziv sociologije (La vocation actuelle de la sociologie) by G. Gurvitch, Historija etike (geschichte der Etik) by F. Jodl, Totalitet i beskonačno (Totalité et Infini) by E. Levinas, Muhammed a.s. by M. Hamidullah, Psiha i droga (Psyches and Drugs) by B. Bisio, Historija islamske filozofije (History of Islamic Philosophy) by H. Corbin, Historija Osmanskog Carstva (Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches) by J. von Hammer, Propast Zapada (Der Untergang des Abendlandes) by O. Spengler and Nehdžul-belaga by Hazreti Ali.

The itles of works and translations indicate the authenticity of his spiritual starting points and strivings, sound grounds for his choices, decisions and assertions. His main written works are pioneer contributions to academic and cultural-historical views of the topics they deal with, since they were the first products of higher intellectual style and approaches to the topics in our regions. They were written as expressions of high scholarship and existential zeal, rather than as a result of an exterior intellectual discussion; they present central areas or, in the language of Sufis, the main posts on the spiritual path of Nerkez Smailagić.

The first area is characteristic by a study of canonical poet of the European Middle Ages, and it fully revealed intellectual independence and the scope of his cultural-history research, his ability to grasp Mediterranean junctures of light world of Islam and Europe, as well as all important feature of the style which was inherent to him: intellectual originality, articulateness and purity of language, soundness and persuasiveness of multidisciplinary approach. With his work Politička vizija Dantea Alighieria Nerkez Smailagić opened a spiritual view of his serious interpretations and communication of classical cultural worlds of Europe and Islam. The second area is dealing with politics and is characteristic by the work  Historija političkih doktrina, his most significant political work and an important contribution to political sciences in socialist Yugoslavia, which were institutionalized by founding the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb as the first program of the kind in socialist countries in Southeast Europe. Nerkez Smailagić had a decisive role in the orientation of the Faculty, as the instructor-in-charge of two essential courses: Introduction to Political Sciences and History of Political Doctrines. The two-volume Historija političkih doktrina (History of Political Doctrines) was his textbook aimed to meet the needs of one of the basic academic disciplines, as well as a precious contribution to general historical presentation of different political teachings and traditions in politically scarce environment of socialist Yugoslavia. The third area is marked by works on the religion and culture of Islam and on Islamic connection of Muslim and Muslim peoples with destiny of mankind, primarily Klasična kultura islama and Uvod u Kur'an. These works highlighted the unique expression of Bosnian Muslim self-awareness and sensitivity of Nerkez Smailagić, his committed research into Islamic sources and responsible presentation of the contribution of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars in credible encounters with Islamic sources and their living courses.