Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi Bosnevi

Who is Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi Bosnevi?

Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi Bosnevi was a Bosniak poet and writer of Aljamiado literature.

Uskufi is noted as the author of the first Bosnian-Turkish dictionary in 1632; Magbuli ’ari, one of the earliest dictionaries of the Bosnian language and in the South Slavic languages as a whole. A hand-copy dating from 1798 is currently kept at the City Archive of Sarajevo. The dictionary, written in verse, contains more than 300 word explanations and over 700 words translated between Bosnian and Turkish. Following a collaboration between the University of Oslo and the Bosnian ministry of education and sciences, the dictionary was reissued on national day in 2012 during a ceremony in Tuzla, the birth town of Hevaji. According to Mønnesland, the dictionary is made relevant today not least because of politic aspects since it shows the Bosnian language to have a long tradition.

In his works Hevaji, writing under the pseudonym Uskufi, calls his language "Bosnian", and he emphasized his ethnicity as Bosniak.