Vilayet Printing House (Sarajevo)
Vilayet of Bosnia | |
Publication types | Newspapers, books |
---|---|
Nonfiction topics | Politics, law, education, culture, religion |
Owner(s) | Ignjat Sopron (April–October 1866); Government of the Vilayet of Bosnia (October 1866 – August 1878) |
The Vilayet Printing House (
The first newspaper to be published in Bosnia and Herzegovina was Bosanski vjestnik, a political-informative and educational weekly edited by Sopron and printed in
Background
The
In the first half of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was swept by a wave of reforms meant to centralise and Europeanise the government of the state. Bosnian Muslim feudal lords rejected the reforms and repeatedly revolted against the
The reforms became firmly rooted in Bosnia during the 1860s, when the Ottoman governor (
History and publications
Under Sopron
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Topal_Sherif_Osman_Pasha.jpg)
Shortly after the Constitutional Law for the Vilayet of Bosnia was issued, Osman Pasha invited publishing magnate Ignjat Sopron to Sarajevo. Sopron was the owner and manager of a publishing and printing house in Zemun (then part of the Austrian Empire, today one of the municipalities of Belgrade, Serbia).[4] An ethnic German, he was born in 1821 in Novi Sad as Ignaz Karl Soppron.[7] Upon his arrival in Sarajevo, Osman Pasha offered him a subsidy to establish and organise a printing house. It was to be headquartered in a building on Sarajevo's Dugi sokak street that was being rented by the vilayet's government.[4][8] Sopron soon came to the city bringing with him printing tools and materials, accompanied by a typesetter from Belgrade, Ilija Tomić. Tomić was in charge of the Cyrillic and Latin letters, and he engaged three graduated students of the Serb secondary school in Sarajevo to be his trainees. Osman Pasha also invited a man named Kadri-effendi from Istanbul to work as the typesetter for Arabic letters.[8] The principal aim of the printing house was to issue an official gazette and to publish elementary school textbooks, thus stopping their import from Serbia and Austria.[4]
Sopronova pečatnja, or Sopron's Printing House, was officially opened on 19 April [O.S. 7 April] 1866.[7] The Cyrillic orthography that was used in it was consistently in accordance with the linguistic reform of Serbian philologist Vuk Karadžić, which was at that time relatively new and still not universally accepted.[9][10] The first issue of a political-informative and educational weekly newspaper named Bosanski vjestnik (Serbian Cyrillic: Босански вјестник, "Bosnian Herald") appeared on the same day.[7] This was the first newspaper ever to be published in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[11] Sopron made a deal with the vilayet's authorities to publish it independently from the official gazette.[7] When Sopron presented the editorial policy of his newspaper to the authorities, he indicated that it would be printed in the Serbian language, much to the Ottomans' displeasure. The authorities subsequently scratched "Serbian" and replaced it with "Bosnian". Sopron accepted the revision and went along with Osman Pasha's idea of promoting a unitary Bosnian nation.[6] Nevertheless, Bosanski vjestnik had "a decidedly Serb orientation".[11] Sopron did not consider this contradictory, as he apparently identified Bosnian-ness with Serbness. In the newspaper, the language was occasionally referred to as Serbo-Bosnian, while both the Serb and the Croat ethnic designations were expressed.[6]
The first issue of the official gazette, named Bosna (
Under the vilayet government
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Bukvar_%28Milo%C5%A1_Mandi%C4%87%2C_1867%29_11.png/220px-Bukvar_%28Milo%C5%A1_Mandi%C4%87%2C_1867%29_11.png)
In October 1866, Sopron sold the establishment to the Government of the Vilayet of Bosnia.[7] It was renamed Vilajetska pečatnja, or the Vilayet Printing House, and from March 1867 onwards it bore the name Vilajetska štamparija (the same meaning).[12] Sopron remained the owner and editor of Bosanski vjestnik, and managed to publish 51 issues.[7] After a year in Sarajevo, Sopron left the city and returned to Zemun.[15] The first director of the printing house was Haim Davičo, a Belgrade Jew, who was offered that position by Osman Pasha.[16] Mehmed Šakir Kurtćehajić, the editor of Bosna since early 1868, began publishing Sarajevski cvjetnik at the end of that year. It was a bilingual weekly like Bosna, containing commentaries on current politics and articles on various social issues, most of which was written by Kurtćehajić. He fiercely defended the Ottoman regime in Bosnia, polemicising with newspapers from Serbia and Austria which criticised it.[15] In May 1869, when Osman Pasha ceased to be the governor of the Vilayet of Bosnia, Davičo returned to Belgrade. The new governor installed Kurtćehajić as the director of the printing house.[16] Kurtćehajić died of tuberculosis in September 1872;[15] the last issue of Sarajevski cvjetnik had appeared two months earlier.[17]
Kurtćehajić's death marked the end of a prosperous period for the Vilayet Printing House. Its subsequent directors were less capable, and the establishment's condition began to deteriorate. In 1877, the last Ottoman governor of Bosnia installed Kadri-effendi as director, and he significantly improved the condition of the printing house.
Apart from the newspapers Bosanski vjestnik, Bosna, and Sarajevski cvjetnik, the Vilayet Printing House published around fifty books and booklets in Serbo-Croatian, Ottoman Turkish, and Hebrew. While most of these publications were concerned with various Ottoman laws and legislation, the printing house also published a number of textbooks.[14] The textbooks for Serb elementary schools in the vilayet were prepared by Miloš Mandić on the basis of those that were used in Serbia. These include an alphabet book (Буквар), a short Biblical history (Кратка свештена историја), a basal reader (Прва читанка), and the First Knowledges (Прва знања); they were published in 1867 and 1868.[13][18] Mandić's alphabet book, the printing house's first textbook, was the second Serbian alphabet book using the reformed Serbian Cyrillic. The First Serbian Alphabet Book (Први Српски Буквар), authored by Vuk Karadžić, had been published in Vienna in 1827.[13][14] The original plan was to print fifteen textbooks for Serb schools, ranging in subject from grammar, arithmetic, geography and religious teaching, but only four were printed.[19] Although they were based on the textbooks used in Serbia, the vilayet's authorities made sure that every mention of Serbs and the Serbian language was erased from them.[20]
Bogoljub Petranović collected Bosnian Serb lyric folk poems and published them in 1867 in a separate book (Српске народне пјесме из Босне (Женске)).[7][13] The First Bosnian-Serb Calendar for the Common Year 1869 (Први босанско-српски календар за просту годину 1869), consisting of 58 pages, was edited by Jovan R. Džinić.[21] In Serbian tradition, calendars contained more than just calendarical data and were also popular literary and educational almanacs. Džinić's calendar had more of an educational, rather than literary, character.[22] It also included a collection of advice that was traditionally presented to journeymen during the testir ceremony of the guild of tailors in Sarajevo, in which a journeyman was promoted to a master craftsman. This is the only known text of this kind, beside a manuscript written in 1841 for the guild of goldsmiths.[23]
Catholic school textbooks in the vilayet included a geography book (Kratka zemljopisna početnica s dodatkom o Bosni, 1869) by Franjo Ž. Franjković, an alphabet book with elements of religious education (Bukvar s napomenkom članakah nauka vjere za katoličku mladež u Bosni, 1869), and another geography book (Početni zemljopis za katoličke učionice u Bosni, 1871) by the Franciscan
Notes
- ^ Lovrenović 2001, pp. 123–24.
- ^ a b McCarthy 1996, pp. 74–78.
- ^ a b Ekmečić 1989, pp. 254–55.
- ^ a b c d e f Kruševac 1978, pp. 11–12.
- ^ a b Papić 1976, p. 160.
- ^ a b c Kruševac 1978, p. 32.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Kruševac 1978, pp. 27–30.
- ^ a b Kreševljaković 1920, pp. 12–13.
- ^ Kruševac 1978, p. 49.
- ^ Kreševljaković 1920, p. 19.
- ^ a b Hoare 2007, p. 71.
- ^ a b c Kruševac 1978, pp. 41–42.
- ^ a b c d e Kreševljaković 1920, pp. 23–28.
- ^ a b c d Budiša 1984, p. 176.
- ^ a b c Kruševac 1978, pp. 50–52.
- ^ a b c Kreševljaković 1920, pp. 16–17.
- ^ Kreševljaković 1920, p. 21.
- ^ Kruševac 1978, pp. 44–46.
- ^ Sudarušić & Pantić 2012, p. 543.
- ^ Ekmečić 1989, pp. 252–53.
- ^ Sudarušić & Pantić 2012, p. 548.
- ^ Ćorović 1924, pp. 228–29.
- ^ Milenković & Vasiljev 2002, pp. 342–43.
- ^ Levy 1911, p. 31.
References
- Budiša, Dražen (1984). Počeci tiskarstva u evropskih naroda [Beginnings of Printing among European Peoples] (in Croatian). Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost.
- Ćorović, Vladimir (1924). Svetislav Petrović (ed.). "Календари за 1924 годину" [Calendars for the Year 1924]. Srpski književni glasnik (in Serbian). 11 (1). Belgrade: Bogdan Popović.
- ISBN 9788607004324.
- ISBN 978-0-86356-953-1.
- Kreševljaković, Hamdija (1920). Đuro Körbler (ed.). "Štamparije u Bosni za turskog vremena 1529.–1878" [Printing Houses in Bosnia in Turkish Times 1529–1878]. Građa za povijest književnosti hrvatske (in Croatian). 9. Zagreb: Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.
- Kruševac, Todor (1978). "Bosanskohercegovački listovi u XIX veku" [Bosnian-Herzegovinian Periodicals in the 19th Century] (PDF). Veselin Masleša (in Serbian). Sarajevo.
- Levy, Moritz (1911). Die Sephardim in Bosnien: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden auf der Balkanhalbinsel [The Sephardim in Bosnia: a Contribution to the History of Jews in the Balkans] (in German). Sarajevo: Daniel A. Kajon.
- Lovrenović, Ivan (2001). Bosnia: A Cultural History. London: Saqi Books. ISBN 978-0-8147-5179-4.
- ISBN 978-0-932885-12-8.
- Milenković, Svetlana; Vasiljev, Ljupka (2002). "Још једна рукописна књига Лазара Јовановића, тешањског учитеља" [Another Manuscript Book by Lazar Jovanović, Teacher from Tešanj]. Arheografski prilozi (Mélanges archéographiques) (in Serbian). 24. Belgrade: ISSN 0351-2819.
- Papić, Mitar (1976). "Сто година штампе у Босни и Xерцеговини" [One Hundred Years of the Press in Bosnia and Herzegovina]. Трагом културног насљеђа (PDF) (in Serbian). Sarajevo: Svjetlost.
- Sudarušić, Radoslavka; Pantić, Vlastimir (2012). "Српска штампана књига у БиХ од 1800. до 1878. године" [Serbian Printed Book in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1800 to 1878]. In Bojana Dimitrijević (ed.). Филологија и универзитет (in Serbian). Niš: Faculty of Philosophy, ISBN 978-86-7379-263-7.
External links
- Textbooks for Serb elementary schools in the Vilayet of Bosnia:
- Буквар за основне школе у вилајету босанском, alphabet book (1867)
- Кратка свештена историја за основне школе у вилајету босанском, short Biblical history (1868)
- Прва читанка за основне школе у вилајету босанском, basal reader (1868)
- Савјет мајстора терзинских у Сарајеву, part of the First Bosnian-Serb Calendar for the Common Year 1869 (reprinted in 1890)