Pend - nama - Book of advice by Ibrahim Zikrija Užićanin

Abstract

Pend-nama - Book of Advice, not known earlier, is a poem of moral- didactic content written by the poet Ibrahim Zikrija Užičanin in 1840. The poem was written in a beautiful and well-understandable Turkish and was dedieated to his seventeen years-old son Ahmed.

In the former studies of the literature of Bosnian Muslims, the following information regarding Ibrahim Zikrija was disecovered:

-   He wrote a ,,Divan“ (colleetion of poems) in 1232/1817, whose autographie copy is kept in Gazi Husrev-bey ’s Library in Sarajevo.

-   He wrote a commentary on Sulejman Čelebi’s poem Wasllat an- nagat (known as the Mevlud). Three copies of that commentary, known under the title Mawrid al-wusul fl Mawhd ar-Resul are kept in the Institute for Oriental Studies in Sarajevo. One of the copies is copied out from the autographic version and therefore is especially valuable.

-   He wrote several risalas (treatises), of which the authors of our cultural history (Mehmed Tahir Bašagić and Šabanović) do not know anything with certainty.

With the discovery of the hand-written copy of the Pend-nama, which we believe is an autographic copy , we have found another poetic work of Ibrahim Zikrija Užičanin. This establishes him one more as an exeellent poet who worked both as a poet and a sceintist in his homeland.