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GAMER, I, 1 (2012) s. 23-36

KARL SAX'S LETTERS ABOUT "THE BOSNIAN TURKS" AND THE IN (19TH C.)

Ekrem Čaušević* Özet Karl Sax’ın “Bosnalı Türkler” Ve ’da Türk Dili Hakkındaki Mektupları (19. Yüzyıl) 19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında, Bosna-Hersek, Avrupalı devletlerin diplomatları ve gezginlerince daha sık ziyaret edilir hale gelmişti. Ziyaretçilerin eve dönüşleri, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun en batı ucundaki bu vilayet ile ilgili tecrübeleri hakkında çeşitli metinlerin (bilhassa da seyahatnamelerin) basılması süreçlerine sahne oldu. Bu seyahatnameler sıklıkla Bosna Hersek'in coğrafi özellikleri hakkında bilgilere, doğal bolluk ve güzelliklerine, şehirlerine, yollarına, ekonomisine, yönetimine, yerleşik halkına, yaşam tarzlarına, geleneklere, Müslüman halkın gayri-müslimlere yönelik tavırlarına, inanç özgürlüğüne ve diğer temel haklara atıfta bulunuyordu. Buna rağmen, dönemin dilbilimsel ve kültürel görünümü ile ilgilenen bir Türkolog, bu konularda “(tüm mezhepler içerisinde) her dinden oldukça az sayıda Bosnalı Türkçe konuşuyordu”, “Türkçe konuşabilenler bile bu dilde çok zor iletişim kurabiliyordu” ve “yerli Türkler (Bosnalı Müslümanlar) de kendi aralarında yerel (Slav) dili konuşuyordu” gibi ifadeler dışında oldukça sınırlı sayıda bilgiye ulaşabiliyor. Bu dönemde Bosnalı Müslümanların dilleri ve kültürü konusunda araştırma yapan iki yazar ön plana çıkıyor; bunlardan ilki Prusya Konsolosu Otto Blau ve eseri Bosnisch- türkische Sprachdenkmäler, diğeri ise Saraybosna'nın Avusturya Konsolosluğu'nda üst düzey yetkili olarak çalışan Karl Sax’dır. 1862 ve 1863 yıllarında Karl Sax, Alman bir profesör olan

* Prof Dr., Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Head of the Department of Turkology, University of /. Ekrem Čaušević

Wickerhauser'a göndermiş olduğu iki mektubu yayınlamıştır. Her iki mektup da Alman süreli yayını Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft'ta yayımlanmıştır. Profesör Wickerhauser'ın Karl Sax'a yanıt olarak gönderdiği diğer mektuplar korunamamış olsa da, Sax'ın yanıtlarından, kendisinden Bosna'da kullanılan Türk dili, “Bosnalı Türkler” (yani Bosnalı Müslümanlar) ve onların Türk edebiyatı ve klasik eserleri hakkında hakimiyetleri konularında bilgi istendiği anlaşılmaktadır. Sax'ın Bosnalı Müslümanlar hakkındaki yargılarına ve onların Türk dili ve edebiyatı üzerine hâkimiyetlerine çekinceyle yaklaşılması gerekmekle birlikte, Sax'ın mektupları Türk dilinin Bosna ağzı hakkında önemli bilgiler sunmaktadır. Bu makale, daha önce Türkoloji çalışmalarında kendilerine yer bulmayan, Sax'ın mektuplarına atfedilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Bosna'da Türk dili, Türkler, Boşnaklar, Bosna'da Türk şiiri.

Abstract In the second half of the 19th century, Bosnia and was more frequently visited by foreign diplomats and travellers from European countries. Upon their return to their countries, some of these visitors would publish a variety of texts (mainly travelogues) about their travel experiences in this westernmost province of the . These travelogues frequently mention the facts related to the geographical characteristics of , its natural abundance and beauty, its cities, roads, economy, government, inhabitants, lifestyle, customs, attitudes of towards non-Muslim population, freedom of religion, and other liberties. A Turkologist with an interest in linguistic and cultural aspects of that period, however, can find very little information of interest in these sources other than the few statements that "very few (of all denominations) speak Turkish", that "even those who speak Turkish can barely communicate in this language" and that "the local Turks (the Bosnian Muslims) speak the native (Slavic) language with each other". The two authors in this period that do focus on the languages and culture of Bosnian Muslims in their publications are the Prussian Consul Otto Blau in Bosnisch-türkische , I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) Sprachdenkmäler, and Carl Sax, a senior official at the Austrian Consulate in . In 1862 and 1863, Carl Sax published two letters that he had originally sent to a German professor GAMER 24 Karl Sax's Letters About "The Bosnian Turks"

called Wickerhauser. The letters were published in a German periodical titled the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. The letters from Professor Wickerhauser to Carl Sax were not preserved, but from Sax´s replies to Professor Wickerhauser, it is evident that Carl Sax was asked to provide detailed information about the Turkish language in Bosnia, about “the Bosnian Turks” (i.e. Bosnian Muslims), and how much knowledge they had about the Turkish literature and its literary classics. Although Sax´s information and judgements about the Bosnian Muslims and their knowledge of the Turkish language and literature can not be taken without some reservation, his letters, nevertheless, provide important information about the Bosnian variety of the Turkish language. This paper is dedicated to Sax's letters, which have so far not been available to Turkologist. Keywords: Turkish language in Bosnia, Turks, , Turkish in Bosnia

I. The view from the other side of the Sava River The defeat at Vienna in 1683 marked the end of the Ottoman expansion, and the subsequent military failures and territorial retreats of the Ottomans dispelled the myth that their army was invincible. The effects of these events are well known: the Peace Treaties of Karlowitz (1699), Požarevac (1718), and Belgrade (1739) established a stable border along the Sava River for the Hapsburg Monarchy, while the Ottomans had to withdraw from the greater part of the Croatian Kingdom's territory. Although the Croatian Military Frontier lost its basic defence role after these military failures, the frontier system was not abolished; on the contrary, it was extended into the territories of and Banat. The Military Frontier continued to exist because of the centralist and absolutist policies of the Habsburgs, but also because it enabled them to mobilize numerous troops quickly and cheaply in crisis situations. Due to this course of events, European fears of the “Tatar hordes" and the “Saracen infidels" gave way to "ordinary" human curiosity about everyday life in the Ottoman Empire. Thus travelogues became a popular genre favoured by European readers.

Nevertheless, rarely did a travel writer find the strength to free , I, 1 (2012) himself even momentarily from the everyday, heavily Christian- influenced prejudices of the time. If we disregard the mainly GAMER 25 Ekrem Čaušević

idealised descriptions of "European " and , garnished with various (often unreliable) juicy stories about the harem, harem plots, and the life of the Sultan's concubines, many European travel writers experienced the Ottoman Empire as a symbol of absolutist rule and tyranny, and as a space of chaos, anarchy, extortion, and corruption. At the same time, they viewed the Turks themselves as barbarians indulging themselves by humiliating and oppressing their Christian subjects. Needless to say, this implied a stereotype of as a traditional and uncompromising enemy of .1 Marija Todorova writes that, until the eighteenth century, authors of accounts about the Ottoman Empire titled as travelogues and diaries were mainly members of diplomatic missions to the Porte, merchants, pilgrims, and prisoners-of-war. During the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, they were joined by antiquarians, scientists, or simply adventurers and "romantics who were searching for authentic remains of ancient Greece".2 Despite their prejudices, these people, as often as not highly educated in the humanities, left valuable observations about a very broad range of aspects of everyday life, about people and customs, administration, cities and towns, forts, etc. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many travel writers practically made a fetish of "the folk spirit" – the folklore and particularly the folk literature of the Ottoman Empire's Balkan subjects. Needless to say, this was directly correlated with the scientific interests and readers' tastes of the time, beginning with Romanticism, which aroused great interest in "uncivilised peoples" who lived their traditional way of life and in "close contact with nature". The European reader's interest in the events in the was aroused by the national movements of the Balkan peoples and the status of "the Ottoman Christians". In the nineteenth century, people travelled to "European Turkey" from almost everywhere in , but the most numerous among this eastward-travelling motley crew were travel writers from and German-speaking areas.

1 Marija Todorova dedicates a chapter to European travelogues about the Ottoman Empire in her book Imagining the Balkans, University Press, 1997. As a long time has elapsed since its publication, Todorova's book is now one of many dealing with the topic.

, I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) 2 İbid. pp. 62-88. Fragments about travelogues from the Balkans in German, with short biographies of their authors, were published by Miloš Okuka and Petra Rehder in their book Das zerrissene Herz – Reisen durch Bosnien-Herzegowina 1530-

GAMER 1993, Verlag C. H. Beck, München, 1994. 26 Karl Sax's Letters About "The Bosnian Turks"

In the mid-19th century, consulates of some European countries operated in Bosnia. They carefully monitored the political feelings of the local population about the Ottoman bureaucratic machinery, already lethargic and tired on the one hand, and about the neighbouring countries, especially , on the other. The diplomats and other employees who worked in those consulates, some of whom were of Slavic background, were well educated, and often had an enviable level of philological knowledge. Such were, for example, the Prussian Ambassador Otto Blau,3 the Austrian consul general Dimitrije Atanasković,4 the Austrian diplomat and translator Josip Dragomanović5, and the Austrian diplomat Karl Sax. Unlike travel writers who often formulated their observations in a literary manner, these individuals left us concrete information about ethnic, cultural, and linguistic circumstances in Bosnia in the nineteenth century.

II. Why Professor Wickerhauser wrote to Sax In the European academic circles of the nineteenth century, scientific, and professional communication between colleagues was mostly through private letters. In German-speaking areas, fragments of such correspondence would often be published in the relevant professional journals. Not infrequently, this was done simply as a

3 Dr. Otto Blau (1828-1879) studied theology and philology, with a focus on Oriental philology. He started his brilliant diplomatic career at the Prussian Consulate in Istanbul in 1852. He travelled across a large part of the Ottoman Empire. From 1864 he was a consul in Sarajevo, and in 1870 he was promoted consul general for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He stayed in Sarajevo until 1872 and then continued his diplomatic service in Odessa, where he committed suicide seven years later. He published a large number of papers in the German Oriental-Studies journal ZDMG and several books. For the topic discussed here, the most interesting are two of his books: Bosnisch-türkische Sprachdenkmäler (Leipzig, 1868) and Reisen in Bosnien und der Herzegowina (Berlin, 1877). 4 Dimitrije Atanasković (1793 - 1857) was Austria's consul general in Sarajevo, and before that a professor at the Vienna Academy of Oriental Languages (Akademie der orientalischen Sprachen), where Bosnian Father Marijan Šunjić (d. 1860), Father Franjo Sitnić (d. 1845 or 1848), and Father Anđelo Jelić (d. 1837) studied those languages. Established in 1754 for the purpose of educating personnel for the diplomatic service in the Ottoman Empire, the Academy was later renamed the Diplomatic Academy (Diplomatische Akademie).

5 Josip Dragomanović (1828 - 1908) was an Austrian diplomat and translator of , I, 1 (2012) the famous grammar Kavaidi Osmaniye. More about him and his translation in: Ekrem Čaušević, "Das Türkische des Josip Dragomanović," Materialia Turcica 17

(1996), pp. 120-141. GAMER 27 Ekrem Čaušević

way of asking colleagues for help in reading and/or interpreting a difficult and unintelligible text. In 1862 and 1863, excerpts from two letters sent by Karl Sax, "Consular-Eleven" of the Austrian Consulate in Sarajevo, to a Professor Wickerhauser were published in the journal Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG).6 Only in the first letter did Sax quote the question which Professor Wickerhauser had asked him. We can elicit what the Professor was interested in only from the observations on which Sax focuses in his letters (see the text below). Professor Wickerhauser was undoubtedly a Turkologist. I have no detailed information about Karl Sax. However, with regard to the fact that he obviously knew the Turkish language, we can assume that he had received a formal education in Oriental studies. This agrees with the fact that Austria sent schooled Oriental studies specialists, among whom the most prominent was Consul Atanasković, into its diplomatic service in Bosnia. Philologically, Sax's letters are still interesting today. By this, we are primarily referring to the information he left us about stress and the congruence of the subject and the predicate in "the Bosnian Turkish dialect." Except Sax, nobody wrote down a single word about the stress system of Turkish as it was spoken in Bosnia. Sax's letters are interesting today also as a foreigner's view "from the inside", from the heart of Bosnia itself, primarily as a view of a man who most likely was an educated philologist.

III. Contents of the Letters Addressed to Professor Wickerhauser As Sax sent the collected information rather chaotically, and as in his second letter he resumed some of the observations he had made earlier, correcting them as well, I thought it better to condense all his information sent to Professor Wickerhauser into several thematic areas. There are five of them altogether:

6 "Aus einem Briefe an Prof. Wickerhauser. Von Herrn Karl Sax, k. k. Consular- Eleven", ZDMG XVI Band, Leipzig, 1862, pp. 757-759; "Aus einem Briefe an Prof. Wickerhauser von Herrn Karl Sax, k. k. Consular-Eleven", ZDMG XVII Band, Leipzig,

, I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) 1863, pp. 380-382. Both letters were written in Sarajevo; the first one on 16 April 1862 and the other on 14 October and 28 October 1862 (consisting of two parts). In the text, I will use the abbreviations L1 and L2, while the figure after the slash will

GAMER denote the page number in the letter. 28 Karl Sax's Letters About "The Bosnian Turks"

1) About the Bosnians, their names, and the Turkish language in Bosnia Professor Wickerhauser is primarily interested in whether the verb altlanmák, "used by the Turks in ," is heard in Bosnia as well, or the adjective sislí, "which belongs to the Croatian-Turkish dialect (sic!) of the Turkish language."7 Sax replies that "such words are not known in Bosnia" or "at least they are not in use." Then he explains that the Turks never settled in Bosnia and that the Bosniaks8 learned Turkish from the few Ottoman civil servants who lived in Bosnia or from translations of the Qur'an into their language. Further, Sax seems to make a comparison between the levels of the Bosniaks' knowledge of Turkish and , at the expense of Turkish. He writes that Ottoman civil servants, if they are not themselves "Bosnian Mohammedans," usually come from Istanbul. Being educated, they bring along Persian and Arabic words, which the Bosnians use gladly. If we add the reciting of the Qur'an, concludes Sax, it is clear why the Bosnians know Arabic better than Turkish. "Most Bosnian Mohammedans" have no idea about Turkish („die Mehrzahl der bosnischen Mohammedaner hat vom Türkischen gar keine Idee“). "When two such persons meet," he writes, "they greet with esselamu aleykum, or with merhaba, and then the conversation follows in the ‘Slavic’ language" (L1/757). In his second letter, obviously encouraged by Professor Wickerhauser, Sax dedicates a considerable part to Muslim names in Bosnia. He notes that proper names undergo "changes in which hardly any patterns can be identified", for instance Mehmed > Mého, Mustafa > Mújo, Suleiman > Súljo, Ibrahim > Ibro, Bekir > Bégo,

7 “Das Zeitwort altlanmák für ivmék oder adschelé etmék, eilen, gehört dem bulgarisch türkischen, das Beiwort sislí, neblig, regnerisch, dem kroatisch-türkischen Dialekt an. Ich hatte in meinem Briefe angefragt, ob sie auch in Bosnien üblich sind“ (L1/ 757). 8 Certainly, he did not use this term [Bosniake in German] with its meaning of today, i.e. denoting national affiliation of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Muslims, but rather as their religious affiliation. It was only in Tito's that Muslims were granted the status of a (1969-1970), but the name Muslim (Musliman) was imposed on them (written with a capital letter!).* At the beginning of the war (1992- , I, 1 (2012) 1995), the Muslims replaced it with the name Bosniak (Bošnjak). * In Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, words denoting are capitalized, and

unlike English, words denoting religions are not capitalized. GAMER 29 Ekrem Čaušević

Dschafer [Cafer] > Dscháfo, Daut [Davud?]9 > Död (sic!), etc. Furthermore, he says that elision occurs in the names with the title aga, so that Mustafa aga, Suleiman aga, etc., are contracted into Mújaga, Súljaga, while in the names Megmed aga and Ibrahim aga no elision occurs. Proper names followed by the title effendi are heard in their original Arabic form, e.g. Mehmed Effendi, Suleiman Effendi, not Meho Effendi, Suljeffendi, etc., "probably because effendis make sure their names remain in the same forms that they can read in books" (L2/381).

2) About stress In his observations about the Bosnians and their poor or non- existent knowledge of Turkish, Sax says the following: "But those who have learned Turkish completely along with its most elegant foreign words, torture it deplorably, adapting that language to their Slavic speech organs"10 (LI/757). In this respect, he says that "shifting stress from the last to the next to the last syllable of a word is the most important characteristic of the Bosnian Turkish dialect."11 This, Sax writes, usually occurs in nouns in the nominative case; but when a case ending is added to them, stress shifts to the final syllable, e.g., nom. kònak, but in gen. konaghǜn, dat. Konaghà, etc. The same occurs when a noun receives a possessive suffix for the first person singular, e.g. konaghǜm. Stress does not change in most "prepositions," verbs, or pronouns, e.g. uſùn [için], bittì, benìm. Numbers in most cases "have the wrong stress" and adjectives always do, if their origin is from Arabic active participles, e.g. jìrmi [yirmi], jètmisch [yetmiş], hàsir [hazır], làsim [lâzım]. In Sax's opinion, the shifting of stress can be explained by the fact that a large number of Turkish words were adopted in "the Slavic language, in which stress is usually on the first syllable", and that the "Slavic" stress in them is heard even when the Bosnians speak Turkish

9 Notes in square brackets belong to the author of this paper. Modern Turkish forms are given in brackets. 10 "Diejenigen aber, welche das Türkische mit seinem elegantesten Fremdwörtern ganz erlernt haben, misshandeln es jämmerlich, indem sie sich diese Sprache für ihre slavischen Zungen zurecht machen." 11 Sax is not precise enough here. Actually, since he cites only two-syllable

, I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) words in the examples, it is clear that he wants to say that the stress shifts back from the last to the first syllable in a word. Probably he becomes aware of the amphibology, as in his second letter he speaks of accent shifting to the first syllable

GAMER of a word. 30 Karl Sax's Letters About "The Bosnian Turks"

(L1/757); since other parts of speech, especially verbs, were not adopted in "the Slavic language", their accent remained unchanged (L1/758). Today we would say that, in the pronunciation of nouns (and not only of nouns), interference occurred between the stress systems of the Bosnian and Turkish languages. In his second letter, Sax expresses regret over having written that the correct stress "returns" in nouns in the oblique case.12 In this respect he points out that, indeed, there is an obvious difference in the pronunciation of the words whose accent shifts from the last to the first syllable, e.g. kápu and kapú [kapı], but the difference is very difficult to hear in oblique cases, e.g. in dative, in the example of kapujá and kápuja. Hence he makes "the most correct" conclusion that in "the Bosnian dialect of the Turkish language," accent is always on the first syllable (here he is referring only to nouns), and gives the examples páscha [paşa], páschănün, páschăjă, páschăjǐ, páschădan (L2/380-81).

3) About sound changes In his first letter, Sax refers to a phonetic change we are familiar L1/758), which he ,“ج mit ك with: /k'/ > /ć/, („die Verwechselung des defines as "a characteristic of the Turkish dialect." However, the examples quoted show that he did not distinguish between the South-Slav phonemes /ć/ and /đ/, as he transcribed both of them in the same way – with [dsch], e.g.: idschi [ići < iki], dschel [đel < gel], dschaur [đaur < gâvur], etc. On the other hand, he does distinguish between the phonemes /č/ and /ć/, and so he transcribes the latter with [tsch]. Sax also notes that the change /k'/ > /ć/ is not heard at the end of a word, e.g. bitmek ("not bitmetsch"), schimschek [şimşek]. At the same time, he notes "the reverse" occurrence: Slav surnames e.g. Vukalowitsch, and in a , ك ending in -itsch are often written with note he adds that in that way from Bihacz we got Bihke [i.e. Bišće].13 We are also familiar with another change, "testified" to the author by a person called Plechaczek, concerning the dropping of the etymological /h/, i.e. insertion of the non-etymological or prosthetic /h/ at the beginning of a word beginning in a vowel. Sax gives two

12 Sax corrects his statements only in relation to noun stress, hence the , I, 1 (2012) conclusion that he believes his observations about stress in other parts of speech are correct. 13

A town in northwest Bosnia –Herzegovina. GAMER 31 Ekrem Čaušević

such examples, adschi "instead of hadschi" [hacı] and hat "instead of at" (L1 / 758). In his second letter (L2/380), Sax pays attention to another, also generally known characteristic of the West Balkan dialect of Turkish – the phoneme /g/ which was preserved in the inter-vowel position. in places where it is , ك " he says that ,ك > ج Referring this change as pronounced by the Ottomans as "j" [y], in "the Bosnian dialect" is heard as /g/, e.g. ögrenmek, eglenmek, beg ("not bey"), etc.

4) About the congruence of subject and predicate In his brief comment on the congruence of the subject and the predicate, Sax distances himself from the examples he quotes with the following words: "In case of a corrupted dialect, it is difficult to draw a dividing line between the end of that dialect's special features and the beginning of grammatical mistakes. He then adds that such mistakes, which are not possible to explain by the impact of "the Slavic language", can be heard only in the speech of uneducated people. The examples he uses to illustrate this do not challenge his statement, e.g. siz celdi [siz geldi], siz cidecekmi [siz gidecek mi?], biz cittim [biz gittim]. Otto Blau also refers to Sax's observation about subject/predicate congruence.14 Sax obviously focused his attention on the speech of common people, who can be hardly said to be able to converse fluently and accurately in Turkish. We have a similar situation today with English in the non-Anglo-Saxon world, such as is "spoken" by, for example, many street vendors throughout the world. Sax confirms the correctness of his lucid observation about the non- transparency of the line dividing "dialect" specific features from grammatical mistakes of its non-native speakers with a statement that "the Bosnians who communicate with the Ottomans more frequently do not make such mistakes" (L2/381-82).

14 Blau approves Sax's statements and refers to the text in which he, too, notes one such example: ničün sen k'elmedi? "warum bist du nicht gekommen?". Like Sax, he thinks that such mistakes result from a poor knowledge of Turkish, just as in the case of "frequent use of the passive and reflexives instead of the active and aorist tense [= present ending in -r] instead of perfect and vice versa". Such mistakes, says Blau, "can be explained by the poor linguistic knowledge of the ordinary people, who

, I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) in need can hardly express themselves in Turkish." Also picturesque is his statement that "such corrupted speech belongs as much to the Bosnian dialect of Turkish as children's speech can sustain grammatical criticism". See: Bosnisch-türkische

GAMER Sprachdenkmäler, p. 45. 32 Karl Sax's Letters About "The Bosnian Turks"

5) About Turkish poetry At the end of his first letter, Sax says that he also owes an answer to the questions about whether "the Bosnian Turks [i.e. Muslims] show any special love for a Turkish poet, and which famous names in Turkish poetry achieved the highest fame in Bosnia." Sax answers that he "can answer the first question with a resolute No, since the Bosnian Turks do not know Turkish poetry at all." As for the other question, he says that the Ottoman civil servants who serve in Bosnia, and who certainly know of Baki and Fazli [sic! Fuzuli?], may by no means be considered to be Bosnian (emphasised by K. Sax) Turks. Further he writes: "Local Mohammedans, who call themselves Turks – even when they know no Turkish – in order to differentiate themselves from the despised Christians, may not, in terms of , be considered Turks. They know only Serbian (emphasised by Sax) poetry" (L1/758). Sax expresses his emphasised belittling of the Bosnian contribution to Ottoman poetry with a judgement that some Bosniaks "have already tried their skill at Turkish poetry, but without any success". To illustrate his statement, he quotes "a couplet of Bosniak poetry in Turkish". That "couplet" is probably a folk counting rhyme, not a particularly logical pun testing children's verbal abilities (like Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers) and whose real meaning – if there is any in such counting rhymes – has to be figured out later on: Dschüle dschüle / dschüle dschidün / dschüllerile / dschüllere Dschüllerile dschüldürürtschen dschüldi dschüller dschüllere Translation by K. Sax: Lächelnd geh hin zur Rose, mit deinem (Wangen-) Rosen zu den (Garten-)Rosen in dem du (diese) mit den (Wangen-)Rosen lächeln (aufblühen) machst: so haben dann Rosen (andere) Rosen angelächelt (L1/158-59) Approximate Bosnian pronunciation:

[Modern Turkish]: , I, 1 (2012) Cüle cüle / cüle cidün / cüllerile / cüllere GAMER 33 Ekrem Čaušević

(Güle güle / güle gidin / güllerile güllere) Cüllerile cüldürürçen cüldi cüller cüllere (Güllerile güldürürken güldü güller güllere)

IV. Sax's observations and value judgements Sax's erroneous judgements about how well "the Bosnian Turks" knew Turkish poetry call attention to the fact that his information about the characteristics of a completely corrupted Turkish patois (therefore – not even a dialect!) and the very limited extent of its usage must be taken with a grain of salt.15 Even so, we cannot completely ignore the fact that his data do have certain significance, for they contain references to pronunciation (accent) and because they were partially confirmed by other scholars. Actually, very similar or identical observations about Turkish speech in Bosnia were written down by his contemporary Otto Blau, who was a Turkologist and an excellent connoisseur of the circumstances in that country. Blau stayed in Bosnia for eight years, travelled the length and breadth of the country, communicated with the local population, and studied manuscripts in Sarajevo’s libraries. Like Sax, he concluded that there were few speakers of Turkish in Bosnia. Sax's value judgements and incompetent (rather than too strict) attitudes about the cultural circumstances in Bosnia are simply not true. It is quite clear that, due to diplomatic, political, or other reasons, he did not associate with educated Bosnian Muslims, who were a living part of that culture and , who knew Ottoman poetry well, who collected or copied manuscripts and poems by Ottoman and Bosnian poets, who composed their own anthologies (mecmua), and who themselves wrote in the Turkish language. Reading Sax's letters, we have to ask ourselves whether he had ever heard of Bosnian poets such as Nihadi (d. 1587), Ziyai (d. about 1600), Meyli Gurani (d. 1780), and others, or whether he simply ignored them. The answer to this question might be in the assumption that he did not associate with the people who simply lived that culture. As much as he stayed in Sarajevo, Sax could not "take off his glasses" through which he looked down on Bosnia from

, I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) 15 Sax probably generalizes his judgements when he speaks about "the Bosnian dialect of Turkish" and "the Bosnian Turks". In other words, it is likely that he

GAMER acquired all his knowledge about this in Sarajevo. 34 Karl Sax's Letters About "The Bosnian Turks" another culture, one which he obviously considered to be superior. Hence his self-confidence when he judges the poetry of "the Bosnian Turks" and illustrates its "achievement" by the "verses" quoted above. The lack of knowledge about Bosnia, even in academic circles, to which Karl Sax and Professor Wickerhauser obviously belonged, may seem odd today. But there is no room for surprise. The fact that Professor Wickerhauser mentions a "Croatian Turkish dialect" or that Sax claims that the "Bosnian Turks know only Serbian poetry" is all part of the general confusion created by scarce contacts and almost no exchange of information. That a lack of information could have created incorrect perceptions and clichés, or fed already existing ones, is best illustrated by the following example: since in the mid-fifteenth century Bosnia became the furthest province of the European part of the Ottoman Empire, Europe's misconception that Turkish was widely spoken there was, it seems, inevitable.16 That is why a certain Camilla Ružička-Ostoić in 1879 (only a year after Austria-Hungary's occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) published a Turkish-German dictionary in Vienna. What is curious about this book is not its appearance, but the fact that the author intended it as a manual for Austrian civil servants and soldiers serving in the new "imperial and royal province"!

Sources "Aus einem Briefe an Prof. Wickerhauser. Von Herrn Karl Sax, k. k. Consular-Eleven", ZDMG XVI Band, Leipzig 1862. "Aus einem Briefe an Prof. Wickerhauser von Herrn Karl Sax, k. k. Consular-Eleven", ZDMG XVII Band, Leipzig, 1863. Blau, O., Bosnisch-türkische Sprachdenkmäle, Leipzig 1868. Reisen in Bosnien und der Herzegowina, Berlin 1877.

16 It is interesting that Sax himself was a slave to this misconception. Although he points out that the Bosnian Muslims are not ethnic Turks but , he is almost surprised that two Bosnians, having greeted each other first with esselamu aleykum , I, 1 (2012) or merhaba, continue talking in the "Slavic" language. From this he even draws the conclusion that "the majority of the Bosnian Mohammedans have no idea of the

Turkish language" (L1/757). GAMER 35 Ekrem Čaušević

Čaušević, E., "Das Türkische des Josip Dragomanović", Materialia Turcica 17 (1996). Okuka, M.-P. Rehder, Das zerrissene Herz – Reisen durch Bosnien- Herzegowina 1530-1993, Verlag C. H. Beck, München 1994. Todorova, M., Imagining the Balkans, , 1997. , I, 1 (2012) , I, 1 (2012) GAMER 36