# Muhamed Hadžijahić

Muhamed Hadžijahić (Sarajevo, 6 February 1918 – Sarajevo, 21 June 1986), was Bosnian and Yugoslav historian, orientalist, and Ottomanist, doctor of law with main focus of interest in political history.

## Education

He finished elementary school, and high school in 1937, in Sarajevo. He, then, graduated in 1942 at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, where he received his doctorate in 1965, with the thesis Legal position of Sarajevo in the Ottoman Empire until 1850. He has been writing since his early youth, and already at the age of 16, he published his first work in Novi Behar about Alija Đerzelez epic folk songs. He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, in 1942. As a student he began to study legal history. After graduating, he started working in Sarajevo, then Zagreb, Raša near Labin, Mostar, Brčko, Gradačac, Vogošća and finally in Sarajevo again.

## Career

He was especially active in writing in all areas during the NDH, while also working as a censor in the General Directorate for Propaganda. However, since 1941 and the beginning of the WWII in Yugoslavia, he joined NOP as a covert operative associate in Sarajevo. From the autumn of 1942 he is in continuous contact with the leadership of the communist underground resistance movement in Zagreb.
During the WWII he wrote for Hrvatska enciklopedija (1941–42, 1945), Nova uzdanica calendar, El Hidaje, Zagreb's Croatian people, Zagreb's Croatian daily, Hrvatsko kolo, Sarajevo's Osvit, Spremnosti, Muslim yearbook Hrvat, a post-war encyclopedia of Yugoslavia, various Muslim magazines, but also Catholic (Dobri Pastir, Croatica Christiana Periodica) ones too.
After the war, from 1945 until 1949, he worked in the information office of the Presidency of the Government of the People's Republic of Croatia, from 1949 to 1950 as a lawyer at the General Directorate of Coal in Zagreb, and from 1950 to '51 as a legal officer at Raša coal mines. From 1951 until 1955, he worked in the District Court and the State Secretariat for Judicial Administration of the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, and also as a judge in Mostar, Brčko and Gradačac. From 1955 until 1960, he worked in the supervisory board of the Municipality of Gradačac, and from 1960 to '64 in the Municipal Assembly of Sarajevo-Centar. From 1964 to '65 he worked as a lawyer at the Institute of Economics and then from 1965 to '67 at the Institute for Social Management of the University of Sarajevo. In 1967 he took position at the company "Tito" in Vogošća. Between 1967 and 1968 he worked at the city's Institute for the Protection and Maintenance of Cultural Monuments in Sarajevo and from 1968 until his retirement in 1978 at the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he was first elected senior research associate and secretary of the Commission for the History of the Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in 1976 scientific advisor.
He chaired the council of the Gazi Husrev-beg Library in Sarajevo in 1971.
In his works he dealt with Aljamiado literature (Bosnian: adžamijska književnost); history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially from 9th to 10th century and from 18th to 19th century; the Bosnian Church and expansion Islam in Bosnia; the Hamzevian movement; the position of cities in the Ottoman Empire. He also wrote several bibliographic articles.