CYNTHIA SIMMONS
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Yugoslavia, Tito did not encourage the dissemination of such an under–
standing, for the knowledge that primarily ethnically pure enclaves in
the Balkans functioned peacefully might imply that multiethnic com–
munities (or states!) were doomed to failure.
Current scholarship in the West is replete with information on Great
Power invasions into the Western Balkans . Bosnian scholars are engag–
ing in this endeavor as well. Their rationale, it would seem, is to chron–
icle the (often tragic) repercussions of foreign invasion, rule, and
representation, as well as the resilience of the Bosnian people in times of
crisis. In addition to contemporary historical investigations, such as
Princ palikuca u Sarajevu (Prince Incendiary in Sarajevo),
Fadil Ade–
movie's history of the Habsburg invasion of Sarajevo in
I697,
led by
Eugene of Savoy, Bosnian publishing houses are reprinting relevant, but
often forgotten, works . For example, in
Memoari sa Balkana
I858-I878
(Memoirs from the Balkans),
the Bosnian Croatian
Catholic, yet Ottoman bureaucrat, Martin Djurdjevic chronicles the
clash between Ottoman rule and what he terms the "anti-systematic
mentality" of the Bosnian Muslims.
If
early on it was tradesmen who initiated contact between settle–
ments in the Balkans, in recent history, and as a result of events among
the Great Powers, Balkan communities have borne the effects of numer–
ous
migrations .
These movements of large numbers of people have given
rise to relatively new social and political entities-multiethnic villages
and cities. The relatively peaceful disunity of the Balkans evolved into a
potentially fractious "melting pot." For those who celebrated harmony
among the various ethnicities, particular locales served as emblems of
this ideal. Yugoslavs hailed the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo, as such a
place.
The war
(I992-I995)
destroyed Sarajevo, the city, as well as trust
among the majority of Sarajevo's ethnic Muslims, Croats, Serbs, and
Jews. Survivors and specialists have reexamined the "myth" of Sarajevo
as a haven of interethnic peaceful coexistence. Early on in the war the
writer Dzevad Karahasan reaffirmed the myth. He suggested that Sara–
jevo was under attack by more than Bosnian Serbs, and predictably so.
In "Sarajevo, Portrait of an Internal City," he offered a structural analy–
sis of Sarajevo as a seemingly internal city-situated in a valley sur–
rounded by mountains and unto itself. Yet he claims that Sarajevo, with
the singular exception of Jerusalem, is actually the most open and exter–
nal city in Europe. The neighborhoods, or
mahalas,
that radiate from
the center, or marketplace
(carsija),
like spokes from a wheel, although
closed religiously and ethnically homogeneous, open out to the center,
