A JOURNEY WITH EXPERIENCES OF A LIFETIME. THE ADVENTURES OF GYULA GERMANUS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IN 1902.
A JOURNEY WITH EXPERIENCES OF A LIFETIME. THE ADVENTURES OF GYULA GERMANUS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IN 1902.

Summary/Abstract: Gyula Germanus or Hajji Julius Abdul-Karim Germanus, Hungarian Muslim Orientalist Professor (1884-1979) was a well-known scholar and popular figure in Hungary from the turn of the century until late seventies. He was an Arabist, teacher, professor, writer, traveller, literary historian as well MP in Hungary (1958-1966) and member of many academies abroad. He converted to Islam in Delhi in 1930, and he was the first Hungarian to make a pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) in 1935. In this paper, I would like to describe in more detail his first major trip abroad, which took him to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1902. The 17-year-old Germanus, a newly graduated, well-informed, educated, multilingual and already interested in Eastern culture, had a lifetime of experiences on his journey. Based partly on one o f his memoirs and partly on a radio play he wrote and found in the Germanus bequest, I will outline in detail a chronicle of his days in Bosnia. First he travelled by train from Budapest to Banja Luka, where he visited the only Trappist monastery in the Balkans, and then he wrote a brief history of the Trappist order in his book. He then travelled with his companions by coach along a wild and scenic road carved into the valley of the Vrbas river towards Jajce. He noted that the Hungarian soldiers who invaded Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 had named the province “the land of curved mountains” for a reason. It is in Jajce that he had his greatest and most astonishing adventure, when he walked into a cafe in the evening, where he was greeted with great affection by the regular Bosniaks, especially after it turns out that he speaks Turkish. So he spends the evening in good company and is amply entertained.

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