ANDRIĆ based his dissertation more on premises than on syntheses, he gave answers to the questions quickly and explicitly.
Ivo Andrić with friends in 1918 in Zagreb, Photo Museum of the City of Belgrade, legacy of Ivo Andrić
The change of faith, or as he puts it – conversion, was forced because it offered everything: and possession, otherwise everything would be lost and become a disenfranchised paradise. Catholicism in Bosnia, through the Franciscans, isolated Catholics from other nations. The Serbian Orthodox Church has been active in Bosnia since the 11th century, and under the Turks it could not develop its strength outside the narrow sphere of church life, but it still managed to preserve the continuity of spiritual life and, what is especially important, uninterrupted national tradition. The influence of Turkish administrative institutions, both literary and spiritual, was negative: because the literary monuments of Bosnian Muslims were written in Arabic. Andrić then gives sharp and explicit answers to these “soft” theses, which we quote from the following quotations from the Dissertation:
“According to its geographical position, Bosnia should connect the countries of the Danube region with the Adriatic Sea, which means two peripheries of the Serbo-Croatian element … Having fallen under Islam, Bosnia was not only deprived of the opportunity to fulfill this task, which naturally belonged to it. , and to participate in the cultural development of Christian Europe … but because of the domestic Islamized element it became a powerful obstacle to the Christian West … Bosnia remained in that unnatural position during the Turkish rule … whose influence was absolutely negative … Even to the part of the southern Slavs who converted to Islam, the Turks could not bring any cultural content or any higher historical meaning: their rule led only to the loss of customs and to backwardness in every respect. “
More dangerous than the invading armies
ORGANIZED attacks on Andrić begin with the text of prof. Dr. Muhamed Filipović in the Sarajevo magazine “Life”, in 1967, when he wrote in the text “Bosnian spirit in literature, what did he” write the sentence “that Ivo Andrić inflicted more harm on Bosnia than all the armies that trampled on it” !! Since then, Andrić in Bosnia has been looked down upon: the 1992-1995 war. has completely exposed the Muslim-Bosniak reception of Andrić’s work – he openly hates us and shows us in the worst light both in the Dissertation and in the later works that emerged from it, is their general position today. Dr. Muhsin Rizvić, in 1995, Mr. stated that Andrić did not want to listen to Schmidt’s mentor and correct some parts of the Dissertation, deepen the evidence … but simply wanted to bury her in his oblivion.
ONE Andrić’s harsh assessments of the period of Turkish rule in Bosnia were reacted to with concern by his mentor, Prof. Schmidt, in his presentation on the defense of the Dissertation, said: “This will not remain without echoes and objections”, although Andrić in the Dissertation then softens his assessments, with subsequent remarks, saying that everything that was said should not be understood as a critique of Islamic culture. , but only as a critique of “its consequences which occurred as a result of its transfer to the Christian, Slavic land”. And only by specifically stating these consequences, in the form of examples from the everyday life of Christians under the Turks, Andrić only ignited the fire of objections, attacks and hatred against himself among Bosnian Muslims: from that time until today.
Here are some of the many examples of Christian life during the Turkish rule over Bosnia, which come mainly from two sources: oral tradition, folk memory and records of Catholic priests in church books.
– CHURCH bells are the most conspicuous and loudest symbols of Christianity and have constantly attracted the special attention of the Turks, who removed and melted the bells to make cannons. Until the second half of the 19th century, Christians were not allowed to have a church bell. Because “the Turkish ear can’t live where the bells are ringing.” Even the Christian paradise was not allowed to sing on excursions, in their houses or in other places. “Don’t sing high, it’s a Turkish village,” is a proverb from the time. Christians were not allowed to dress nicely, especially not like Turks and Janissaries, and especially women to wear ducats.
– Every fifth year, special commissars were sent from Constantinople to Bosnia, who were called “bodies”, because they traveled from place to place and recorded how many male children each house had, and then they would choose the healthiest and most beautiful and take them to the janissaries. Each host had to state the exact number of children and show them to the bodybuilder. The penalties for inaccurate data were severe. It is a well-known blood tax.
– For Alipaša Stočević, who in the first half of the 19th century was the vizier and lord of Herzegovina, his contemporary monk Prokopije Čokorilo claims that “arach was taken and not dead after six years and that pregnant women touched and told them you would give birth to a man , dai arach “.
– ESPECIALLY, the tribute was collected in a “personally humiliating” way. This tax in the amount of one ducat per year had to be paid by every non-Muslim male who turned 14 years of age. As there was never a register of births (registers) in Turkey until then, tax collectors used a rope to measure the circumference of the boys’ heads and the width of their necks, and according to that they estimated how old they were!
– The Turks did not allow Christians to learn the craft of making weapons and knives and 15 other crafts that make good money. Barbers were not allowed to shave Christians with the same knife they used to shave Muslims. When meeting a Muslim, Christians had to dismount and wait at the end of the road for him to pass. It was not until Omer Pasha Latas that this regulation was repealed around 1850.
– As a market day for the whole of Bosnia, only Sunday was determined. This was done intentionally so that Christians could not go to church that day, but were forced to work and shop.
– The part of the Bosnian population that converted to Islam was the ruling warrior caste; she spent all her strength primarily on conquest and then on the defense of possessions. The spiritual life of that caste was petrified in the forms of another’s religion and unfamiliar language. Nevertheless, there is a recorded attempt at the spiritual activity of Bosnian Muslims from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Otto Blau, the Prussian consul at the end of the nineteenth century, collected and published poems by Bosnian Muslims, but their number and quality are negligible: 11 poets – 17 poems, written in Arabic. These are mostly religious songs, ilahi and kasida.
– From 1766 to 1880. In 1767, the Turks kept the Serbian Orthodox clergy in constant misery and at a low level of education, because in 1767 the Patriarchate in Peja was abolished and Bosnia was directly subordinated to the Patriarch in Constantinople. And the position of patriarch could be reached only by the sultan’s decree, which was mostly bought by bribe, and the Greeks regularly overtook the Serbs there. From that moment, a series of Greek bishops in Bosnia began. Therefore, during the Turkish rule, the Serbian clergy did not develop any literary activity, similar to that created by the Franciscans, nor did they make any contribution to culture. But the Serbs drew their spiritual life from folk songs and church books. This spirit was not so much rooted in the hearth of the peasant hut as in the church altar.
TOMORROW: Great rivalry with Krleža
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