Thesis Chapters by Dror Klein
This magisterial thesis deals with the treatise written by Bosnian Alim Mehmed Handžić (1906-1944... more This magisterial thesis deals with the treatise written by Bosnian Alim Mehmed Handžić (1906-1944) Al-Jawhar al-Asna fi Tarajim Ulama wa Shu'ara Bosna ('The Priceless Pearl, Concerning the Biographies of Bosnia's Ulama and Poets"), which was published in Cairo in 1930. As the title suggests, is a contemporary Arabic Tabaqat (biographical dictionary) work concerned with Bosnia's Islamic scholars and poets. In the 1920s, following the secularization of Turkey and the closing of Istanbul's Madrasas, the traditional fountainhead for Bosnian Ulama, many Bosnian would-be Ulama arrived at the hallowed halls of al-Azhar al-Sharif, only to find an insurmountable wall of bureaucratic obtuseness, due to aspersions cast over their Islamic learning, and competence. Mehmed Handžić, himself a brilliant student at al-Azhar, has taken it upon himself to vouch for the orthodoxy and competence of his countrymen, by writing a Tabaqat work (a distinctly Arabic-Islamic literary genre) on Bosnia's many renowned Ulama. It is an impassioned plea for help to the Azhari administration, to open the gates before the newcomers, as Bosnia is Islam's last bastion in Europe, and Islam in Bosnia faces a very serious danger of falling into disrepair or dying out altogether, due to isolation from the rest of the Muslim world, lack of real Ulama, secularizing attempts from a non-Muslim regime and reform attempts from Muslim reformists (both religious and secular). Inter alia, this thesis assesses Handžić's character and his role in Bosnian history, discusses the Tabaqat genre as a whole and the place of al-Jawhar in it, the methodology which guided Handžić in his work, and the portrayal of the Bosnians in this work.
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Thesis Chapters by Dror Klein