CULTURAL HERITAGE: - Macedonian Information Centre

2 - Marijana kavCiC
Some of the manuscripts contain inscriptions indicating that they
used to be a part of the funds of certain Islamic libraries created on the
territory of Macedonia after the establishment of the Ottoman rule. Those
libraries were founded for the needs of mosques, tekes (monasteries of
Muslim orders) or madrasas (religious schools) by the system of waqf,
i.e. by endowments made by individuals, and in the beginning their
funds consisted of the manuscripts almost exclusively written in Arabic
language, due to the already mentioned reasons.
According to the documents discovered so far, it is believed that
the very first Islamic libraries in the Balkans were created precisely on
the territory of Macedonia, at the beginning of the 15th century 6 . One
of them was founded by the famous commander of the frontier area Isa
Bey, son of Ishaq Bey,.
According to the Act of endowment made by Isa Bey and ratified
in Skopje in 1469, we know that, for the needs of his religious school,
besides his numerous lands and shops, he donated more than 330 bind
volumes containing texts of the most famous Islamic scholars and authors
of the time 7 . The books in the Act of endowment were listed according
to their contents, for every title the number of volumes was mentioned
and, in one case, the presence of decoration.
Out of the manuscripts mentioned in the Act of endowment, we
knew so far that only one had been preserved: the 12th volume of the
Razi`s Commentary of the Koran 8 . Its title is Mafatih al ghayb (“The Keys
of the Unknown”) and it is also know as al-tafsir al-kabir (“The Big
Commentary”). The full name of its author is Fahruddin Abu Abdullah
Muhammad ibn Omar ibn al-Husain ibn al-Hatib al-Razi. Recently,
as a result of the current cataloguing of the Arabic manuscripts held by
the National and University Library “St. Clement of Ohrid”, another
two Arabic manuscripts have been discovered containing the inscription
“endowed by Isa Bey, son of Ishaq Bey”.
The first is “Glosses on the Commentary of the Compendium on the
Principles of the Islamic Law” by Sayfuddin Ahmad al-Abhari, representing
a commentary of the commentary of the work on the Islamic Law (fiqh)
entitled Muhtasar muntaha al-su’al wa al-amal fi ‘ilm al-usul wa al-jadal
written by the famous scholar and first-class philologist Jamaluddin Abu
Amr Othman ibn Omar ibn Abu Ibn al Hajib. The second manuscript
is kanz al-ma’ani by Burhanuddin Abu Muhammad (Abu al-Abbas)
Ibrahim ibn Omar ibn Ibrahim al-Ja’bari. The work is a commentary of
6 Kaleši, Hasan, Prve orijentalne biblioteke u jugoslovenskim zemljama, Bibliotekar,
XIII/ 96 , No. , pp. 279-282.
7 Elezović, Gliša, Turski spomenici u Skoplju, Vakufija Gazi Isa Begove zadužbine u
Skoplju, preštampano iz Glasnika Skopskog naučnog društva, sv. i 2, pp. 5- 0 .
8 Narodna i univerzitetska biblioteka “Sv. Kliment Ohridski”, “Sv. Kliment Ohridski”,
Skopje, 99 , p. 28.