The Italian scholar Alberto Fortis published his Viaggio in Dalmazia in 1774 in Venice. He included both the original text and his Italian translation of the Žalostna pisanca plemenite Asanaginice or the Sorrowful Song of Hasan Aga’s Noble Wife. It has been considered an important part of world heritage ever since. Fortis noted that the song came from a people who used both Cyrillic and Glagolitic but not who he had heard it or received a copy from. Interest in the song was immediate and it has been much translated and interpreted since. It remains shrouded in thrilling mystery, nonetheless, and any attempt to pierce that veil of mystery must start by considering the divide between Christians and Christian authorities, on the one hand, and Muslims, on the other, and of relations between them.
The Sorrowful Song probably had its origins amongst Muslims facing or just after forced conversion to Christianity. It was likely preserved among such converts, insofar as it expresses coming to terms with a forced choice: accept baptism and stay in your Dalmatian townlands or leave. The song mentions a qadi or judge from Imotski, a town that came under Venetian rule in 1717. This indicates that the background to the action of the song was the anti-Turkish wars, which lasted from 1645 to 1669, 1684 to 1699, and then 1714 to 1718, during which the border between the Venetian and Ottoman territories in Dalmatia shifted and a significant number of native Muslims found themselves under Venetian rule. Any who wanted to remain in their native region, in their homes and on their properties, had to convert to Christianity. Those who chose to remain Muslim had to say goodbye to all that and move across the border, into Bosnia.
The Sorrowful Song is mysterious and reading it requires active engagement of the imagination. The text is, of course, sacrosanct and must not be altered. We must respect its right to appear on its own terms within different images of humanity and the world. Each new reading naturally brings forth new interpretations, as every reader is a unique individual and differs from every other reader. Their sense of self does not remain constant over time, either. The unchanging nature of the text interacts with the restless and ever changing nature of the reader’s self to create an endless flow of interpretations. The world of the song disappeared long ago, but its interpretations over time in the European context offer us a frame for understanding the waning of that world and how to reconstitute its traditional vision. In this essay, the author will attempt a reading of the text that resituates it within a traditional intellectuality that is more appropriate to the people amongst whom and the time when it was originally recorded and of whom it bears witness. Their witness that there is no god but God and that the praised is His apostle was central to the shared world image of the people of Hasan Aga’s halls. Praising God, we connect with Him as the Praised and so realize within ourselves our own sublime potential, the prophet whose Arabic name is Muḥammad/Aḥmad, which in English means the praised.[[1]]
The song is 92 lines long. This is the numerical value of the name Muḥammad—m(40), h (4), m (40), d (8)—which, as we have noted, translates into English as praised. Muḥammad as praised is connected to God, the Praised (ar. al-ḥamīd), by praise, and thus symbolizes our sublime potential as human beings. He is that essence of humanity incepted within every self, from the beginning to the end of time, to which all of God’s heralds recall us.
All existence reflects God as Praised. Praising God, the world accepts that it too must be praised and then returns that praise in witness to the incontestable truth that none are praised but the Praised, Whom all things praise. Embracing perfectibility, human beings become a culmination of existence, rendering it praised and connecting it to the absolute Praised through their praise. Whatsoever is in Heaven or on Earth or in between is a product of universal intellect that connects all things in the ceaseless stream of the One’s self-revelation. Universal intellect is the light and reality of the praised.[[2]]
His authentic inner essence serves as our universal model of a humanity at whose core the qualities of all the worlds are united. He is the why and the wherefore of the universal revelation of the One, the Unconditional Term to the conditioned.[[3]] The praised is that sublime potential, that perfect example, our true self, closer to each of us than any mere station on the path of ascent towards him.[[4]]
The song mentions thirteen people—Hasan Aga, his mother, sister, and wife, their five children, her brother and her mother, the qadi of Imotski, and the leader of the wedding band. The thirteenth letter in the Arabic alphabet is m and its numerical value is 40. Their sum is 53, which corresponds to the name Aḥmad—a (1) h (4) m (40) d (8)—as we have seen a variant of the name Muḥammad.[[5]]
A written record is a fossil of living speech. The sounds in speech and written letters are connected in ways that allow higher states of consciousness to reveal themselves, up to the absolutely Aware. As with everything in creation, these written letters and letter-sounds also represent numbers. Individually and in combination, they provide insight into the flows of information on the horizons and in the self. At the lowest level, which is that of the sensible world, numbers correspond to quantities. Understood symbolically, both letters and numbers are links to higher levels of Being.
The sacred sciences use numbers individually and in combination to communicate secrets, hidden behind what is written from ignorant readers for whom the message is not intended. Such numbers can communicate complex symbolic messages. Their full meaning can only be grasped by deploying the community’s or culture’s understanding of the scientia sacra.
When a linguistic artefact is no longer seen as a work of sacral culture and so as belonging to the scientia sacra within which it developed, it ceases to present as ars sacra and becomes indecipherable and mysterious, no matter its aesthetic quality. Ignorance, wilful or otherwise, entails the external imposition of modes of interpretation that exclude the original possessors of the work and their worldview. Its aesthetic aspect partakes of its essence but is not in itself a clear enough call fully to recall the absolutely Beautiful in His love of beauty. This is why the creation and enduring presence of a work of sacred art is bound up with sacred science. Every experience of creating or even relating to such a work is an opportunity for the self to connect with and ascend to the Sacred, which is to say to its own most beautiful uprightness, as the reason for and purpose of its existence. Those who ascend love the Sacred and actualize themselves in and through Him as in His image.
All the sacred traditions know the name of the praised as that of our highest capacity, everywhere, always, and forever. Initiates into the scientia sacra of the praised’s own tradition will discover him in all the other traditions too. According to the revelation in the Recitation, Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, was the herald of Aḥmad[[6]], which is to say of the praised. Muslims believe that this name corresponds to the Greek Parakletos, whom Jesus Christ announced to his disciples.[[7]] The Jewish and Christian Bible contains 53 books and as prophet the praised is the transcendent or covenantal witness of all God's revelations.
These may be just coincidences, but they nonetheless deserve consideration in any attempt to come to terms with the challenging mystery of the text as it is. One should also remember that regarding them as coincidences can affect our ability to remain open towards what we observe in our investigation. Is it even possible to unearth additional evidence for that code by (re)reading the song? Like his neighbours, Hasan Aga was no settler from a foreign land. His ancestors had probably inhabited the area for centuries, as Christians who found in what they had freely inherited of Jesus Christ cause to respond to God’s call and to accept for themselves the truth that there is no god but God and that the praised is His apostle. Assuming a secure public sphere and protection from violence, their response to God’s call can only have been born of free will. Muslim rule, once properly established, has always guaranteed the right to bear such witness, without excluding the right to other paths to God, as He revealed to His prophet, the praised, “Had God not repelled the people, some by the means of others, cloisters and churches would have been destroyed, and synagogues and mosques, in which God´s Name is much mentioned.”[[8]]
Invoking the name of God is what cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques are for, as symbols of different paths to becoming conscious in our relationship to the Absolute. In ourselves we already know the names of all things and so all the names of God. His names are most beautiful, identical to Him in His indivisibility but beyond numbering in the flow of His self-manifestation through creation. Relating to God through these names, we realize ourselves in the purpose and meaning of our creation, in most beautiful uprightness. As our most beautiful example, the praised is our guide on the upright path.
Human differences are signs of God. The most honourable of us are the most aware and everyone can become aware. The significance of those differences and of our sacrosanct responsibility for order in the world is revealed by how we converse as human beings and cleave to truth, goodness, and beauty in those “cloisters and churches, synagogues and mosques,” whose common essence is the invocation of God. It is those very differences that guarantee our return to God and so to full humanity as our sublime potential. The alternative is corruption of the world and of our humanity. In the Recitation, God says: “Had God not driven back the people, some by the means of others, the earth had surely been corrupted.”[[9]] As His prophet, the praised steadfastly prayed: “My God, lead me by the most beautiful qualities of my character. Only You lead by the most beautiful. Turn me from the ugly qualities of my character. Only You turn from the ugly ones.”[[10]]
From whose consciousness was the Sorrowful Song sent down into thought and then into speech? To judge by the title, it must have been that of the noble Hasan Aginica, Hasan Aga’s noble wife. Accepting this answer clarifies our reading of the song, insofar as she discloses the horizons of her own self within it. The noble Hasan Aginica wonders:
What whitens on the greening peak?
Snows now, or swans in flock?
Snows away had long since melted;
Swans long since ta’en flight.[[11]]
Snows could have survived until late spring or early summer on that greening peak, in the cold and shaded recesses of Biokova. A flock of wild swans is equally plausible. Ordinaryenough occurrences for the people of that land, neither would have been a strange sight. But even raising the question of what was there in itself refers us to something other, something unexpected:
No snows are they, no swans are they,
but Hasan-aga’s tent.
What is Hasan Aga doing there in a white tent visible from afar? Warriors do not generally erect white tents for others to see from any direction. Moreover, the name of the tent’s owner is Hasan, which is to say “beautiful”. The praised gave it to his first grandson—the son of his daughter Fatima and his beloved follower Ali—offering us a sign about being beautiful and beauty’s association with God as Possessor of the most beautiful names. This beautiful Hasan was an aga and that means someone dear, important, respected, and honourable. The singer says of him that:
Sick sore with bitter wounds he lies.
What are these bitter wounds and what has caused them? Why does he suffer from them on a greening peak under a white tent? Are they wounds of the flesh or of the heart? If of the flesh, won in battle, then wouldn’t his white tent call his enemies to overcome him? If of the heart, have they been caused by a dilemma whose resolution is itself a source of suffering, as he must either lose something he loves or betray someone he loves? He must struggle against his nature and overcome his sense of shame. His name “Hasan” or “beautiful” connects him both with God and with the praised as the most beautiful example. That connection is the most precious thing he has to lose or betray. The poetess goes on to say:
His dam and sister come;
his lady love for shame cannot.
Hasan Aga expects, in fact requires, his mother, his sister, and his beloved wife to come to him. Are his bitter wounds in fact due to the imposed dilemma he is struggling with: between remaining in his home and on his lands as a Christian convert or continuing to bear witness to the praised as prophet and as a result leaving with all his household? If he accepts baptism and so betrays God and His apostle, then so must his entire adult household, duty-bound to obey him and do as he does, according to the belief he shares with his new lords. Nobody in his halls can remain unbaptised. His children will have to abide by and be whatever their father decides. This his lady love cannot because her sense of shame before God and the praised will not allow her.[[12]] The act of bearing witness to no god but God and to the praised as His prophet cannot be transferred or delegated to another—not hers, not his, no one’s. It is the essence of our humanity. To deny him is to calumny God and oneself. Each of us comes into this world alone and returns from it the same, answerable to God.
Hasan Aga gathers his family, his children, and his dependents about him to tell them of his decision: to convert to Christianity and so stay and preserve his house and family. Compared to exile and death, he considers that the only option. But his wife will not, cannot, because of her sense of shame.
Hasan Aga and his lady love do not share the same desire. What he wants, she does not. Hasan Aga wants the world, lordship over family and home, estates and serfs, riches and glory. But he must pay for it by denying the praised as His prophet.[[13]] Those bitter wounds he gave himself in the hope of gaining by them what would in fact heal them. But his lady love will not do the same. Her sense of shame before God and His apostle prevents her from betraying or denying them. She too faces a choice: to lose the world or herself? Her sense of shame is her sense that she cannot betray God, not for anything on earth or any treasures that could be hers, as to betray God is to betray oneself. Her nature is to follow the praised as her prophet. If she were to renounce it, she would be renouncing herself and everything she holds dear.
Hasan Aga gathers his family, his children, and his dependents about him to tell them of his decision: to convert to Christianity and so stay and preserve his house and family. Compared to exile and death, he considers that the only option. But his wife will not, cannot, because of her sense of shame. What can she tell him of her reasons, given the devastating consequence that he must chase her away, because there is no place for her there, where he will remain in accordance with his decision, no place for anyone who does not submit to him?
So long as they refrain from blaspheming against the praised as God’s prophet, Christians meet all the requirements for perfect self-realization in their humanity. This is because God’s prophets all recall us to the same truth—the perfect potential read into our core, in the heart, by the very act of our creation by God’s command to “Be!” For those who already know the praised as their prophet and have accepted him and borne witness to him as their most exalted potential, however, to renounce him is to renounce all the prophets. One cannot reject the already formed awareness that when humankind realises itself in and through the praised it does so in relation to something we have known always and forever, namely that there is no god but God and that the praised is the sealing essence of all the prophets. To reject him after having accepted that truth is to die the worst of all possible deaths, in which God pronounces His sentence in the court of existence.
Hasan Aga serves as his wife’s protector only so long as their connection through God and His apostle is maintained. This connection of male and female, of giving and taking, is what allows them to fulfil their debt to God, from Whom they have received everything and to Whom they return it. Should either break off their relationship with God and His apostle, their rights and duties towards each other are transformed. Hasan Aga’s decision to sever his connection with God and His apostle annuls both his custody of his children’s mother and her obligations towards him.
Hasan Aginica’s name is not mentioned in the text.[[14]] When her relationship with her husband is broken off, she does not stop being the Hasan Aginica, however, beloved in her relationship with God and His apostle, the most beautiful example. In her witness to the praised as God’s apostle she accepts Jesus Christ as he is in God’s revelation, both that through him and the Gospels and that through the praised and the Recitation. To deny the praised is to deny Christ and, indeed, all of God’s prophets. One cannot turn from the praisedand deny or abandon him in order to become a Christian. That is not how being a Christian works. When the Christian seeks and sees his sublime potential in Christ, he is, indirectly, bearing witness to the praised as well. By cleaving to Christ and embracing him in all aspects of life as the path, the Christian ascends towards God as Praised and so towards the praised as our sublime potential, most beautiful example, and a mercy to the worlds.
When someone who has previously borne witness to the apostolate of the praised willingly rejects what they know, namely that he is their sublime potential, and so rejects him as their connection with God, they inflict bitter wounds upon themselves that all the worlds cannot heal. They supress their sense of shame, so that all things seem permissible. The goods of this world, which they consume in obliviousness to the responsibility they shall have on the day when they shall offer their account to God for everything they have done, may seem to alleviate or supress their pains. This is, however, but a descent into thicker darkness and more bitter wounds. Decisions reached when the self is in such a condition involve turning one’s back on God and so on oneself. The singer continues:
Recovered of his wounds,
his loyal love he sends this doom:
In my white halls, stay not-
not in the hall, nor with my kin.
The bitter wounds to Hasan Aga’s self are simply him havering over whether to denounce the praised publicly as prophet or to relinquish his halls and estates, on territory now governed by the principle of one authority and one faith. In choosing his halls and estates and in renouncing the praised before witnesses in the white tent, he believes he is protecting his riches in this world, which he elevates above anything in the other world. His mother and sister follow him, but his love’s refusal represents a block to full realization of his intention. None must remain under his protection in his halls to bear witness that the praised is the apostle of God. So long as she does, his love’s decision not to betray God and His apostle give the lie to his wounds and resolve. He believes that to retain his halls and estates, in payment for them, he must force her into exile and deny the praised as prophet. That is why he must chase her away. There is no place in his halls for her—a witness to the truth that there is no god but God and that the praised is His apostle.
Agreeing to renounce the praised as prophet is not and cannot be a private matter. Hasan Aga is required to announce it to the world. As soon as he has made known his intention—to reject the apostolate of the praised—his love’s obligation to him ceases. The act shatters their marital bond. Their voluntary decision to be bound in marriage through their debt to God meant that they accepted the praised as His prophet and their most beautiful example. Through him, in loving him above any aspect of the self, they realised themselves as a pairing that affirmed the One, the Absolutely Beautiful. Every marital relationship is a bond between masculine beauty (ar. hasan) and feminine beauty (ar. hasnā’). It is a balance, one that shifts from side to side in constant change, through which God the Absolutely Beautiful reveals Himself: as masculine beauty gives, so feminine beauty receives. But male beauty is also receptive first, as it possesses nothing of beauty it has not received first from the One, the Absolutely Beautiful. That Hasan is beautiful is itself a confirmation of the praised as prophet, as the most beautiful example, and so as the why and wherefore of our own creation in most beautiful uprightness.
When she, as female beauty, affirms through her receptive or feminine aspect his masculine beauty as the giver of what he has himself received, she allows both herself and him to form a pair that expresses the praised as their most sublime potential. What she receives as female beauty is threefold in contingent existence: the prophet, the praised, as the perfect recipient of the absolutely Beautiful, and also as perfect giver; masculine beauty, which receives from the praised what it gives to female beauty; and female beauty, the recipient who, using her potential, ascends towards the praised and so towards God, in whom her debt and her right are guaranteed.
God is Beautiful and loves beauty. He makes Himself known through beauty in His creation. And everything in existence, all manifestations of the Beautiful, are contained in each human self, receiving and giving, masculine and feminine. This is why love is the relationship between lover and beloved, a relationship of giving and receiving, always. Any nexus of male and female through love is a manifestation of God, Who loves humanity as revealed in that pairing, Who loves them as lovers who love God.
So long as her beauty remains in his halls, he has not met the condition set by the Venetian authorities—convert to Christianity, leave, or die. He may have sworn allegiance to the authorities, but beautiful Hasan has not asserted his lordship over all his adult household.
Hasan is beautiful and when he renounces any relationship with his wife, who is also beautiful, because of his determination to renounce his relationship with the most beautiful example and so with God, what he imposes on her is not just an end to their relationship but an end to her relationship with his family and white halls and their children, who he reduces with the framework of property over his halls and estates. In doing so, he not only confirms his own subordination to the Venetian authorities, he punishes his beautiful wife cruelly, out of a need that arises from his vulnerability. It is clear to her that neither the Venetian authorities nor their new subject leave her any room for manoeuvre in her choice not to submit to them:
His meaning kenned, his dame,
distraught, stands wretched at the thought.
Hoofbeats surround the halls.
The aga’s wife takes breakneck flight
down windowed tower walls.[[15]]
So long as her beauty remains in his halls, he has not met the condition set by the Venetian authorities—convert to Christianity, leave, or die. He may have sworn allegiance to the authorities, but beautiful Hasan has not asserted his lordship over all his adult household. So long as this is so, his prospects remain uncertain. The threat of loss looms over him—of her beauty or of all that he owns. The sound of steeds echoing around the hall can mean but one of two things for her beauty: either it is Hasan Aga come to banish her or some other agents of the will of the new authorities come to punish her and the hall. Were it Hasan Aga, the sound of steeds would not surround the halls. The reference to surrounding the halls (lit. oko dvora, “around the hall”) suggests a siege.
Muslim households commonly anticipate misfortune in line with God’s message in the Recitation: “Leave is given to those who fight because they have suffered violence—surely God is able to help them—who were expelled from their habitations without right, only because they say ‘Our Lord is God.’”[[16]] Leaving offers those facing an expulsion that they cannot resist at least a prospect of continued witness to loving God and His apostle. This is why Muslim homes had secret exits known to the adult members of the household. The adult males—those capable of fighting—were at risk of being killed, while the women and children would be taken and made into slaves of the new regime. There was a secret exit through the window and down the side of the tower.[[17]] It was intended to allow the adult men of the household—principally the lord of the hall and then the members of his entourage and in case of need the rest of the household—to escape imminent threat of death.
Our beauty takes the sound of horses surrounding the halls as a sign that the authorities are moving against her. That secret exit to the other side of the halls—to escape and exile—is dangerous but also a path to salvation. This is not, cannot be, escape in order to commit self-murder —after all, she has decided not to betray God and His apostle, not for anything, not for all the treasures of this world. This renders speculation that she is fleeing Hasan Aga equally baseless. He too knows the secret path to salvation “down windowed tower walls”. For them both, that path is a symbol of their connection with the praised as their prophet. But Hasan Aga has decided not to follow that path. For Hasan Aginica, as a witness keeping her oath to the praised, it is the only path. It may lead to her death but is nonetheless her path to salvation and so that of the world, as in God’s message: “And whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if they have given life to mankind altogether.”[[18]] For her, to betray the prophet is the only certain death, and her decision to flee “down windowed tower walls” is an act of salvation, her testament to all she loves.
When, as a prophet submitting to God’s guidance, the praised was given permission to evade the conspiracy hatched against his life by moving from Mekka to Medina, he started his journey by letting himself out the rear exit to Abu Bakr’s home.[[19]] Those conspiring to murder him had laid siege to the house but didn’t find the secret passage by which the praised and Abu Bakr left. Our beauty may have thought of this as she handed herself over to God as her Guide on the path to salvation. She may have recalled the story of the prophet that God shared in the Recitation: “And when the deniers were devising against thee, to confine thee, or slay thee, or to expel thee, and were devising, God too was devising; and God is the best of devisers.”[[20]]
Hasan Aginica knows the risks involved in her decision and the path through the window of the tower, which leads to exile and migration. Her children do not know this. Their thoughts on their mother and father and their decisions are not factors. They can sense the tension between their mother and father but not the consequences. For them the sound of horses around the hall can mean nothing but the return of their father Hasan Aga:
Two maiden daughters race behind:
Come back now, mother dear;
Our sire’s not come, but Pint’rovich
the bey, your mother’s son.
In the children’s eyes, the only conflict in their home is this strange, incomprehensible tension between their father and mother. Who might their mother have to flee but the man their grandmother and aunt have gone to visit under that far away white tent? Who could it be riding up to their hall with such force, accompanied by the pounding and echoing of the horses’ hooves heard by Hasan Aginica, if not their father? In fact, it is neither what the Hasan Aginica fears nor what the children suppose.
Once Hasan Aga has renounced the praised as his prophet for earthly treasures and erected that white tent to signify this decision, he can only realize his full intentions by subjecting all the adult members of his household in his halls to his decision. As soon as Hasan Aginica makes clear that she cannot and will not follow him, out of a sense of shame before God and His apostle and for love of them, Hasan Aga’s protection and obligations towards her end. They transfer immediately to her brother Pintorović-beg, her closest and most senior living kinsman. Hasan Aga’s white tent has made clear to Pintorović, and everyone else, his intention to submit to Venetian occupation and accept the principle of one ruler and one Catholic faith within its borders.
Then, Hasan-aga’s wife returns,
Her brother’s neck to clasp.
Oh! Brother dear! So great a shame!
To send me from these five!
Two opposing desires, the Hasan Aga’s and the Hasan Aginica’s, grow out of different grounds. Hasan Aga rejects God’s call to humanity to bear witness that there is no god but God and that the praised is His apostle: “O believers, betray not God and the Messenger, and betray not your trusts and that wittingly; and know that your wealth and your children are a trial, and that with God is a mighty wage.”[[21]] Hasan Aginica is caught between the rock of her sense of shame—preventing her betrayal—and the hard place of being separated from her children—who are in their father’s custody after his decision, just like his white halls and estates. She must go, but the children must stay. There is no place for her in Hasan Aga’s halls. She relates her pain to her brother who is now responsible for her dignity.
The bey refrains, says not a word,
but from a silken pouch
draws forth her papers of divorce
to claim her portion full
and take her to their mother’s home.
It was Pintorović-beg’s duty to come and collect his sister. As soon as Hasan Aga’s betrayal was made public, the authorities to whom the beg and his sister remained subject would have confirmed the dissolution of the Hasan Aginica’s obligations under marriage. Confirmation, the papers of divorce, was given to Pintorović-beg, to whom were also transferred all legal obligations and rights towards his sister, while she was freed of all her previous marital duties. The beg produces the papers of divorce and hands them to his sister to study.
Once she the writ has read,
both boys’ brows the dame embraces,
both daughters’ rosy cheeks:
but from her little babe abed,
she cannot bear to part,
so that her brother grips her arm
to strip her from her son,
and draws her high onto his horse,
to hie to their white halls.
Having recanted his witness that the praised is God’s apostle and publicly accepted the Catholic faith, Hasan Aga becomes absolute master of his household, once Hasan Aginica has left his halls. He and all the denizens of those halls had to change their names and give up the doctrines by which the followers of the praised affirm their love of God. Parting from her children, Hasan Aginica’s message to them is that her womb is a merciful home and a place of refuge, that as their prophet, the praised is the womb of all the worlds, a mercy of God whose perfect contingency comprehends all of contingency, so that it appears as a sign of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful, and facilitates return to Him. (In the language of the praised, in which God revealed the Recitation to him as prophet, the word for womb is raḥīm, whose literal meaning is “place of mercy”).
However painful parting from her children is, the hope that her womb would continue to connect them with God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful, and with the praised, the mercy to the worlds, must have played a major role in her ability to accept the trials set her. Her fate, however difficult and painful, was not determined by passions or earthly greed. She may have repeated to herself the question posed by God to humankind: “What, is he who is upon a clear sign from his Lord like unto such a one unto whom his evil deeds have been decked out fair, and they have followed their caprices?”[[22]] She may have felt some relief at God’s promise: “And whoso fulfils his covenant made with God, God will give him a mighty wage.”[[23]]
Hasan Aginica returns to her family home, where she swore before God to take Hasan Aga for her husband. The home she left for his halls, in which she bore him children. She is returning to mother and brother, knowing that all things come from God and all things return to Him. Man’s true beginning and end are not to be found in any halls of this world. They lie beyond the bounds of transience and decay. It may seem worth betraying one’s sense of self, whose true homeland is with God, for the treasures of this world, but what good is the whole world to a person who has lost their self?![[24]] She returned, completely free of her oath before God to repay her debt to Him through marriage. In doing so, she kept her that oath to God by which and through which the self is delivered from temptation.
On the path that leads from the halls where she has left her children behind to the halls where she was born—riding behind her brother on the horse—she may have asked herself: Who am I really, how is it that I came to be where I am, where am I going, and what do I know about myself, whom all of this is happening to? And with yet greater resolve she may have asked herself: Who do I chose to show my face to? She may have also chosen to bear witness again that there is no god but God, that everything happens in His all-encompassing and merciful womb, that the praised is a mercy to the worlds and that we affirm our love of him by following him. Wherever she turns she sees the Face of God. This is why her self-realization, manifest in her own face, is a return to herself and so to God. It is loving God, Who in loving His creation loves Himself.
She has been banished from the home of her children. They have been removed so she can neither see nor hear them—senses that seem to tell her that her womb is more than a mere manifestation of God’s all-encompassing merciful womb. In this she may have forgotten that there is no beloved but God and that nobody is as loving as God. She could persevere in her witness that there is no god but God and that the praised is His apostle and in absolutely refusing to deny it. But the will to reject what has been imposed upon her is not enough. She may suppose that this is not all God wants. Loving her, He wants her to discover the fullness of His love within herself, by looking at herself through Him and looking at Him through herself. All her questions on her way between the two halls will have been of return to God, of ascending to Him, recalling, perhaps, the words of God’s proclamation: “No indeed; but you love the hasty world, and leave be the Hereafter. Upon that day faces shall be radiant, gazing upon their Lord.”[[25]] Only in that meeting, face to Face, in the realization of the completeness of humanity, are revealed the reason and the purpose of our coming into the world and our leaving it.
With her mother and her brother in her native halls, Hasan Aginica is on the other side of the border dividing her world from the world of her children. She can only be true to herself there, in the place she has returned to, but is nonetheless never separated, in herself and of herself, from her five children, each of whom reminds her of why and to what purpose she believes in the promise of the praised. Her children are with her and she with them. The world now sees her as a maid whose path may lead her towards new and different halls, but she has chosen the path that returns her to God’s halls.
When she agreed long ago to marry Hasan Aga and come to his halls, she was answering God’s call: “O believers, obey God, and obey the apostle and those in authority among you. If you should quarrel on anything, refer it to God and the apostle, if you believe in God and the Last Day; that is better, and fairer in the issue.”[[26]] Now that Hasan Aga has withdrawn his obedience to the apostle to retain his lordship over estate and home, Hasan Aginica’s duty to obey him has ended. And it was only after he renounced the apostle that hecould chase her from his halls in defiance of God’s command: “Do not expel them from their houses!”[[27]]
From the moment Hasan Aga makes public his abandonment of the tradition of the prophet, Hasan Aginica regains all the rights of a free woman in her society.
Were Hasan Aginica to remain in his halls, persevering in her obedience to God and the prophet but not to Hasan Aga, it would ruin Hasan Aga’s deal, his public denunciation of the proclamation that there is no god but God and that the praised is His apostle in exchange for an assurance that he will retain lordship over his house and estates. His conversion to Christianity—the condition for survival under Venetian rule—must be public. It cannot be concealed in any way. Host and household are all subject to checks by the Sanctum officium, the inquisitional court. No form of hypocrisy will be permitted in this public declaration of conversion. Those discovered as false are most cruelly punished.[[28]] Hasan Aga’s entire household must also testify to their submission to his decision before the Venetian authorities, or rather the Church officials who have close ties with them.
From the moment Hasan Aga makes public his abandonment of the tradition of the prophet, Hasan Aginica regains all the rights of a free woman in her society. She has returned to her paternal halls and custody over her, the protection of her dignity, has passed to her brother, the lord in her family home. The new opportunities she has in the community, under rights guaranteed by God and His apostle, are confirmed by the attention she receives.
At home she tarries for a while,
less than a week, ‘tis sure,
this gentle dame of gentle kin,
whose gentle hand none seek
more hotly than Imotski’s judge.
Her brother’s right to decide on the sacrosanct nature of her position in society and her right to remarry follows from her obedience to God and the apostle and so to him. She could have challenged his right to make decisions in her name. She could have called on God and the apostle in her search for a resolution to her dispute with her brother. This would not have been to betray God or the apostle. But she would have needed strength. Nor would it betray them to accept her brother’s will. But would she find the energy for a disagreement in which everything depends on her will? Would she not have to find the reasons for her resistance in her feelings and premonitions?
She begs her brother dear:
Oh, brother dear, from harm be free!
Pray, troth my hand to none,
lest my poor heart should break to see
my poor abandoned sons.
She is beseeching her brother. Can he accept what she is asking without himself disobeying the will of God and the apostle? He bears the burden of an authority tempered by justice. No one is as just as God, Who commands through the heart and speech of the prophet: “Marry the spouseless among you!”[[29]] That is God’s will. The apostle was obedient to Him, bearing witness that there is no will but God’s. By accepting his sister’s request not to marry, her brother would be refusing his obedience to God and His apostle. In doing so he would forsake the order through which God and His apostle guarantee his sister the right to realise herself in the duality of giving and receiving. And humankind is endebted to no one for anything except to God.
The dame justifies her will, which she has confided to her brother, on the grounds that her heart will shatter if forced to look upon her poor children, whom the situation has rendered orphans. But God is in the heart of His servant. He is One, Indivisible. The heart, in the full meaning of that term, is indivisible too. It cannot shatter. Only its most remote reflections in the contingent world can, once they have lost contact with their uncreated and uncreatable essence. When the heart shatters, caught between loving God and loving one of His manifestations in contingency, He remains Lover, Beloved, and Love.
Praying, she thinks of her children—two daughters and three sons. She calls them “sirotice”, a word that can mean orphan, but also pauper, someone who has been abandoned or finds themselves in a position of misery, wretchedness, and poverty. She knows that all people and all things are “sirotice” or indigent before the Abundant[[30]], the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. Surely humankind realizes its full potential by acknowledging its own poverty, through which God makes manifest His abundance? She looks at her children and they look back at her and she is terrified. Sister and brother both know the message from the prophetic legacy, when the Lord replied to a question posed by Moses, asking where to seek Him: “Seek me in those of broken heart, as I am always with them.”[[31]] Love of her children turns Hasan Aginica away from God, so that they seem enough, in and of themselves, not just signs by which He makes Himself known through love. If she wants God’s mercy, she must persist in her obedience to Him and His apostle.[[32]]
Her children remain under the authority of Hasan Aga who has bound them to himself and his property, to a false lordship without the Lord. She is caught between two loves—love of God and of His apostle, on the one hand, and love of her children, on the other.
In a love letter relayed by the apostle and addressed to her—specifically to her and to all believers, men or women—God says: “Of ye of faith, do not betray God and the apostle!”[[33]] Any undertaking will prove futile if one turns away from God and His apostle. Only in loving Him and in returning to Him can we realize our own purpose and meaning. No property or child can ensure that return. Realization is only possible through love.
Her pain and suffering are caused by Hasan Aga’s choice to betray God and His apostle over property and children. She cannot and will not do the same. She is obedient to God and His apostle. She loves them more than herself. She cannot and will not turn away from them. Her children remain under the authority of Hasan Aga who has bound them to himself and his property, to a false lordship without the Lord. She is caught between two loves—love of God and of His apostle, on the one hand, and love of her children, on the other. And God is jealous, unwilling to share love with any of His creations. She thinks of God’s words: “For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”[[34]] The praised says as prophet: “By God, I am more jealous than him (Sa’d), but God is more jealous than I.”[[35]]
Hasan Aginica and her brother both know this. They are united in their obedience to God and His apostle. Whatever they may be thinking, whether they voice it or not, they know that discussion would lead them away from the call that concerns them: “And obey God, and His Messenger, and do not quarrel together, and so lose heart, and your power depart; and be patient; surely God is with the patient.”[[36]] To take heart is nothing but an encounter with the Loving—seeing yourself through Him.
Alas, the bey pays her less heed
than to Imotski’s judge.
The dame her brother then entreats:
On paper white inscribe
a screed for the Imotski judge:
“Fair greetings from your bride
who fairly writes to pray of thee,
the wedding band once called
let them her bring a mantle tall
to pass the Aga’s halls
and see not her poor orphan sons.”
In obedience to her brother, and so to the apostle and to God, Hasan Aginica has accepted the transfer of custody over her to the qadi, who is bound in witness before God as an impartial defender of justice. For the second time she mentions her “sirotice”, her poor wretched ones, from seeing whom she wants to be protected, but what she really wants is to see herself through their eyes, in her desire to be obedient only to God and His apostle. She emphasises that they are her “sirotice”, who will have to realise themselves through God’s mercy by following the praised as their prophet, the most beautiful example. She is not scared for them as “sirotice”, because she knows that the lordship of the One with the most beautiful names is manifest only through pure and conscious “siromastvo”, which is to say poverty and kinlessness.
Rather, what terrifies her is the possibility that they may fall victim to the temptations of wealth, for which they would lose their selves. She knows that there is no refuge from God but in God, Who sent the revelation to the praised as His prophet and so to her and her children: “By the white forenoon and the brooding night! Thy Lord has neither forsaken thee nor hates thee and the Last shall be better for thee than the First. Thy Lord shall give thee, and thou shalt be satisfied. Did He not find thee an orphan, and shelter thee? Did He not find thee erring, and guide thee? Did He not find thee needy, and suffice thee?”[[37]]
Hasan Aginica pleads with the qadi to send her a “podkljuvac”.[[38]] She does not want to see her children with the eyes of a concerned mother. She wants them to see her loving God and following the path of the praised as her prophet. In return for her confusion and worries she wants to be connected to God’s mercy which encompasses everything, as if to tell her children: “Enough for us is God; God will bring us of His bounty, and His Messenger; to God we humbly turn.”[[39]]
White screed in hand, at once
the Qadi calls the wedding band
to send them for his bride.
The band finds bride and welcome fair,
and heartily hie home.
On the path away from her family home, in which her brother was her protector, and towards the qadi’s halls, where her custody will be transferred to him, lie the halls of Hasan Aga and so their children. Only Hasan Aginica knows fully the reasons for the divorce that led her to being now between two halls, on her path to realisation through complete sacrifice. The white tent was a statement of the public reason to people on both sides of the border, both to those who long ago established firmly what they are and those whose loyalties are caught up in eddies of doubt. Hasan Aginica puts faith in return to the halls of her Lord, but she cannot forget her children.
But as they pass the Aga’s halls,
two maids out windows peer,
two sons hie out to meet their dam,
to beg their mother dear.
Come back with us, o mother dear,
to eat of what we have.
Hasan Aginica’s expulsion from the halls, which she strives to transform into a departure for God’s halls, has destroyed the order that has informed her children’s sense of self. She is no longer there at the communal table, sitting last, to the right of Hasan Aga, when everything has been served and all are seated. The perfect circle of the table, at whose centre are dishes and courses, no longer recalls the one heart common to all. Their mother is no longer there. From their perspective, she is hungry. No thing and no place can replace her presence with them. They can take over her role in setting up and setting the table and even smell the food, but it no longer takes place in the presence of their mother’s blessed hands and her care for them: Are they eating, do they need anything? Her presence supervised the entire order, their gathering, from the first to the last washing of hands, from the initial “In the name of God!” to the final “Thank God!” With her they all stand in the knowledge and mercy of All-Merciful God. Her merciful womb connects them with Him. This is why they call her to eat at a time not even close to lunchtime, so that they may return the lost order through her.
But she knows that it is impossible to restore the lost order without betraying it within herself and through herself. Perfect humanity, and thereby God’s kingdom, are only possible in the heart, in the reconciliation of opposites. She looks to that kingdom. She sacrifices herself for it, convinced that in doing so she delivers into perfection herself and her loved ones. Immeasurable is her sorrow at turning away from the world and her hope for a perfect outcome to her pain in all-encompassing grace. She takes comfort in the message that this life is nothing but taking pleasure in deceptive illusions. As she is leaving her birth home, perhaps she whispers to herself God’s message to humanity: “Whatever thing you have been given is the enjoyment of the present life and its adornment; and what is with God is better and more enduring. and what is with God is better and more enduring. Will you not understand?”[[40]]
The children are perhaps confused by the changes in their halls, in the household and the household order, in their clothing and the type of food, and in prayer and everything governed by love of God and His apostle. They may wonder at the arrival of strangers and the strangeness of their names. Most important to them in all of this, however, is that their mother has been removed so completely from mealtime so that her absence disrupts the entire household order. Everyone is there, in the halls, but her. That is why her children beckon her.
The aga’s wife attends and begs
the leader of the band:
By God, O leader of this band,
our steeds halt by this hall,
that I may gift my orphans here.
Hasan Aginica stands between two regimes of custody: one she is leaving behind, another to which she resorts. She crosses the distance from the halls of her husband, who has forsaken the praised as his prophet, to her ancestral home, her brother and mother, and then from there she continues to the halls of her new husband, the qadi. Refusing to accept the imposed denial of the apostle, she has responded by accepting not her will but the will of God in all things. Travelling with the wedding party, she feels the alienation from which she is returning to her true homeland, to God. This return is an ascent from separation from the Loving to the Loving Himself, from all the temptations of the world and the self within which His creation is offered up as identical with Him and sufficient in itself: All that she has is in God’s kingdom, in knowing and in bearing witness to the proclamation that: “Surely to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth; He gives life, and makes to die; and you have not, apart from God, either protector or helper.”[[41]]
The wedding band appears to be leading her, when she is actually leading them. She is no longer enduring and waiting, she is travelling and acting. She addresses the leader of the wedding band, and in doing so she points to the core of her story about herself, the world, and God. In this address she reveals the thirteenth of thirteen – Hasan Aga, his mother and sister, Hasan Aginica, her three sons and two daughters and her brother and mother, the qadi of Imotski and her brother in God, the leader of the wedding band.
Thirteen is a sacred number signifying Aḥmad/Muḥammad, the heart of all creation and our sublime potential. The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets is m. Its numerical value is 40. And the number 53 (13+40) corresponds again to Aḥmad. The prophet Ishmael, son of the prophet Abraham, indicates this with his 12 sons, as do the prophet Jacob, son of the prophet Isaac, with his 12 sons, and Jesus Christ with his 12 disciples. In fact, all the prophets point to him. They were pledged to him before existence and bear witness of him. When God brought him into this world it was as the seal of the prophets. To forsake him is to forsake all the prophets, including Jesus, son of Mary. Their witness to each other is revealed in both the Gospel and the Qur’an. There is hope for those who do not know this but none for those who do and have borne witness only to deny it. Hasan Aginica reminds the wedding band, Hasan Aga, and her children of him. Loving God means following Aḥmad/Muḥammad, as by following him we realise our humanity.
She has been forced to part from her children, who remain wards of their father in her absence, a father who has betrayed God and His apostle for an illusory promise of honour, glory, and authority over property and children.
Nothing in the world, nor even the world in its entirety, has value except as a reminder to praise—the debt owed by every individual who has discovered the praised within him or her self and realized their self by following him on the upright path towards God, as Praised and Beloved. Hasan Aginica sees her troubles and suffering for what they are in her turn from the world to God, that she might receive all from Him. She has been forced to part from her children, who remain wards of their father in her absence, a father who has betrayed God and His apostle for an illusory promise of honour, glory, and authority over property and children.
Conscious of the position she has been placed in, moving up from passive endurance to action, Hasan Aginica surrenders herself to obedience to God and the apostle. In doing so she shows her poor children the wealth of God, to Whom we belong and to Whom we return. If in loving her children she is diverted from her love of God, if she surrenders their destiny to the will of another, even to her own, in the slightest measure, rather than to God’s, is she not thereby associating someone or something to her Beloved? In doing so, does she not give grounds in the minds of others to doubt her witness that there is no beloved but God? And what shall she tell her children on their path back to God with more certainty than this: that each of them must inevitably take on and carry the weight of their covenant with God for themselves.
Their steeds they duly halt,
that she may gift each child fair gifts.
Each boy gold-threaded boots,
each girl a coat down to the ground;
while for the cradled babe,
she sends but poor and humble robes.
Hasan Aginica gifts her sons gilded footwear, her daughters long overgarments, but to her son, still in the cradle, she gives a mendicant’s poor and modest robes. In doing so she conveys to them, and to everyone present, her love of God and His apostle, and her departure from the world of oppression to the halls of Peace.
With her gifts the mother offers her own testament to her children, at peace and faithful, connected to God, the Peaceful and the Faithful, through being-at-peace in the exercise of faith. She is telling them they are only passing through this world, to always remember that, and to shoe and dress accordingly, because the halls of this world are but stations on our journey of return. This return takes place in every self. Ascending along the path of return, the traveller discovers their own self by being that self or rather God’s. Everything on this path, the pleasure and the pain, the joy and the suffering, is but a sign by which God reveals Himself through his love as Known and Witnessed.
Her sons she gives gold-threaded footwear to remind them of the mosque of the world, of their ascent on the upright path towards God, with all of existence—the Sun and the Moon, the stars and the mountains, the trees and the animals, and many people. She gives her daughters čohe, which are long dark blue woollen overgarments, to remind them that they owe obedience to none but God and His apostle and those who give orders in line with that obedience. The blue colour of the gifted overgarments is to remind them of the intercession of the praised, of his presence across existence, which owes the debt and duty of praise that it fulfils by praising God, the Praised. To her son, still in the cradle, she sends poor and humble robes (uboške haljine), that is she sends him robes to match his own humble status (as ubog), which is to say the powerlessness and poverty that places him in the lap of God’s protection.[[42]] As “ubog” creatures, we are entirely in and of God (Bog). We owe nothing to anyone but Him. We are entirely at and within God’s mercy, as we partake of no will in or by which we might take responsibility for our own self. The infant’s mother sends him these rags as her missive to him of herself: both you and I, and all people, are at the mercy of All-Merciful and Ever-Merciful God. We are in Him, as He is in us. It is as if she is telling her children: Go to the Beloved, do not look anywhere else, may your thoughts be filled with nothing but Him, because this is the only path to self-realization. Never lose hope in God’s mercy.[[43]]
It is as if she is imparting to everyone that: We come into this world through the wombs of our mothers, through the merciful womb by which God makes manifest his all-embracing mercy. Our deaths are not and cannot be the same as our births. None are truly alive but God. We come from Him and it is to Him that we return beyond suffering and death. We must not allow this world to become a prison with no escape. Other worlds are ladders of ascent to the self in most beautiful uprightness and so to God. Let our love of God consume everything but Him, because there is no life but Him. Whoever strives for a world without God gets nothing. And those who strive for God, get everything. Regarding all this, Hasan Aginica could have remained silent, trusting that her love of God would pass to her children and connect them with the throne of the Ever-Merciful through her womb. She reminds herself, and so reminds them as well, that there are no acceptable excuses for putting up with oppression. As God revealed in the Recitation, when people reach for excuses on the day of judgement the angels will respond: “But was not God´s earth wide, so that you might have emigrated in it?”[[44]]
This is why without saying a thing Hasan Aginica gifts her sons gilded footwear, her daughters long overgarments, but to her son, still in the cradle, she gives a mendicant’s poor and modest robes. In doing so she conveys to them, and to everyone present, her love of God and His apostle, and her departure from the world of oppression to the halls of Peace.
Gallant Hasan-aga,
looking on, now commands his sons:
Come, my poor orphaned boys,
no mercy has your dam for you,
in her Hagaric heart.
Hasan Aga also considers his children poor and orphaned (deprived of proper kin relations). To leave them his halls and estates to inherit, he has denied the praised as his prophet. Instead of exile, he thought to avoid the pain of leaving and the fear of the unknown. For Hasan Aginica, the path he chose leads only to perdition. Only God can give her poor orphaned children abundance in joy. She has directed them towards the All-Merciful and away from their father, who is determined to betray God and His apostle. And she is steadfast in her decision to leave, because she believes betrayal has no price.
Wherever her migrant path may take her, whatever the threats, God and His apostle are more important. For it was sent down into the heart of the praised as prophet that: “But had We prescribed for them, saying, ´Slay yourselves´ or ´Leave your habitations,´ they would not have done it, save a few of them; yet if they had done as they were admonished it would have been better for them, and stronger confirming them, and then We surely would have given them from Us a mighty wage, and guided them on an upright path.”[[45]] Here “Slay yourselves!” means nothing more than self-revelation in life. It is only when one dies that one is made aware in death that there is no life beyond God, the Living. For those who think life in contingency enough, death is a terminus towards which all the fantasies of a self-sufficient world, a world without God, from Whom all things come and to Whom all things return, lead.
Hasan Aga invokes the world and its halls, while Hasan Aginica invokes God and His halls.
The sufferings involved in the imposed denial of God and His apostle and expulsion from the halls where her children must stay have turned Hasan Aginica towards her Hagaric heart, which is to say her praising heart. She has responded with determination in following the praised as her prophet in the conviction that God can hear her and will lead her. For, in the Recitation, God reveals that: “Whoso emigrates in the way of God will find in the earth many refuges and plenty; whoso goes forth from his house an emigrant to God and His Messenger, and then death overtakes him, his wage shall have fallen on God; surely God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”[[46]]
Hasan Aga invokes the world and its halls, while Hasan Aginica invokes God and His halls. Hasan Aga falsely believes that safety and provision can be found in this world, while Hasan Aginica knows they cannot and do not exist apart from God, to Whom everything belongs and will return. Accepting exile, she transforms it into a willing exodus because of God. She accepts the suffering and the hardships while thinking of the promise: “And those who emigrated in God´s way and were slain, or died, God shall provide them with a fair provision; and surely God is the best of providers.”[[47]] Whenever and wherever a person is denied the right to freely bear witness that there is no god but God and that the praised is His servant and His apostle, including in their own halls, they are obligated to emigrate to where their will is their own, and thereby God’s. The praised as prophet has this to say to them: “Our wandering shall not be over until the sun rises there where it sets.”[[48]]
Having understood the testament, which was really a call to sacred migration, Hasan Aga addresses his children, accusing their mother of having a Hagaric heart. He reminds them of the destiny of Hagar and her expulsion from Abraham’s halls. And he rejects that heart and does not want to see its presence in his children. A Hagaric heart ties one to the praised as a prophet descended from Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, the first son of the prophet Abraham. When she was exiled from her halls, God heard her, showed Himself to her, and led her through her troubles and suffering on the upright path. So, her exile became emigration for God and to follow the praised, our ever-present sublime potential on the upright path of return. She, however, persists with her Hagaric, that is her praising, heart.[[49]]
When Hasan-aga’s wife hears this,
white-faced, she falls to earth.
Her soul departs in grief, her gaze
on her poor orphaned sons.
Her heart is Hagaric. Her whole being bears witness to this. She has heard confirmation of it from one from whom she parted irrevocably with just such a heart, but white of face, prostrate before God, that she might rise before Him just the same. For God says in the Recitation of those who are white of face that: “They shall be in God´s mercy, therein dwelling forever.”[[50]] As for the sirote, Abundant and All-Merciful God is ever with them.
Post scriptum
The Sorrowful Song of the Noble Wife of Hasan Aga is both a work of art and, as argued here, sacral. To understand such a work requires insight into the relevant scientia sacra.[[51]] So far, so clear, as even the words of the title can be deployed in different semantic fields and used as the building blocks for a variety of theoretical perspectives. The Sorrowful Song first entered public consciousness because it was recorded in writing, but it originally belonged to the oral world of its linguistic community.
Whoever recorded it hid the identity of the performer. Attempts to pull back those curtains have been unsuccessful, but the search for traces and reflections of her in oral tradition has continued ever since that first publication. It would be rash to claim that any traces so far discovered have cast much light on the time preceding its publication, however.
The use of the names Asanaga and Asanaginica offers evidence that the Sorrowful Song was recorded amongst crypto Muslims, people who hid their true allegiances.
If the transcriber did conceal the identity of whoever told him the song, it is reasonable to suppose that it may have been because they belonged to a group living in secrecy. Starting in the year 1774 and going back through the centuries, we know that the presence of Muslims and Jews was deemed unacceptable on territories under Venetian rule—including their extensive lands in the eastern Mediterranean. And yet they remained present in various manifestations. Different forms of conversion to Christianity were imposed upon them, as the condition for inclusion under the ruling political order. That is how crypto Muslims came into existence—people who officially rejected their own and accepted the Catholic credo, while in secret maintaining their Muslim faith and identity. In this dual identity, they were of concern to the Church, the Inquisition, and the secular authorities.
The use of the names Asanaga and Asanaginica offers evidence that the Sorrowful Song was recorded amongst crypto Muslims, people who hid their true allegiances. Had it not been so, had the song been sung by people unafraid of public exposure, they would surely have used the Muslim forms of those names, Hasan-aga and Hasan-aginica, and would not have hidden. And yet, the song was sung. Why did the recorder stay quiet about his source, if not because the performers had sought his guarantee they would not be betrayed? The song must have been sacred to the people it belonged to. Reciting it in secret, amongst the closest of kin, meant immeasurably more in an oral than a literate context. If the recording of the song had been accompanied by information on who had sung it, the Inquisition could have used that as irrefutable proof against them.[[52]]
One might offer countless interpretations of the Sorrowful Song, but they will generally be either traditional and metaphysically based or modern and based on the world of quantity and comparison. No truly adequate interpretation can rely entirely on just one of these perspectives, however, just as no person is fully self-identical across even two of all the moments given to them. Not even the same person will produce the same reading of the same text on different occasions.
Our song probably comes from a time, the middle of the 17th century, and an area during and in which the Ottoman and the Venetian Empires were reordering their shared border, that is the borderlands of the Bosnian world. More precisely, it expresses the drama of the people of that time and in those parts. The nature of its publication in 1774 ensured that subsequent interest in it was mainly in Western Europe, among people themselves involved in a dramatic transition between two ontologies, the traditional and the modern or the perennial and the secular. That is how this originally perennial work of art came to be interpreted mainly through a secular lens. This interest was also motivated by how little knowledge these students had of the people the song came from, which rendered its semantic fields all the more mysterious, and by its undeniable aesthetic quality. The epithets in the title, however, “žalostna” and “plemenita”, which may be translated as “sorrowful” and “noble”, respectively, like the noun “pisanca”, “poem” or “song”, and the name “Asanaginica”, are subject to distinctly different regimes of interpretation under the two competing ontologies and their associated semantic systems.
The song’s title already tells us that it is not about the Asanaginica so much as it is her song. Her world of spiritual nobility is not determined by kin or origin. As God revealed in the Recitation: “O humankind, We have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that you may know one another. Surely the noblest among you in the sight of God is the most conscious of you. God is All-knowing, All-aware.”[[53]] He also says: “And be conscious of God; God teaches you.”[[54]]
That people are made man or woman reflects the duality general to everything, whose absolute Third is God. He is not the Third of Three. His being Third is absolute Truth revealed and confirmed by the duality of all that exists and is reflected in humanity, masculine and feminine. This duality reflects or collects existence as a whole. Femininity receives and masculinity gives. This is the nature of that duality by which God, absolutely One, makes Himself known, as Unconditioned, in contingency or conditioned reality. Everything belongs to God and to Him all things return.[[55]] This means that he is the Giver of every contingent thing, which all return to Him. His manifestation in contingency is primarily receptive and so female, and only then donative and male. This is the order of descent, downward from above, from higher to lower.
The pair of the Sorrowful Song, Hasan Aginica and Hasan Aga, represents the two sides of humanity and so of existence, connected through the absolutely Beautiful.
Whatever state we find ourselves are in, we have self-awareness. Being aware in this way includes the existence of a vertical dimension, whereby each lower level of being is brought to consciousness as the recipient from a higher or consciousness-endowing level of what it has. That higher state is in its turn lower than the one that renders it conscious, and so on, until we reach the absolutely Conscious. Nobility is relationship with God as absolutely Conscious. All one can and does know comes through relationship with God as Knowing and Conscious. And He reveals Himself at the highest level of Being through His most beautiful names, by which he teaches humankind. Having been incepted, however contingently, into absolute Being, people gather within and through themselves His revelation of all the names that originally belong to God. That is why people are, in the fullness of their receiving and giving, in their rational and purposeful creation, beauty that reveals the absolutely Beautiful.
The pair of the Sorrowful Song, Hasan Aginica and Hasan Aga, represents the two sides of humanity and so of existence, connected through the absolutely Beautiful. When this relationship is fully realized, God sends down the Holy Spirit to speak or reveal His mercy. He is Beautiful. His being Beautiful reveals a male and a female servant in our duality through whom God makes known His lordship. That is why the Aga and the Aginica are Lord Beauty and his Lady. The stress given to their nobility is a sign of the poem’s origin on the highest level, which reveals itself to and through her. It is our connection to that higher plane, the Holy Ghost or Intellect, or rather the Truth in and by which everything comes into existence.
If the Sorrowful Song is to be read and interpreted in accordance with its native ontology, it must be taken in the round, with all its semantic fields, within the framework of the appropriate ontological order, which means with due regard for all the appropriate languages, meanings, and symbols. Difficult as this seems in times when intellect is eclipsed and the visible rules supreme over the invisible, one cannot but agree with Ananda K. Coomaraswamy when he says: “Yet I hope to have shown, in a way that may be ignored but cannot be refuted, that our use of the term ‘aesthetic’ forbids us also to speak of art as pertaining to the ‘higher things of life’ or the immortal part of us.”[[56]] He concludes:
“Let us, then, admit that the greater part of what is taught in the fine arts departments of our universities, all of the psychologies of art, all the obscurities of modern aesthetics, are only so much verbiage, only a kind of defense that stands in the way of our understanding of the wholesome art, at the same time iconographically true and practically useful, that was once to be had in the marketplace or from any good artist; and that whereas the rhetoric that cares for nothing but the truth is the rule and method of the intellectual arts, our aesthetic is nothing but a false rhetoric and a flattery of human weakness by which we can account only for the arts that have no other purpose than to please.”[[57]]
The Sorrowful Song belongs to that world of the Truth and its revelation to the praised as prophet. It is only as part of that world that we can understand the semantic fields reflected in its aesthetic nature, which cannot be extricated from the unknown, as the higher level of being, and so from Truth, as the reason and purpose of all the signs on the horizons and in the self. From that perspective the artist does not create, because there is no, can be no creator but the Creator. The work of the artist establishes and reveals connection with God Who creates through Truth. That is why making art is ritual, always empty without the presence of the Ghost who descends from God into the heart of the artist. And the heart is that uncreated and uncreatable core of humanity in which dualities and oppositions arise and where they disappear. That core is where Spirit and humanity are one, but only by eluding determination in space and time.
When a piece of art enters being out of that relationship between the artist and God as Artist, it is felt and known within the experience of every person it serves in any way as transcending the limits of materiality. This art speaks through Spirit and Spirit speaks through it. Whatever in it that can be sensed and analysed by rationality will find shelter in Intellect, its original environment, and in Truth, from and through which it descended into existence, just as it returns from existence to Truth. This may help us understand Thomas Mann’s perspicacity in saying: “I like to think—yes, I feel sure—that a future is coming in which we shall condemn as black magic, as the brainless, irresponsible product of instinct, all art which is not controlled by the intellect.”[[58]]
In traditional anthropology intellect corresponds to the heart: Intellect is the focal and maternal level of all existence, just as the heart is unifying, source and confluence. Human beings are, in principle, the intellect and the heart of existence, albeit always in contingent duality. They want the horizons of the outside world to speak to them and to speak back to them in turn. In this reciprocity of inside and outside and of beginning and end, people fear being cut off and so attack and run away. But the signs on the horizon and in the self recall us to that unity of Being we then want to return and surrender to. In such momentary, ungraspable manifestations of Beauty, we feel the blessed release of tension. That is why we dedicate ourselves to identification with the Beautiful. Which is nothing more than loving the absolutely Loving and being loved. When that level of existence is realized, everything on and of it becomes inexpressible, as it has returned from separation to the One. To the extent one can still talk about it, ascent and descent are seen within two ontological visions.
In the first ontological vision, God created humanity and everything that it can and does do. The essence of that is beauty. That is why human beings may be defined in terms of our potential for affirmation in beauty, in the presence of the absolutely Beautiful as manifest in contingency. People of the second ontological perspective also see art as a search for beauty and a surrender to it, but not a tool for transcending the contingent. This is why the language and meaning of these two possibilities are so different. For the artist in the metaphysically grounded picture of the world, both art and making art serve the realization of our highest potential, ascent to most beautiful uprightness, the reason and purpose of our existence. They are governed by the principle “ars sine scientia nihil”. That is why questions concerning the role and meaning of art are crucial to any discussion of them.
A symbol connects one level of Being with another. … It is the language of Sophia which she uses continuously to surrender herself to Him from Whom she receives everything she has.
The role and meaning of art in their metaphysical interpretations cannot be separated from symbols and symbolic manifestations. The aforementioned ascent within the self and so in existence as a whole is the purpose of art and making art and entails revealing the relationship between different levels of Being. A symbol connects one level of Being with another. It removes the confusion of normal speech. A symbol is a manifestation of a higher order of reality in a lower one. We can understand why Jesus Christ spoke through parables and why all manifestations on the horizons and in the self, separately and together, are signs or symbols. People have always stood before these signs, and in them, and with them. It is a language by which humanity discovers its being as derived from the Absolute, from His will to reveal Himself to Himself, but really from the love that leads Him to undeniable unification with Himself. It is the language of Sophia which she uses continuously to surrender herself to Him from Whom she receives everything she has.
In the Recitation, God reveals Himself in speech to the praised as His prophet and says: “We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in themselves, till it is clear to them that He is Truth. Suffices it not as to thy Lord, that He is witness over everything?”[[59]] Signs on the horizons are how God manifests and reveals Himself. They are observed by humanity. That is how these signs are reflected in us. These two sides of God’s revelation of Himself—the entirety of existence through which He communicates with humanity, on the one hand, and humanity’s consciousness, thought, and speech, on the other—are the duality which confirms and reveals the absolute It Is or Truth. That is why there is nothing and will never be anything in existence that is not a manifestation of the Self of the absolutely Standing. A person may falsely believe that their life, will, power, hearing, sight, knowledge, and speech are inherently and entirely their own. But it is not and cannot be so. They are theirs but only as a gift received on condition they acknowledge their debt to the absolute Creditor, Who holds them in absolute oneness.
We realize our humanity through our relationship with the absolute Real, in the identity of the signs on the horizons and in the self, which we express through our witness that there is no truth but Truth and that all the signs in the self are praised, which means that through praise and the praised they are connected to Truth, the absolutely Praised. In these two tenets humanity reveals itself in its sublime potential and so in its relation to its reason and purpose for being. It is perfected in its sublime potential. That is the praised, the mercy to the worlds and the most beautiful example, more important than any state of the self that follows him up the ladder of ascent or return to God. When a person forgets God, the praised whom He sent down to them ceases to be their ever-present higher potential. As God warned humanity: “Be not as those who forgot God, and so He caused them to forget their souls; those —they are the unjust.”[[60]]
only through death in the visible world are we born into the invisible one
One can only forget what is known. When that happens, the knowledge is not destroyed. It sinks down into the murky depths of the self. But it is possible, through remembering, to bring it up into the higher levels of the self, from the dark low places to the light of the higher levels. In this ascent people disclose themselves in their relationship with God Who makes Himself known through all of existence, in being absolutely present even when we forget and seem absent. God reminds us of the reality of that which we, in forgetfulness, think fully ours: “He said, ‘Do you serve what you hew, and God created you and what you make?’”[[61]]
Only then, when we sacrifice all that which seems in the lower levels of existence to belong to us, can we become realized and receive all. Only when we are in full mourning for the loss of our world image, can we be made joyful by being gifted its reality in eternity, only through death in the visible world are we born into the invisible one, in the fullness of our reason and purpose for being, or from above, in the words of Christ Jesus.
Hasanaginica, A Bosnian-Muslim Folk Ballad
Presented here is the interpretation of Rusmir Mahmutćehajić and the English translation of Desmond Maurer (refer to translator's footnotes for more details)
What whitens on the greening peak?
Snows now, or swans in flock?
Snows away had long since melted;
Swans long since ta’en flight.
No snows are they, no swans are they,
but Hasan-aga’s tent.
Sick sore with bitter wounds he lies.
His dam and sister come;
his lady love for shame cannot.
Recovered of his wounds,
his loyal love he sends this doom:
In my white halls, stay not-
not in the hall, nor with my kin.
His meaning kenned, his dame,
distraught, stands wretched at the thought.
Hoofbeats surround the halls.
The aga’s wife takes breakneck flight
down windowed tower walls.
Two maiden daughters race behind:
Come back now, mother dear;
Our sire’s not come, but Pint’rovich
the bey, your mother’s son.
Then, Hasan-aga’s wife returns,
Her brother’s neck to clasp.
Oh! Brother dear! So great a shame!
To send me from these five!
The bey refrains, says not a word,
but from a silken pouch
draws forth her papers of divorce
to claim her portion full
and take her to their mother’s home.
Once she the writ has read,
both boys’ brows the dame embraces,
both daughters’ rosy cheeks:
but from her little babe abed,
she cannot bear to part,
so that her brother grips her arm
to strip her from her son,
and draws her high onto his horse,
to hie to their white halls.
At home she tarries for a while,
less than a week, ‘tis sure,
this gentle dame of gentle kin,
whose gentle hand none seek
more hotly than Imotski’s judge.
She begs her brother dear:
Oh, brother dear, from harm be free!
Pray, troth my hand to none,
lest my poor heart should break to see
my poor abandoned sons.
Alas, the bey pays her less heed
than to Imotski’s judge.
The dame her brother then entreats:
On paper white inscribe
a screed for the Imotski judge:
“Fair greetings from your bride
who fairly writes to pray of thee,
the wedding band once called
let them her bring a mantle tall
to pass the Aga’s halls
and see not her poor orphan sons.”
White screed in hand, at once
the Qadi calls the wedding band
to send them for his bride.
The band finds bride and welcome fair,
and heartily hie home.
But as they pass the Aga’s halls,
two maids out windows peer,
two sons hie out to meet their dam,
to beg their mother dear.
Come back with us, o mother dear,t
o eat of what we have.
The aga’s wife attends and begs
the leader of the band:
By God, O leader of this band,
our steeds halt by this hall,
that I may gift my orphans here.
Their steeds they duly halt,
that she may gift each child fair gifts.
Each boy gold-threaded boots,
each girl a coat down to the ground;
while for the cradled babe,
she sends but poor and humble robes.
Gallant Hasan-aga,
looking on, now commands his sons:
Come, my poor orphaned boys,
no mercy has your dam for you,
in her Hagaric heart.
When Hasan-aga’s wife hears this,
white-faced, she falls to earth.
Her soul departs in grief, her gaze
on her poor orphaned sons.
[[1]]: Trans. note. It is the author’s established practice to translate the prophet Muhammad’s given name into Bosnian as Hval. He explains this in his three volume work, Hval i Djeva, published by Brill as The Virgin and the Praised, Brill, 2015, translated and abridged by Desmond Maurer. Hval literally means “one who is praised”. In the absence of an English name that expresses the same meaning, the form used to translate Hval as the name of the prophet Muhammad is therefore the praised. A similar consideration arises with regard to the translation of the name Hasan. Hasan Aga and his wife Hasan Aginica are the protagonists of the poem and their names are also significant. Aga is a term designating its bearer as a lord. Aginica signifies an Aga’s wife, but it also designates the bearer as herself noble. Hasan means beautiful and is the male form. Hasana is the female form and therefore also means beautiful. Hasan Aga is thus the beautiful lord, representing the principle of male beauty in a world that is gendered and therefore based upon the relationship between the genders. Hasan Aginica means beautiful lady, so that she represents the principle of female beauty. In this way, reference to Hasan Aga and Hasan Aginica as a pairing involves the presence in each self of both the male and the female principles of beauty. The presence of both principles in every individual is key to the author’s theology, as expressed in the above-mentioned work. The situation is further complicated by the author’s use of Lijepi to refer to God as the Beautiful, reflecting his standard invocation of God’s divine names as a way of expressing how human beings, male and female, partake of the divine qualities they express. The reader is advised to keep this structure of thought in mind: Hasan is the masculine beautiful as donative or giving principle, Hasan Aginica is the feminine beautiful as receptive principle, and God is the Beautiful, Whose names are most beautiful. Each individual, male and female, contains both principles, masculine and feminine, as they must receive first before they can give. It is only in combination that they can reflect and express their embodiment of God’s most beautiful names as a result of their following and realizing themselves after the best example, the praised, who is the perfect union of the two principles, the recipient of God’s Word, and the apostle through whom It has been given to the world
[[2]]: See: Nasr, Sayyed Hossein, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Albany: State University of New York, 1993, 160
[[3]]: Ibid., 163
[[4]]: See: Qur’an, 33:6. Quotations from the Qur’an (Recitation) in the original are given in the author’s own version. In English, we have used adapted quotations from two works: Arberry, Arthur J., The Koran Interpreted, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980; and Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, eds. Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake and Joseph E. B. Lumbard, New York: Harper One, 2015
[[5]]: On numerology in the Muslim sacred tradition and for comparable phenomena in Judaism and Christianity, see: Varisco, Daniel Martin, “Numerology”, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003, 3: 554-55; Schimmel, Annemarie, The Mystery of Numbers, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; Conrad, Lawrence I., “Seven and the Tasbī: On the Implications of Numerical Symbolism for the Study of Medieval Islamic History”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 31/1 (1988): 42-73
[[6]]: See: Qur’an, 61:6
[[7]]: See: John, 14, 15 and 16
[[8]]: Qur’an, 22:40
[[9]]: Ibid., 2:251
[[10]]: Muslim, imam, Sahih, Istanbul: Dar et-tiba’a el-‘amira, 1915, 1-8, 2:185
[[11]]: Trans. note. The English version of the poem used in this text is a previously unpublished one by Desmond Maurer
[[12]]: Trans. note: the word translated here and in the poem as “shame” or “sense of shame” is “stid”. Its translation represents a crux in his interpretation for the author of this essay, as it has played an important role in interpretations of the poem historically. He is concerned that it not be understood in English as suggesting that the heroine has herself done anything shameful. Rather, she has an innate sense of modesty, chastity, decency, and of what is proper, of what is owed, that prevents her from attending and tending to her lord, because to do so would be in some way shameful. The riddle posed by the poem is to work out what may have caused her to feel that it is not proper for her to attend him. The author’s answer is her husband’s apostasy
[[13]]: Muslims could not live as citizens under Venetian rule. If they made themselves known as muslims in any way, they were subjected to investigation by the Sacred Office, the inquisitorial court that determined the history of their Muslim faith and required they admit fault, reject any connection to the praised, ask for forgiveness, and request admission under the wing of the true Catholic faith. For more on the work of the Sacred office in Venetian territories and investigations into muslim affiliation see: Čoralić, Lovorka, Hrvati u procesima mletačke inkvizicije, Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2001
[[14]]: Trans. note. As explained in footnote 2, above, Hasan Aginica is not in itself a name. It is an epithet, identifying the protagonist as her husband’s wife, and it is how she is referred to in the text. While students of the poem have identified her with actual historical figures, that is entirely speculative, and we do not know what her name was. The epithet Hasan Aginica designates its bearer as both beautiful and noble, regardless of her continued relationship to her husband. Just as Hasan’s name refers to his nature as beautiful and Aga to his status as noble, so her retention of the epithet, Hasan Aginica, makes clear that she too embodies the principles of beauty and nobility in her own right, both as his wife and after she is no longer married to him
[[15]]: Trans. note. While it is traditional to understand the line “Jeka stado konja oko dvora” as indicating the echoing of horses’ hooves surrounding the halls, in fact the sound could be any echoing one produced by horses in considerable number, including whinnying. The translation follows tradition rather than literal accuracy here
[[16]]: Qur’an, 22:39-40
[[17]]: Trans. note. Using climbing stones built into the outside of the tower for the purpose
[[18]]: Ibid., 5:32
[[19]]: See: Guillaume, Alfred, trans., The Life of Muhammad (A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasūl Allāh), Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1980, 224
[[20]]: Qur’an, 08:30
[[21]]: Ibid., 8:27-28
[[22]]: Ibid., 47:14
[[23]]: Ibid., 48:10
[[24]]: See: Mark, 8:36
[[25]]: Qurʼan, 75:20-23
[[26]]: Idem, 4:59
[[27]]: Ibid., 65:1
[[28]]: For more on this see: Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968; Haliczer, Stephen, Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe, Barnes & Noble Imports, 1987; Lea, Henry Charles, The Moriscos of Spain: Their Conversion and Expulsion, Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & CO., 1901; Plakotos, Georgios, The Venetian Inquisition and Aspects of “otherness”: Judaizers, Muslim and Christian Converts (16th – 17th century), Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Glasgow, Department of History, 2004; Ortega, Stephen, “Across Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Ottoman Networks and Spaces in Early Modern Venice”, Mediterranean Studies 18 (2009): 66-89; Barbierato, Federico, “Politics, Diplomacy and Religious Dissent: The Activity in the Inquisition in Early Modern Venice”; in: Eric R. Dusteler, ed., A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013, 281-305; Corrales, Eloy Martín, Muslims in Spain, 1492–1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel, trans. Concuelo López-Morillas, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021
[[29]]: Qurʼan, 24:32
[[30]]: See: Qur’an, 35:15
[[31]]: Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad, Az-Zuhd, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1999, 64
[[32]]: See: Qur’an, 3:131-32
[[33]]: See: Qur’an, 34:37
[[34]]: Exodus, 34:14
[[35]]: Muslim, 2:782
[[36]]: Qur’an, 8:46
[[37]]: Ibid., 93:1–8
[[38]]: Trans. note. A word of unclear origin, it is glossed as “peplum” in a contemporary Latin translation by the Dubrovnik poet Đuro Ferić (1739-1820), in Gortan, Veljko, and Vratović, Vladimir, Hrvatski Latinisti, Croatici auctores qui latini scripserunt, vol. II, Pisci 17-19 Stoljeća, Auctores Saec. XVII-XVIII, Zagreb: Zora, Matica Hrvatska, 1970, pp. 668-673. It clearly means some type of long mantle or overgarment that will cover her face and block her field of vision
[[39]]: Qur’an., 9:59
[[40]]: Ibid., 28:60
[[41]]: Ibid., 9:116
[[42]]: Trans. note. The translation of this section is rendered complex by the use of the word “uboške” in the poem to describe the robes sent by Hasanaginica to her infant son. The author of this essay explains this in reference to the infant himself as “ubog”. The usual meaning of term is “poor, humble, beggarly”, ultimately “a mendicant holy man, one given over to the care of God”. The robes are therefore such as befit an individual of that profile. The author interprets Hasanaginica sending such robes as drawing attention to the lowliness and poverty of all human beings in the face of God’s abundance, so that the proper attitude is to accept our nullity in relation to His fullness and surrender to His guidance and protection. The child is thus receiving a coded message regarding his proper attitude to life and to God, in whom alone he should trust. This interpretation is expressed by a number of rhetorical links drawn between the adjective and the root word in it, “bog”, which is the Slavic word for God, but also etymologically for wealth and prosperity. “Ubog” is therefore its negation. This is how the author resolves the supposed crux in the text of the poem here. What Fortis recorded, “uboške haljine”, has otherwise been amended in more recent times to “u bošci haljine”, which means “clothes in a bundle”. This conjecture may be attributed to Vuk Štefanović Karadžić in his 1821 publication of the poem, which was derived uniquely from Fortis. His emendation fails, however, to shed any light on the text or the motivation behind Hasanaginca’s gifts and has no standing in either witness to the text (Fortis or the supposed Split manuscript), nor it is found in the contemporary Latin version referred to in note 38 above, which has “in cunis puero mittebat amictum exiguum exiguuo”, viz. “she sent a poor garment to the poor boy in the cradle”. There is therefore no reason to accept it, especially as the received text makes perfect sense, when read in the context of Hasanaginica’s religious concerns and her husband’s apostasy
[[43]]: See: Qur’an, 39:53
[[44]]: Qur’an, 4:97
[[45]]: Ibid., 4:66-68
[[46]]: Ibid., 4:100
[[47]]: Ibid., 22:58
[[48]]: Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 1-45, Beirut: Mu’essesetur-risala, 2001, 28:111
[[49]]: One may discern in the adjective “arđaskom” the verbal roots ‘- r - j (Badawi, Elsaid M. and Haleem, Muhammad Abdel, Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur'anic Usage, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008, 610), h-j-r (Idem, 979-80) and kh-r-j (Idem, 257-59). The differences between the second and third roots do not affect their semantic fields (see: Al-Faruque, Muhammad, “Emigration”, Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, 2, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2002, 18-23, 18). Derivatives from the first root include the verb ‘araja (to move up) and the noun ma‘raj (ladder, steps, path of ascent). Ibn Hisham in the notes to his reworking of Ibn Ishaq’s biography of the prophet Muhammed writes: “The Arabs say both Hājar and Ājar, changing the h into a, as in the verb harāqa and arāqa ‘to pour out’” (Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, 691). Derivatives of the second and third verbal roots include hājara (move away, migrate); muhājir (emigrant); kharaja (leave, abandon), khārij (one who leaves). Hijra (migration) and particularly the personal name Hājar belong to these semantic fields. Given the already noted transponibility of the phonemes represented by the letters j and r and dropping of the phonemes represented by h and kh, it is clear that arđasko srce means essentially hadžersko srce, the heart of Hagar, the mother of the prophet Ishmael and the ancestral grandmother of the prophet Muhammad. This is why the followers of the prophet Muhammad are called Hagar’s children and muhajirs or exiles (see: Mahmutćehajić, Rusmir, Tajna Hasanaginice, Sarajevo: Buybook, 2010, 151n9; idem, The Praised and the Virgin, Liden, Boston: Brill, 2014, “Hagarʼs Posterity”, 172-209)
[[50]]: Qur’an, 3: 107
[[51]]: On these concepts in the broader context of world artistic heritage see: Burckhardt, Titus, Sacred Art in East and West: Its Principles and Methods, trans. Lord Northbourne, Pates Manor, Bedfont, Middlesex: Perennial Books, 1986
[[52]]: On how orality and literacy are related in traditional and modern cultures, see: Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., “The Bugbear of Literacy”; in: idem, The Bugbear of Literacy, Pates Manor, Bedfont, Middlesex: Perennial Books, 1979, 33-49
[[53]]: Qur’an, 49:13
[[54]]: Ibid., 2:282
[[55]]: See: Qur’an, 3:109
[[56]]: Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., “A Figure of Speech or a Figure of Thought?”; in: Roger Lipsy, ed., Coomaraswamy, 1: Selected Papers: Traditional art and Symbolism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, 13-42, 40
[[57]]: Ibid., 41
[[58]]: Mann, Thomas, “The coming humanism”, The Nation, 147 (1938): 617-18, 18
[[59]]: Qur’an, 41:53
[[60]]: Ibid., 59:19
[[61]]: Ibid., 37:95-96
