Catalogues – means of accessing islamic manuscripts in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Islamic manuscript books had an over-eminent role in the spreading of literacy and dissemination of knowledge of Islamic provenance in Bosnia and Herzegovina not only among ulemah circles but rather among ordinary people in general. Those facts are proved by several thousands of such books which are preserved in national and foreign collections, most famous among them being preserved in Gazy Husrev-bey’s library in Sarajevo and Bašagić’s collection in Bratislava, Slovakia. Authentic evidence of the possession and use of Islamic manuscripts in Bosnia and Herzegovina during Ottoman Empire, which ended in 1878, are comprised in sijjils of shariah law. Sijjyl is a collection of court records of certain territorial-administrative area which resulted out of a professional judicial practice in a certain time period. These documents are peculiar civilization registers whose content includes various topics – currently unavoidable study of political, economic, social and cultural history of a town or a wider region. The above mentioned facts suggest the importance of the catalogues of Islamic manuscripts and archive registers dating from Ottoman-empire period in Bosnia and Herzegovina.