The history of Turkology research in croatia and of the chair of Turkology of the faculty of humanities and social sciences in Zagreb

Abstract

In this paper, based on archival records of the Archive of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb and on relevant literature, the history of individual and institutional Turkology research in Croatia is analyzed. The Oriental Collection of HAZU was formed in Zagreb in 1927 and on the same year HAZU tasked German Turkologist Franz Babinger with collecting Oriental manuscripts in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The following year, Russian Turkologist Aleksey Olesnitski took over that task and in the following years he collected 1966 manuscripts, 660 documents and over 500 books for the Oriental Collection, as well as wrote numerous valuable works. Besides that, in 1937, Olesnitski was named lecturer of Turkish language at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, but his work was stopped by his early death in 1943. Olesnitski's scientific work in the field of Turkology was preceded by the work of Ćiro Truhelka on the beginning of the 20th century. From the 1970s onwards that work was continued by Muhamed Ždralović, from the 1980s by Nenad Moačanin, from the 1990s by Ekrem Čaušević, Vesna Miović and Tatjana Paić-Vukić, while in the new millennium Kornelija Jurin Starčević, Vjeran Kursar, Dino Mujadžević, Marta Andrić, Barbara Kerovec and Azra Abadžić Navaey joined the Turkology research of their predecessors. On the other hand, the place of the professor of Turkish language at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, that was suddenly extinguished in 1943, was revived in 1994 with the launch of the Chair of Turkology with Ekrem Čaušević as Head, Marta Andrić, Barbara Kerovec and Azra Abadžić Navaey as lecturers, two foreign language instructors and associates from the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and in Sarajevo.