The question of national identity and nationality of the group of people
inhabited in a particular geographical area, despite numerous theories which
over the last nearly two and a half centuries have been giving the variety of
answers, most frequently is related to a common ethnical background, culture,
history, tradition, and as it was considered for a longer period of time, a
common language. Although it is not uncommon for members of one ethnic group
to profess the same religion in the vast majority, the religion, at least
according to the theories of the nation, has never been an essential
definition of the national identity. It should not be surprising if we take
into account the circumstances that led to the awakening of nations and
national movements in the 19th century of the European Enlightenment period,
when the other form of togetherness started to replace a religion dominant
for centuries. Thus, in forming national consciousness, religion found itself
in the last place. On the other hand, if nationality formed by a religion was
unacceptable for the theories of the nation, forming a national literature by
the religious affiliation would have been unthinkable. By the simple analogy,
the first was excluding the other which means that if it was not possible for
the religion to form a nation, it was also not possible to form a national
literature. At least, it was common opinion. However, right in the European
region where those theories had been developed, we can also find the first
case to refute them. And we can do that with the so-called Bosnian- Muslim
literature that have made its first steps during the second half of the 19th
century as ? mean in the creation of the new Bosnian nation. It was not the
religious literature with religious themes and motifs, but the literature of
the religion, of the members of a religion in an effort to create their own
national identity based on a religious one. In that sense, there were three
most important literary events that made the foundations for the creating the
so called ?literary Bosnianhood? in the last decades of the 19th century: a
collection of proverbs and lessons called ?National Treasure? by Mehmed-beg
Kapetanovic Ljubusak, a collection of epic poems called ?Folk Songs of the
Mohammedans in Bosnia and Herzegovina? by Kosta H?rmann and the launch of the
literary magazine called ?Bosniak?. The paper presents historical, political
and social circumstances that had led to those literary events, the birth of
the new type of literature as well as the new Bosnian nation and national
identity.
CONCEPT OF NATIONALISM EMPLOYED IN THE GOLDEN LEGEND BY NADEEM ASLAM
