Amila Buturović is a professor of Islamic studies at the prestigious York University in Toronto. This native Sarajka, who graduated in Arabic and English in her hometown, received her doctorate at the most famous Canadian university, "McGill." She is the author of several studies and several well-known books. "Carved in Stone, Etched in Memory" is the last of them, published in the fall of 2015 by the London publishing house "Ashgate." The book is a kind of cultural history of Bosnia and Herzegovina through an interdisciplinary study of Islamic commemorative customs and tombstones from 1,500 years ago.
Amila is also the author of books about Bosnian identity in the Middle Ages through the analysis of tombstones and the poetry of Mako Dizdar; she is the co-author of a book about the role of women in the Ottoman Empire, also published in English. She wrote a special study, "Islam in the Balkans," published by the "Oxford" bibliography.
In an interview for "Avaz," he mentions the works of Šefik Bešlagić, Mehmed Mujezinović, Đoka Mazalić, and more recently, Ivan and Dubravko Lovrenović, and Gorčin Dizdar, who deal with the topic of studying tombstones in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because, as he says, "rich and alone an inspiring" topic in itself. When asked what inspired him to research this segment of Bosnian history in the first place, he states that it was originally Dizdar's poetry. Buturović says that "Stone Sleeper" represents "an attempt to establish a new dialogue" between medieval ancestors and current society and all those who "do not share the historical moment" but share the Bosnian "geographical and cultural space.". 
– Apart from Dizdar's poetry, which you covered in your book "The Stone Speaker", published by "Palgrave" in 2002, in New York, what else inspired you? Why did you decide to research this segment of Bosnian cultural history in the first place? – That second thread is of a much more personal nature. Although I moved away from Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina several years before the war, I, like many of my fellow citizens, became its victim through the loss of loved ones, including the closest family members who are now buried in Sarajevo. While visiting them, I began to notice how cemeteries are shaped and even changed under the influence of political discourse and social turmoil. Those changes in the lapidary (monumental) commemoration of death intrigued me to take a deeper look at the cemetery as a space that reflects historical changes in a simple but dynamic way. So, to think about the grave as a living cultural text, not just a silent monument. The French author Michel Ragon once said that the necropolis is just the other side of the metropolis. I think that there is a lot of content behind that remark, so I decided to examine it in the example of Bosnian cemeteries. Stone archives - They say that what historians cannot support with documents, archaeologists can, precisely by studying tombstones or discovering tombs. What do these monuments reveal to us in Bosnia and Herzegovina that historians have not yet proven to us? - Well, for archaeologists, tombs primarily have forensic significance: they deposit bones, and those bones are in themselves the goal of excavation and scientific work. For anthropologists and ethnologists, for whom direct contact with human remains is not their goal, tombs carry a symbolic value—insofar as they are considered a material representation of death—and as such become the focus of ritual life. As for historians, they are—and this may sound strange—relatively uninterested in the dead. Although they inevitably deal with dead subjects—participants in historical events—historians aim for a certain narrative immediacy to evoke that distant past in a documentary way. Cemeteries do not play a major role in this process and are mostly valued for the biographical detail contained in the inscription. - However, Bosnian cemeteries remain a kind of archive of Bosnian suffering, even though the stones cannot speak. Is that how you perceive them? - The starting point of my research is that cemeteries do not only have an archival value but are at the same time active commemorative spaces intended for private purposes—enabling reconciliation with the loss of a loved one, remembering the deceased, maintaining a relationship with relatives and friends, etc.—but also for collective needs; the importance is given to those who died in the common space. That significance is reflected not only through cemeteries but also through folklore, the written word, art, the sacred calendar, politics, etc. When graves are approached in this way, they are no longer just silent stones that contain silent remains of a forgotten life but are subjects that continue to participate in history and participate in our everyday lives. It is not even necessary to emphasize how important, for example, in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, the attitude towards the victims of the war is. So, graves reveal a lot; it just depends on how you approach them. - How much and what can be read in those cemeteries about what is referred to as a thousand-year-old Bosnia? Do they say anything about the Bosnian language?- Our history is linguistically very complex, so the issue of tombstone literacy is quite complex. I believe that neither the written nor the oral heritage can be understood if it is isolated or cleansed of its linguistic complexities, but precisely if it is allowed to be a diverse and reduced (blurred-oop.a.) linguistic panoply. When we look at Bosnian cemeteries throughout history, and even those that belong only to Muslims, they embody several language standards and scripts: Bosnian, Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic; from languages Bosnian, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. If we return to the thesis that the grave is both a private and a public space, we can see that it reflects not only wider cultural currents but also very personal choices that decide how the deceased will be remembered among close relatives, friends, and the community that surrounds him. So, regardless of which 'official' language is in force, the grave records what is of direct meaning for communication between the dead and the living members of the community, whether it is a village, neighborhood, mahal, city, or region. 
Bosnian Islam - Do Bosnian cemeteries say something special about Islam - when and how did it come to Bosnia and Herzegovina? - Pitanje dolaska islama je historiografsko i ono se može jasnije odgovoriti na osnovu historijskih dokumenata, domaćih i Osmanskih. Meni je interesantnije pitanje kako groblja očitavaju promjene u duhovnom i kulturnom životu (u Bosni). Osmanska administracija je metodično i redovno pravila popise stanovništva, i naši istaknuti Osmanisti su uložili velike napore da razjasne te procese. Međutim, ono što statistika sadržana u defterima ne registruje je kvalitet i sadržaj te promjene. - So what did it mean to accept Islam and how did it affect daily life and relationships with family members and the immediate community, including those who did not accept Islam? How did these "new" Muslims in Bosnia learn about Islam?- Although we have important answers to such questions in written documents, especially those related to the formation of urban areas, schools, and dervish orders, we know little about what happened outside the larger settlements. And here I attach great importance to tombstones. They embody these changes and indicate that conversion was not only an act of acceptance of a new faith but a long process of transformation and conversation with the wider environment. One of the key moments in life is death. How to die without fear that we will be forgotten or that our transition to the afterlife will be smooth? Here I look at the tombstone as the closest source of information about ordinary people who did not leave behind writings and deeds recorded in documents. That's why I found the most interesting cemeteries in villages and places that marked such transitions more slowly but also authentically. While in the cities the imperial standard was quickly accepted among the civic elite, this was not the case in the margins and peripheries. They were all Bosnians - Are there any signs that Bosnians were living in Bosnia and Herzegovina who recognized themselves by different religions, but were members of the same nation?- And yes and no. I would not dare to make such assumptions based on a study of this type, and probably not on any other basis. On the one hand, whoever is buried in this area can in a certain way be considered a Bosnian, in the sense of participating in the cultural and spatial continuity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The sense of community is maintained when both living and long-dead members are involved, as well as the invisible world in between. We know, for example, that many passing travelers were buried in Bosnia. Alifakovac is a place where, according to tradition, travelers who died while traveling through Sarajevo were buried. I see them as part of that common cultural context. On the other hand, (national) identity is a modern concept related to the formation of political categories such as the nation, and in this sense, it is not easy to apply it to earlier eras. What is characteristic of pre-modern history and culture also applies to pre-modern cemeteries: people declared themselves in several ways, and the lines demarcating religious, historical, ethnic, economic, social, and regional affiliations melted into each other. After all, Bosnians are buried there, but being a Bosnian now and then are conceptually two different terms, although not mutually exclusive. About Bosnian tolerance - Is Bosnian tolerance just a myth considering all the bloody wars and genocides, or is there evidence of it? What do the sights and monuments say? - Our epigraphy does not express great themes and epic glory. It is mostly simple, short, and lyrical. The stonemasons who made them were local, and just as with the early examples, they carved not only Muslim niches but also Christian plaques. The handwriting is simple; there is no calligraphy, only a basic knowledge of the Arabic script and simple phrases. It is certainly different in urban centers, where many nišan and turbeta are written in a much more skilled calligraphic hand with rich poetic style and rhyme and using precious stones. For a long time, the combination of written and visual reflects the continuity with the medieval stonemasonry tradition and indicates that the break was not violent or demanding to separate the funerary culture and change the eschatological (temporally last note) symbols after the arrival of Islam. For me, that is a very important reflection of tolerance and dialogue. Common customs - As if Bosnians were more similar in death - more equal than in life full of imposed differences, from national ones to religious and cultural ones?- Although Muslims, Christians, and Jews have a similar eschatological vision, the paths to overcome this earthly destiny are different and the sacraments of salvation include different symbols and rituals. Therefore, if despite these differences you are similarly sent to death - and the grave is an essential link in that process of salvation - then this is a significant affirmation of acceptance of others and participation in a common destiny. It is also important that until the early modern period the dead were not categorically separated, there was an important spatial intimacy that also indicates a common attachment to the birth lump and the life around it - as a decisive criterion of collective victory over oblivion, which death can cause. - Did our predecessors hope for a better future, knowing, as we all like to say, especially in difficult times, that Bosnia lasts and survives, as history proves, regardless of all adversity? - Our ancestors were not great optimists. Their messages for future generations are very elementary; they seek understanding and dialogue, mutual respect, and connection. There is not too much glory in them and the need to leave a heroic mark on the course of history but to affirm life after death. As we are not a cultural climate that cremates its dead (cremation is expressly forbidden in Islam), burial becomes, among other things, an important act of marking space. And space, we know, is an essential component in the feeling of belonging. In modern times, this belonging to the space is politicized, and in pre-modern times it is expressed more by the concept of the birth clod.– If they do not already reflect heroism, as Krleža wrote about the Bosnian stećci, do Bosnian cemeteries have a universal message, or do they only carry a Bosnian humanist message? – I think that an important lesson for the present and the future is that those old cemeteries are drowning in each other, regardless of whether they are Orthodox, Catholic, or Muslim, and that this is a message left to us by our ancestors. Certainly, in modern history, secularism and the modern state created civil culture, which includes mixed cemeteries, but they, at least in our country, were used to overcome religious affiliation, while the old ones accepted it as inevitable. So, the old cemeteries did not have an ideology that supported the mixing of the dead, but they had a cultural heritage and customs according to which this was not an obstacle. In the post-war period, unfortunately, we are losing more and more of that civil space, and at the same time, we are creating an ever deeper divide between the deceased both spatially and symbolically based on their religion. The irony, it seems, is that those old cemeteries portend a better past, not a future. Author: Erol Avdović
English
Bosanski
