Quote:
Originally Posted by faisalsonbol
the first it says "work of Amran ?? Ibrahim"
the second one is "work of Al-hajj ????"
I can't read his name
al-hajj is not a name. It's a word people call someone who did the pilgrimage to makkah |
don't worry too much! Your translation is correct ! My respect.☼
Amran is both a surename as well a male first name in Bosnia.
And the use of nicknames in BiH is normal; almost everybody then (and still now) has one
( even I got one after some time staying there).
Al Hajj indeed might refer to either the man himself having been on a Hadj or wanting dearly to go ;
during my stay in Visoko 1985/86, a very nice man was called "Hajji Ali" because he wished so strongly to meet this Fifth Pilar and talked about it so often, they nicknamed him kindly "Hajji "
The challenge also with yataghans made in Bosnia is that the scripture is often trilingual: Bosnian into Turkish which was written in Arabic at that time.
So for a native Arab speaker or even an Arabist, this is not easy to translate.
Also for someone with Turkish knowledge or background it is the same:
as you have to go back to the lingo of more than a century ago...
Some Bosnian words I know, are from Turkish origin but only some old folks in deep Anatolia do know them...and in non Bosniak parts of today's Bosnia not everybody knows or understands them...
Back to the yataghan concerned: as for the writting, if the writer was not too highly educated, he might have used a kind of "Pidgin" Bosno-Turkish.
but in this case Sidi Faisal is correct 100 %
Enclosed is Bosnian versus Turkish in Arabic scripture from the 17th -20th century