[ALST-L] If anybody in Prishtina can contact their history professors

[Isa Blumi]

 If anybody can ask their history professors in Prishtina or in Tirana if they have such copies...it would help greatly!  In the next few years we hope to do the same for the priceless materials lost in the war in Kosova.  Please ask your professors if they have material from Sarajevo.
Thank you,

Isa Blumi, NYU


 

Dear Colleagues,  We would like to ask you for your assistance for an important project,which cannot go forward without cooperation from scholars, librariansand archivists.  As many of you know, during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, the libraries andarchives were especially targeted for attacks by nationalist extremists.Among the greatest losses of primary source materials was the May 1992burning of the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, which was bombarded withphosphorus shells by the Bosnian Serb Army.  The Oriental Institutewas completely burned, its priceless collection of 5263 bound manuscriptsand hundreds of thousands of Ottoman documents turned to ashes.  Details can be found in my article, "Erasing the Past: The Destructionof Libraries and Archives in Bosnia-Herzegovina," MESA Bulletin 29 i(July 1995): 7-11  <http://w3fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/Bulletin/bosnia.htm>The article is also available in Turkish -"Maziyi silmek: Bosna-Hersek'teki kutuphanelerin ve arsivlerin tahribi,"Turk Kutuphaneciligi 9 iii (Eylul 1995): 337-341.  Since then, a group of scholars and librarians has launched aproject to recover this lost knowledge, resurrecting the informationcontained in the burned original manuscripts by using the potentialof modern technology and networking.  We have named our initiative the"Bosnian Manuscripts Ingathering Project".Our goal is to track down photocopies, microfilms and other facsimiles(published or unpublished) made before the 1992-95 war from the originalmanuscripts and documents that were destroyed in Bosnia.  Once we havelocated them, we make copies (on CD-ROM and acid-free paper) of theseprecious records which preserve the information from the original materialthat has now been lost.  For additional details, please see the website ofThe Bosnian Manuscripts Ingathering Projecthttp://www.kakarigi.net/manu/ingather.htm  The project is ambitious, but not without precedent.  There have beenother successful projects in the 20th century to reconstitute librariesand archival collections destroyed in war:http://www.kakarigi.net/manu/preced.htm  In the five years since we launched our Bosnian Manuscripts IngatheringProject, we have traced and recovered copies of ca. 1000 pages of lostoriginals, representing all or part of about 30 original manuscriptsand document collections.  This represents a tiny fragment - less thanone percent - of what was lost when the Institute was burned. Our hope isthat we will locate many more such items and return copies of them to theOriental Institute in Sarajevo.  In the years before the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo was destroyed,many foreign scholars went there to do research. They brought back withthem photocopies and microfilms of materials from the Oriental Institute.We are seeking assistance from our colleagues in Turkey, the Balkansand wherever such materials may be located.  We would like to find out what has happened to these scholars and totheir papers.  In cases where these scholars are now deceased or retired,stacks of old photocopies or a few reels of microfilms from Sarajevomay still be sitting in someone's office or donated to some university'sarchive, where their importance as _unique_ records of lost originals maynot be realized. Please help us find them and to return (copies of) themto the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo.  According to information received from colleagues at the OrientalInstitute, some names among the many students and scholars who went toSarajevo to do research and had copies made at the Oriental Institutebefore the war include:* the late Prof Mehmed Cavusoglu (Istanbul Universitesi & Marmara Univ.),* Prof. Hasan Kolcu (literature scholar, member of TDK)* Prof. Hamdi Hasan (University of Skopje/Uskup)* the late Prof. Vanco Boskov (Skopje, Macedonia)  Any information about the location of their papers would be greatlyappreciated.  We also know that, during the years before the 1992-95 war, foreignlibraries and research institutes (such as the TTK and TDK) receivedmicrofilms from the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo as part of exchanges.  A search of the microfilm archives of these institutions could identifythe microfilms from Sarajevo.  We could then make copies of these copiesand send them to the Sarajevo Oriental Institute to replace their lostoriginals.  There are many more possibilities, but any information that can help uslocate scholars who once did research in Sarajevo, and their papers,would be a great service to the preservation of knowledge.  The situation is urgent, since many of the scholars who did researchin Sarajevo 20 to 30 years ago are now close to or already in retirement.Some of them are already deceased. Their families and colleagues may notrealize the importance of the photocopies (originally from Sarajevo)that now lie unused in desk drawers or on office shelves.  If promptaction is not taken, this material may soon be discarded, the knowledgelost forever.  Thank you for any assistance or information you can provide.Andras Riedlmayer<riedlmay at fas.harvard.edu>The Bosnian Manuscripts Ingathering Projecthttp://www.kakarigi.net/manu/ingather.htm* Amila Buturovic (York University)* Andras Riedlmayer (Harvard University)* Irvin Cemil Schick (Harvard University & MIT)Please address correspondence regarding the project to:Andras RiedlmayerFine Arts LibraryHarvard University32 Quincy StreetCambridge MA 02138 U.S.A.tel. +1-617-495-3372, fax +1-617-496-4889e-mail <riedlmay at fas.harvard.edu>



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