THE WORK OF MUHAMED SEID SERDAREVIC IN THE FIELD OF HISTORY OF ISLAM

ON THE OCCASION OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS FROM HIS BOOK “A SHORT HISTORY OF ISLAM”

Abstract

Since diversity of Muhamed S. Serdarevic’s work has not always been evaluated and presented the way it deserves, this article is an attempt to point to certain characteristics of his work in the field of history of Islam. In this area he wrote two works: “A short history of Islam” and “Information on the history of Islam”. They belong to two different periods of his creative life, “A short history of Islam” was written in his early period, while the other one in a latter, more mature period of his creative life. Even though both works have a lot in common, they obviously have different intentions. “A short history of Islam” is written for a wider audience and, at the time it was written, it represented the only such work available in local language written in Latin alphabet. A great need for such work becomes apparent through the fact that it was originally being published in the Behar magazine (1905-06), and then immediately printed out as a separate book. Apart from the fact that it was written approximately a decade later from the first book, “Information on the history of Islam” is different from “A short history of Islam” in certain other important elements too. It is considerably smaller in size but the period covered is considerably wider and it encompasses Umeyyad and Abbasid dynasties and even the period of the Ottoman rule. It is obvious that this work has been adapted to a teaching process and it was probably created for that purpose. When the two works are compared, we could say that the first one is meant for a wider audience and is educational in nature, while the other one is more like a text book.