CULTURAL HERITAGE: - Macedonian Information Centre

24 - Marijana kavCiC
principles and religious law – as well as their script, that remained in
use up to 1928.
Although the official language of the Ottoman Empire was the
Turkish language, during the Turkish conquests of the Balkans, the
Arabic, as the language of the Koran, but also as the language of the works
of scientific and philosophical character, was still considered superior
to Turkish, continuing to play the role of a carrier and transmitter of
the Islamic religion and of the Islamic civilization. This is absolutely
comprehensible, taking into account the fact that the Arabic language
had already had an elaborated terminology and had already counted with
the numerous works, not only in the area of religious disciplines, but also
in all the other fields of sciences.
So, it is quite understandable that a certain number of authors
from the South Slavic geographical and linguistic area used to write in
Arabic, not only the works from the fields of religious sciences, but also
the poetry. Even the first famous poets from Macedonia after the arrival
of the Ottomans, Haveri, Katib Hasan and Ayani from Bitola, used to
write in Arabic, complaining that it was difficult for them to compose
verses and to find poetical expressions in their own language 4 .
Among the Arabic manuscripts of the fund of the National and
University Library “ St. Clement of Ohrid”, three manuscripts have been
found up to now whose authors probably originate from Macedonia.
These are Muhammad Wahdati ibn Muhammad al-Uskubi and Shayh
Sinani Mustafa ibn Mahmud al-Uskubi, the both from Skopje, judging
by their nisba 5 , as well as Abdurrahman ibn Hasan ibn Abdurrahman al-
Dabrawi, originating from Debar. All of this demonstrates the importance
that the Arabic language used to have in this region, where not only the
Arabic works of the greatest Islamic scholars used to be read, but in that
language some original works were also created by the authors living in
or originating from Macedonia.
The Arabic manuscripts of the Collection of the National and
University Library are written on the paper and most of them represent
the works on theology, Islamic law and Islamic tradition, but there is also
a large number of works from different fields of sciences that used to be
the subject of studying in the Middle Ages such as philology, mathematics,
astronomy, philosophy etc.
As to their contents, the manuscripts written in Turkish are close to
the Arabic ones, while those written in the Persian language mostly consist
Gjeorgjievski, Naume, Knigata i nejzinoto mesto vo kulturniot život na islamskiot
svet vo Bitola, Bibliotekarstvo vo Bitola i Bitolsko, Matična i univerzitetska biblioteka
“Sv. Kliment Ohridski”, Bitola, 995, p. 99.
5 A part of name, i.e. an adjective indicating the origin of the author – geographical,
genealogical or ethnical - or the affiliation to a certain order or law school.