in imitation of western European writers who were investing “The East” with
imagined eroticism and exoticism.
310
Women in the ottoman Balkans
My thesis is that the Croatian romantic re-discovery of its cultural heritage
through travel and an interest in folk poetry cast a new light on the traditional
historiography and literary canon—especially in terms of the representation of
otherness and gender—that established a rigid boundary between the Ottoman and
Dalmatian (Croatian) cultures. The newer comparative ethnographic approaches,
historiographic research, Ottoman studies, as well as research into literature
written in multicultural border areas such as Dalmatia focused on the existence
of cultural currents and the sensibilities generated therein, and defined the border
zone “not as a boundary line, but as a territory or zone of interpretation between
two previously distinct societies.”6
In The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (2004), a survey of the links
between the Ottoman Empire and the surrounding political powers, Suraiya
Faroqhi has focused on the multitude of ways in which, during times of peace with
its neighbors, the borders of the Empire became permeable, thus enabling both
diplomatic and everyday communication with the outer world. She has analysed
the importance of the border regions in terms of their links with the imperial
center, and their specific geopolitical and cultural significance for the Empire. In
terms of Ottoman-Dalmatian encounters, Faroqhi argues that despite numerous
wars, the Ottoman Empire maintained links “closer than with any other state of
Christendom” with Venice. Thus, the Dalmatian towns under Venetian jurisdiction
were not only military outposts for control over the Adriatic, but, together with
the Ragusan Republic, also vivid and important centres of exchange, trade, and
diplomatic contact between the Empire and Venice.7
Concerning the historically dynamic background of the border region, we
may argue, as I shall demonstrate later, that literary works written in this area
are in a sense the “geopoetic representation” of the border which “acts as a
barrier generating cultural conflict and as a bridge promoting respect for cultural
difference.”8 Applied to the context of the Dalmatian-Ottoman border, such literary
works show how Christian and Islamic cultural environments, social codes, and
norms were interwoven in literature and everyday life.
Surprisingly, the new Romantic-Illyrian approach to the folk heritage also
revealed a lack of factual and historical knowledge about Ottoman Bosnia. The
writers that subscribed to this approach often stressed that the aim of their travels
was to enlighten their fellow Croats on the subject of Bosnia. For instance, Matija
Mažuranić’s travelogue Pogled u Bosnu [View into Bosnia] (1844) is a stylized
documentary and lyrical description of Ottoman Bosnia. The author often imitates
a mixture of “Illyrian language” and Turkish words, or rather Bosniak— bošnjački
as he calls it.9 In the preface to his travel piece, Mažuranić stated that the purpose
of his journey had been to introduce his readers to Bosnia, which remained
neglected due to a lack of historical knowledge, inadequate communication
channels, and the constant striving of Croats for cultural belonging to western
Europe. In his words,
Šolić, Women in ottoman Bosnia
311
From that time, it seems to me, we [Croats] have not turned back. Rather,
always looking at the West, we have learned more about Germans, Italians,
Frenchmen, and Englishmen than about ourselves; and about the rest of the
world we found out only as much as we were able to learn from our close
neighbors, who, of course, know almost nothing of Bosnia. But does it have
to be like this forever? Is it not time that we turn back and take the shortest
way to see the condition of this part of our Illyria?10
Luka Botić (1830–60), on whom I shall be focusing here, is another writer who
recorded Bosnian folk traditions, thus making the “Bosnian experience” the basis
of his writing. A Croatian poet born in Split, Botić was inspired by Illyrian ideas
concerning the cultural and political unification of all Croatian lands. Moreover,
he typifies what Noreen Grover Lape calls “double consciousness,” a faculty
inherent in writers existing in “border zones” through either a bi-cultural heritage
or immigration, to articulate the difference, to “confront the tension between open
and closed frontiers—the struggle to continue or to terminate culture contact.”11
Because of his “double consciousness,” Botić went even further than Mažuranić
in his literary discoveries: he not only used stylized language that was closer
to elements of Bosniak, but he also interpolated different literary traditions that
evoked new meanings in folk tradition as well as new perceptions of literature and
life in the border zone. Botić’s “double consciousness” rests in his ability to merge
different traditions: knowledge of the Croatian (Dalmatian) literary heritage,
Dalmatian folk ballads that he had heard (just like Fortis) in the hinterland of
Split, and Bosnian folk traditions.
Botić traveled from Bosnia to northern Croatia at the invitation of Josip
Juraj Strossmayer, and returned with the idea of the co-existence between
Christianity and Islam through love. In his four short works Dilber-Hasan (1854),
Pobratimstvo [Brotherhood] (1854), Bijedna Mara [Miserable Mara] (1861), and
Petar Bačić (1862), Botić describes love between young Muslims and Christians.
More importantly, through different social and artistic conceptualizations of the
feminine, he offers a vivid image of Ottoman Bosnian women as seen through
social rituals and folk poetry. As I will show, Botić consciously interpolated
gendering concepts and the communication patterns of Bosnian folk poetry with
the Croatian literary canon that he had culturally inherited. He also experimented
with and confronted representations of gender and otherness as articulated in
Croatian literature. Furthermore, he delved into a writer’s ability to immerse
himself in another culture that he naturally observes as an outsider. Finally, as Tin
Ujević remarks, Botić was obsessed with Bosnia. This obsession is represented
in his works through the “exotic feminine” typical of other Romantic writers, of
whom he dreamt in the Mediterranean Renaissance town where “East reaches the
sea”:12
With a virginal soul, Botić experienced his own version of romanticism
in the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Romantics looked to
Spain,; Botić found that Spain in Bosnia. … In Spain, the East was still very
312
Women in the ottoman Balkans
much present in Muslim architecture, symbolized by Moorish crescents,
but only as a memory. In Bosnia, however, the East remained an untouched
reality.13
No matter how abstract and stylized they may be, writes Maja Bošković-Stulli,
these folk poems nevertheless reveal the actual social relations that existed, and
the part that women played in them. Without thi
s element of artistic stylization,
“the folk poems would not be transmitted and performed.”14 This transmission
through stylization is present, to different degrees, in each of Luka Botić’s four
main works. All his stories except one are more or less related to real historical
events. Pobratimstvo is the only lyrical story without a historical basis; in it, Botić
describes the love between a Muslim aristocratic girl, Ajkuna, and a Christian,
Radmilović Mijo, using the social pattern of “brotherhood” [ pobratimstvo]
characteristic of the ballads and folk customs of the time. The plot of Petar Bačić
is situated in 1537, when the Turks conquered Klis (near Split) and became a
genuine threat to the town. The translation of a sixteenth-century chronicle
accompanying the ballad describes this fourth year of the war as one of “the worst
for Dalmatia.”15 However, the religious conflict between Islam and Christianity
is replaced by the theme of social injustice among Christians, and praise for
the brotherhood between Januš-beg, a Muslim, and a Christian called Petar.
Dilber-Hasan, the only piece written in prose, is another portrayal of friendship
between a Muslim and a Serb on the eve of the second Serbian uprising against
the Ottomans in 1806. It is also a vivid and stylized description of the writer’s
experiences in Ottoman Sarajevo, and of love between a Muslim and an infidel.
Finally, Bijedna Mara features the unhappy love of Mara and Adel (and Melka’s
love for the latter). From a linguistic and metrical point of view, it is the most
complex of the four.
The finest portrayal of the Ottoman context, and, by extension, of Bosnian-
Ottoman women, is the artistic incorporation of sevdalinka (from Turkish sevda,
meaning love), the typical love poems of Muslim Bosnia from that period. Botić
used them extensively in his work because, as a type of love poetry, they represented
an aestheticization of daily events and the interaction between men and women
in Ottoman Bosnia. The development of this lyrical form, according to Munib
Maglajlić, is inextricably linked to the specific features of flourishing Bosnian
towns during the most fruitful phase of the Ottoman presence there (between the
sixteenth century and the Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878), characteristic
of rapid urban development as well as artistic and literary achievements. The
towns developed according to the “oriental cult of water and greenery,”16 a term
Maglajlić uses to emphasize the historical and cultural contrast between old
medieval fortifications as the form of confined town structures, and urbanistic
principles characteristic of the new settlements scattered loosely and built in close
proximity to water and nature.
As Maglajlić points out, the social position and role of Muslim women became
an important element in the construction of urban space. Divided into private (in
Šolić, Women in ottoman Bosnia
313
Turkish, harem or haremlik) and public ( selâmlık) spaces, the houses resembled
those of the ruling Ottoman circles. However, the difference between the public
and private in relation to gender, as defined by Western theories, should not be fully
applied to Ottoman society.17 As Leslie Peirce suggests, Ottoman urban space was
established on different principles of authority, and the public/private division
was replaced by a distinction between “the privileged and the common, the sacred
and the profane—distinctions that cut across the dichotomy of gender.”18 The
privileged, therefore, became “private” and the common “public”; in other words,
“private” meant power.
Peirce’s analysis of the different relations among gender, power structure, and
the organization of urban space casts new light on the social role and influence
of women in Ottoman society. In contrast to traditional views, she emphasizes
the fact that women actually had more power in the domain of communication
than was previously thought. For instance, the “hidden” power of women in the
ritual of courting is a typical aspect of sevdalinka: a girl would stand behind a
latticed window [ demirli pendžer] and engage in dialogue with the man who was
courting her. This was called ašikovanje (from the Turkish âşık, meaning lover),
and such courting was common among the members of the lower classes.19 The
hidden girl’s role was privileged in this form of communication: she was able to
see the man with whom she flirts, and could even decide whether or not he was
suitable for her.
On the other hand, men were deprived of direct visual contact with women.
They mostly heard of a girl’s beauty through gossip or rumors spread by other
women who had seen her. The concept of visibility therefore became socially
significant as it represented “inner power”; it played a crucial role in the socially
important ritual of ašikovanje and the performance of sevdalinka.
In Botić’s work, and especially in Bijedna Mara, the sevdalinka is presented
as a pattern of communication in which the event, the actors, and the setting are
interlinked. First, singing is the only way for the young Adel to properly articulate
his love. A desperate feeling of love and longing accompanies him from the very
beginning, when he meets a poet on his way to Split from neighboring Klis, at the
time a Turkish stronghold. This poet is a healer (he is collecting herbs) as well as
his alter ego: he is supposed to heal Adel’s heart with a song. The song he sings is
a dialogue in verse performed at an imagined meeting with a loved one. It is also
a representation of the wait and the journey to see one’s beloved. Furthermore,
the poem reveals another important characteristic element: the aestheticization of
everyday events.20 Botić recreates it in six-syllable verses:
Da me hoće draga
If my darling wants
Zdravo dočekati,
to soundly welcome me,
Zdravo dočekati,
to soundly welcome me,
Milo pozdraviti:
to kindly greet me:
Što mi nosiš, zlato,
what will you bring me, my precious,
iz tog Klisa tvoga? —
from that Klis of yours? —
314
Women in the ottoman Balkans
Ja ti nosim, dušo,
I am bringing you, my darling,
Rumenu jabuku,
a ruddy apple,
I nosim ti, dušo,
and I am bringing you, my darling,
Đulsije vodice,
perfumed rose-water,
I nosim ti dušo,
and I am bringing you, my darling,
Srce obranjeno.
a safeguarded heart.21
The plots of the first three works by Botić mentioned above are set in the
broader Balkan and Mediterranean area, while in Bijedna Mara, the conflict and
love story take place in the very heart of Split. The story is based upon an actual
historical document. Botić’s ballad is a poetic interpretation of one of the regular
reports sent to the Venetian dukes. Dated 8 April 1547, this report by a Venetian
functionary informed the rulers that a Turk had allegedly abducted a Christian girl.
However, it had turned out that both the gi
rl and the young man had invented the
story in order to hide their love for each other. The writer of the report compared
this story with a similar event that had happened in 1546 when Mara Vornić, a girl
from a well-known aristocratic family, fell in love with Adel, a young “Turk” who
used to come to a bazaar in Split to sell his goods.
As expected, their love was predestined to end tragically: Mara’s parents did
not approve of the relationship; Mara died in a monastery, and Adel married
a Muslim girl. The writer of the document recorded the love song of a young
“Turk”—actually a Bosnian Muslim—who sang it in a bazaar “slavjanski” or “in
the Slavic manner.” The song is not versified, but just retold by the writer. Botić
translates it as follows:
A Turk caught sight of our dove. I am the Turk. Your face is whiter than my
wax, and nicer than roses I strained. The Turk caught sight of our dove. I am
the Turk. I heard her when she talked, her mouth is sweeter than my honey.
Your dove has a nicer figure than my horse. When he sang, the Turks said,
smiling: it is love.22
The various discussions of the origin of the song sung at the bazaar in Split
have traditionally analyzed different cultural influences, casting some light on
the mutual interconnections between what are typically seen as two distinct and
separate cultures. Jakša Ravlić, for instance, has suggested that the song probably
belongs to a Dalmatian folk tradition, brought there by Slavs as early as the tenth
century.23 However, analyzing the social patterns surrounding the performance,
Munib Maglajlić has questioned Ravlić’s theory, claiming that the song performed
in the Split bazaar in the middle of the sixteenth-century Ottoman-Dalmatian
conflict is in fact the first sevdalinka ever recorded. “Taking everything into
consideration,” he writes, “the Bosniak Adil, who is unhappily in love, is also
the first known singer, and also probably the first known poet of sevdalinka and
Muslim oral literature in general.”24
Maglajlić’s analysis supports the thesis of the existence of channels of
communication and human contact on an everyday basis between Christian towns
Šolić, Women in ottoman Bosnia
315
and the Muslim-Ottoman hinterland.25 Most importantly, he has demonstrated,
through the poetic modification of historical documents, that at the time when
Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History Page 56
