Safvet-beg Bašagić

Bašagić in an Ottoman military uniform.

Safvet-beg Bašagić - a collector, literary, journalist, poet, translator, professor, bibliographer, curator of a museum, politician - a Bosnian intellectual, who preserved in his works and collections an image of Bosnian literature and Muslim literary heritage. His collection of Islamic manuscripts and prints comprises Arabic, Persian and Turkish works and rare Serbian and Croatian texts written in Arabic script. Bašagić's collection contains, at the same time, unique manuscripts and essential works of medieval Islamic scholarly literature and belles-lettres, spanning the interval from 12th to 19th century, and prints from two centuries, starting from 1729. The 284 manuscript volumes and 365 printed volumes portray the more than a thousand year long development of Islamic civilization from its commencement to the beginning of 20th century. Especially the authorship and language aspect of the collection represents a bridge between different cultures and a certain overlap thereof. The very history of the journey of Bašagić's collection of Islamic manuscripts and prints was dramatic and its termination almost unbelievable. Bašagić tried to deposit the collection in a more secure place than was the Balkan region of his time. In the turmoil of the turbulent development of Balkan nations in 19th and 20th centuries, his valuable collection eventually found its haven of rest in the funds of the University Library in Bratislava. The University Library in Bratislava makes considerable provisions for the protection of Bašagić's collection documents that are adequate to its worth and value. The whole fund of the collection has been professionally expertised by Czech and Slovak scholars and is carefully stored and used for scientific purposes. In order to adequately protect the original documents and so to preserve them for the next generations and, at the same time, to enable the unprofessional and scholarly public to use them, the Library has decided to digitalize the collection and publish it in an electronic form. Many items of the collection are available online.[8][9]