A contribution to the cultural history of Pljevlja region

O naučnoj, i prepisivačkoj djelatnosti Pljevljaka na orijentalnim jezicima u vrijeme Osmanske uprave

Abstract

The seientific, cultural and transcribal activities of people who wrote in Oriental languages (Arabic, Persian and Turkish) have been partially studied. Thus the results of studies regarding those authors and their work indicate that researchers should intensify studies of the intellectuals of that period. These studies would be completed even more successfully if the authors could be studied according to the places of their birth, and if the places, where famous works were written, were also studied. That is the reason why this paper discusses Pljevlja as one of the more significant cities of the Bosnian eyalet, in which scientists and writers lived.

In this city, which became the seat of Herzegovina sanjak-beys in 1576, the tradition of studies of several seientific disciplines was present. Therefore, sevaral seientific works from various diseiplines were written or translated in Pljevlja. Thirteen persons who hved in Pljevlja are mentioned in the period from the middle of the XVIth century to the end of the XIXth century as those active in the fields of Science, culture and as transcribers. This paper mentions twenty four works from that period and nineteen of these works were transcripts. The majority of these works and transcripts are kept now in the Gazi Husrev-bey’ s Library and the Institute of Oriental Studies in Sarajevo. That is only a part of the manuscripts known to the wider scientific and cultural public. Probably a larger number of these works are still kept in larger libraries and arehives, both in the country and abroad, and will probably one day beeome known and accessible to a wider circle of interested people.