The Bosnian Muslim Scholar Who Risked His Life to Protect Jewish Heritage

Bosnia is one of the unique crossroads and political hotspots of the world. With the memory of a brutal genocide still intact, Bosnia continues to struggle to maintain a profound heritage of religious pluralism. Even before the Ottomans conquered Bosnia in 1463,¹ it was a religiously diverse land made up of a tapestry of different cultures, tribes, and people groups. 

This would set the precedent for a unique flourishing of cultures in later times, but also be the catalyst for countless centuries of inter-ethnic and religious wars that still plague the region to this day. The Ottomans, however, brought this diversity and pluralism to a height never seen before in Europe since the time of al-Andalus, or perhaps the Emirate of Sicily centuries earlier. 

In true Islamic fashion, they protected and ensured the rights of the People of the Book (Christians and Jews). This is where the Jewish-Muslim-Christian coexistence was born in Bosnia, as numerous ships of Sephardic Jews fleeing Spain from as early as 1492 arrived in the Ottoman Empire, and the Sephardim eventually settled in Bosnia. 

Along with the new arrivals came, what is today known as, The Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illustrated Sephardic Jewish manuscript produced in Spain in the 1350s. It was an item that the Nazis would come searching for in 1943 in Sarajevo, and an item that Muslim scholar, imam, and museum curator Derviš Korkut would protect with his life. 

The State of Yugoslavia before WW2

Founded on December 1st 1918, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (later the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or SFRY), was a complex visionary union of South Slavic ethnic groups.It was originally called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, where Bosniak Muslims and other Slavic and Albanian Muslims were deemed as the ‘other’, and often shunned and persecuted.² The Jews at this time in Yugoslavia numbered around 75,000. The majority were part of the centuries-old Sephardic community that had settled there in the late 15th and 16th centuries. In 1940, as anti-semitic policies were ramped up, a group of intellectuals of mainly Serb and Croat background responded by publishing academic papers that pushed back against the government and aimed at preserving the religious diversity that the major cities in the Balkans were known for. These papers were entitled: ‘Our Jews: The Jewish Question With Us: A Collection of Public Workers’ Opinions’.³

Among these various writers, there was one single and solitary Muslim contribution: the highly educated Bosniak scholar and imam, Derviš Korkut. His essay was entitled: Antisemitism is Foreign to the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina.⁴

Korkut’s view of the Ottomans, up until their fall, was one of an empire that espoused a considerable degree of religious tolerance and coexistence. From as early as the 16th century, even the fabric of the elite was composed of newly converted Balkan devshirme recruits. 

Modern nationalist movements within Turkey that emerged in the 1920s have tarnished this reputation, espousing ideas that conflict with the religious and cultural diversity that made Ottoman culture what it was. It is for this very reason that Korkut highlighted how alien antisemitism is to Bosnian Muslims, who up until the turn of the 20th century, had been Ottomans through and through. 

Nationalism and ethnicity were not granted the consideration that they are today. Muslims living under the Ottoman Khilāfa, be they Circassian, Laz, Albanian, Bosniak, Tatar, Pomak or Turk, would have seen themselves as Muslim Ottomans. It is through this identity and experience that the Bosniak people developed and maintained their approach to religious pluralism and diversity. 

It was natural for a Bosniak in Sarajevo, for example, to see his Jewish neighbour as one of his own, a fellow Bosnian. This exact mentality would lead to thousands of heartwarming stories of Muslims saving Jews during the Holocaust, but Derviš Korkut’s story is particularly fascinating. 

Derviš Korkut

Korkut was born into a prominent religious family in 1888, in the central Bosnian city of Travnik, 10 years after the Ottomans lost Bosnia to the Austro-Hungarians. He pursued further Islamic studies in the imperial capital of Istanbul. His brother, Besim Korkut, completed his education at  Cairo’s al-Azhar, and was a well known scholar of his time, having produced one of the earliest modern translations of the Qur’an in Bosnian.⁵ 

Derviš Korkut’s outlook was coloured by his experiences of two different worlds: his Islamic education in the Ottoman Empire, and his life under the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia, followed by his secular education at the Sorbonne in Paris. 

With a dapper suit and tie, a well-trimmed moustache and a traditional fez, he was among a generation of prominent, educated, religious Bosniaks who were living through a time of profound change and reform. After various political activities rallying for Bosniak Muslim representation within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Korkut, as we know him today, would find himself in the National Museum of Sarajevo as the chief librarian in 1937. A few short years later, with the rise and expansion of the Nazis, it would be this very library where a unique chain of events would unfold.

The Nazis in Bosnia

As the Axis powers entered Yugoslavia and divided it accordingly on April 16th 1941, Bosnia found itself absorbed into the Nazi puppet state, ‘The Independent State of Croatia’. Yet again, Bosnia was caught between empires and foreign powers, this time led by Ante Pavelić and his fascist government, the Ustaše,⁶ whose brutality was rivalled only by the Nazis. 

Chaos was breaking loose as the Nazis and Ustashe carried out mass campaigns of extermination and murder against the region’s Jews, Roma, and Serbs. The infamous Jasenovac concentration camp, set up by the Croatian Ustaše, wreaked havoc and terror on these communities who would often plead to their Muslim neighbours to hide them in their homes to escape their otherwise likely fate, death. 

In May 1942, after the murder of 14,500 Jews, Serbia (where Korkut spent much of his career) became the first territory in Europe after Germany to be declared ‘judenfrei’ – ‘free of Jews’.⁷

Throughout this time, Korkut maintained his position as an Islamic intellectual and spoke out against the discriminatory policies of the Nazis. He signed a petition alongside 108 other prominent Bosnian Muslims publicly condemning the Nazi and Ustashe atrocities, making clear that their activities were entirely against their Muslim faith and beliefs. 

Protecting Jewish Heritage

In 1941, Derviš Korkut acted as chief librarian and curator at the National Museum of Sarajevo. The same month the Nazis entered Sarajevo, he was approached by one of the leaders of the Sephardic Jewish community – Dr Vita Kajon.⁸ Dr Kajon knew the Nazis would soon come after him, so he entrusted a box of historical manuscripts to Korkut. Knowing that the Nazis were set upon destroying these treasures of cultural heritage, Korkut hid them in an unassuming archival folder of Turkish manuscripts on the historical Kapetanović family. Not long after, having secured his cultural treasures, Dr Kajon was sent to Jasenovac by Croatian fascists, where he was killed in 1942. 

The most significant Jewish manuscript among those entrusted to Korkut and the museum, was the Sarajevo Haggadah, a lavishly illustrated masterpiece and treasure of medieval Jewish heritage. ‘Haggadah’, from the Hebrew root H-G-D, meaning “to tell”,⁹ tells the story of the exodus of Jews from Egypt, that is told during every Passover meal. 

Hidden Among Qur’ans

In 1942, word reached Derviš Korkut that an important and senior Nazi official, Johann Fortner, would be coming to tour his museum. Korkut knew instantly that the heritage and history of his museum were under direct threat. He rushed to the basement, took the Haggadah, and hid it in his clothing to take home, an act that reveals Korkut’s dedication to the preservation of history and the protection of minorities as a devout Muslim. 

Munib Korkut, son of Derviš, later recounted: 

“My father told me the story of the Haggadah when I was a teenager, after the war. He said to me: “One day, a German officer arrived at the museum, and as Jozo Petrovic could not speak German, he called me. The officer asked to see the museum. During the visit, he requested to see the Haggadah. So, I answered: “I’m sorry, but another German officer came two hours ago and took away the Haggadah.” Furious, the officer left.” 

The Haggadah was, in fact, hidden in Korkut’s own home: 

“My father brought the Haggadah to our house. A few days later, he entrusted it to a hodja (imam) who hid it in a village mosque near the Treskavica mountains. After the war, the hodja came to return the book, and my father brought it back to the museum.”¹⁰

Sarajevo is surrounded by three mountains, Treskavica, Bjelašnica, and Igman, all of which were strategically important during periods of warfare. The mountain, mosque and village where the Haggadah was hidden remain unknown to this day, as does the identity of the pious hodja (imam) who hid it. 

In another interview, Derviš’ Kosovan-Albanian wife, Servet, told a journalist: 

“My husband came back home for lunch with the Haggadah hidden under his jacket. He told me: “Say nothing to anyone. No one must know or they will kill us and destroy the book.” That afternoon, he went to Visoko, where one of his sisters lived, under the pretext of visiting her. From there, he took the book to a village tucked away in the Treskavica mountains, where his friend was the hodza of a little mosque. The Haggadah was hidden among the Korans and other Islamic books for the duration of the war”.¹¹

Among these noble acts, the humble Korkut also played a significant role in saving a young homeless Jewish woman named Mira Papo. Papo was expelled from her brigade of the Yugoslav Partisans in 1942 for being Jewish. She was found sleeping on a bench in a park in central Sarajevo, resigned to her fate. At that time, Nazi officers were patrolling the streets and surrounding forests with their dogs, searching for Jews to send to concentration camps. By chance, a friend of Mira Papo’s father came across her first, and took her to Derviš Korkut. She was welcomed into their family home, with Korkut’s wife, Servet, and their newborn son, Munib. 

Mira, whom they called Amira, was given strict instructions not to speak a word of Bosnian and to pretend she was an Albanian-speaking cousin of Servet visiting from a village in Kosovo (Servet’s native home). Both Servet and Mira were 19 years old and became great friends. Mira hid among them for 6 months, often shrouding herself in the niqāb and local dress at the time, known as the zar.¹² She narrowly escaped the deathly grasp that had plagued Bosnia and its Jewish, Serb and Roma populations.

Korkut After the War: Shunned, Persecuted, and Forgotten

After the war, the communist Yugoslav government rose to power, and once again, Muslims found themselves in difficulty. In the early period of Korkut’s life, Muslims had made up an overwhelming majority of the Balkans (from Bosnia to Bulgaria), however, following the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, 62% of the region’s Muslims had been exiled or killed.¹³ This amounted to more than 632,408 Muslim deaths in this period. Among the survivors, many became muhajjirs, migrating to other Muslim lands (the remnants of the Ottoman Empire).¹⁴

With the decreasing role of Muslims in Yugoslavia and the strict stance against religion by the communists, countless Bosniak imams, scholars, and intellectuals were imprisoned or killed. In 1947, Korkut himself was arrested on false claims of collaboration with Nazis and Ustaše. He was sentenced to 8 years of hard labour in prison, of which he served 5. Korkut lived the rest of his life as a convicted ‘enemy of the state’. He died in 1969 aged 81, largely unrecognised for his noble actions. Today however, half a century later, Korkut serves as an inspiration and example of a noble Bosnian Muslim who dedicated himself to the pluralism and tolerance that his city, Sarajevo, was always known for. 

The Legacy of Islam in Bosnia

One of the defining characteristics of Muslims in Bosnia is the warm and open approach they show towards their komšije, or neighbours. In the last few centuries, Muslims in the Balkans have been portrayed by nationalist Christians as traitors, sell-outs, and an embodiment of their ‘oppressors’, the Ottomans. The story often told is that they traded their Christian faith for Islam, either by threat of the sword or for material benefit. A simple study of history reveals quite a different story, where Islam was in fact, accepted freely and willingly, without coercion. Despite the prevailing stereotypes, Bosniaks always embraced the diverse faiths and people with whom they shared their land. This was the case even up to the 1992-95 war, where ethnic tensions rose to a peak. Bosniaks yet again suffered alongside their Christian Croat and Serb neighbours during the Siege of Sarajevo, where everyone, irrespective of faith, was targeted by radical Serbian forces. 

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From being brought to safety in the hands of Sephardic Jews fleeing Spain at the end of the 15th century, followed by its sojourn in Venice, where former Jews-turned Catholic ministers hand-wrote notes in its pages, to its final destination in the city of Sarajevo and the hands of a Muslim scholar who risk it all to ensure its preservation, the Haggadah is in many ways the perfect symbol of Bosnia’s shared Abrahamic heritage. 

In today’s climate of increasing religious tension, it is stories such as these, of the Haggadah and individuals such as Derviš Korkut, that must be remembered and told. 

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