 Well, hello, everybody. Again, thank you so much to David for inviting me. I'm not an archaeologist. I'm an archaeologist wannabe of my life. So this is my wonderful opportunity to be here. This paper relates to my broader research on the presence and the value of tombstones in Bosnia and Herzegovina for understanding the period of Ottoman history, but also of contemporary, in contemporary period, in the sense that I, if anybody has been to Bosnia, has anybody been to Bosnia here? I think you should go. Here is a moment to emphasize that it's actually a very nice place to go. But if you travel through Bosnia, you cannot not encounter some cemetery. There are cemeteries all over the place. Lots of people, parents, have died there. But in addition to that, it's actually quite a diverse and very vivid dynamic landscape of the dead. And for me, this was actually an important, I come out from a religious studies perspective and history perspective. So for me, it was an interesting observation to see how that can be integrated in our understanding of the past. Before I go into a kind of visual journey with you, which I would like to show as to what it is that I actually have done with these tombstones, I want to bring up a couple of theoretical and methodological questions that we have already addressed. And I think many of the papers have talked about that. But this is perhaps another layer that I'd like to add. One is the question of, how do we speak of a local culture? Without underplaying its broader significance. So this question of local versus translocal or micro versus macro, regional versus global and so on and so forth, which I think is very important nowadays. Because on the one hand, we deal with the question of geographical determinism. Is this something because it's a product of this particular place? And on the other hand, we are asked to think of cultures as being open and porous. So at what point do we actually draw the line? I am here in that regard drawing on the work of two scholars who I find actually very insightful in that regard. One is Sidney Pollock, whose work on South Asia has focused primarily on literature, but it's really broad in terms of the literary culture, where he talks about the encounter between cosmopolitan and vernacular systems. And what is actually quite insightful, as far as I'm concerned, in his work is that he talks about the way in which they are mutually influenced and mutually historicized. So in other words, there is really no such a sense that only the cosmopolitan culture affects the local culture. But in fact, the local culture also affects the cosmopolitan. And this is a process that needs to be recognized at any level of the discussion, particularly in pre-modern period. So the production of difference is done as a part of this interface between the cosmopolitan and the local. And what Sidney Pollock has demonstrated is how often, in fact, the vernacular culture in ways takes over the cosmopolitan impulse and, in fact, becomes almost a standard because the political standard instead of just the local vernacular. And the second person that I like to evoke is Avnerbeza Ten, who is a really scholar, who has done quite a bit of work on Ottoman sciences. And in his book, Cross-Culture in Exchange, he argues that cultures are not just porous, but they actually consist of many origins. That said, every culture is really plural. So that really, even when we talk about local culture, we cannot undermine, we must talk about the plurality. And the question is, how do we look into mechanisms that combine one culture from many? In other words, what are the margins of culture which allow themselves to open up and to absorb other models? And he calls something in the process which he calls a zone of mutual embrace, where he argues that exchange takes place much more freely randomly than we normally assume, and often without relation to power. And he argues that it's actually in those areas that are the loci of any cultural and scientific innovation that are most important loci of cultural and scientific innovation, and that these kinds of innovations, in fact, feed back into the global culture. And what I find particularly persuasive in his argument is his observation, and he, of course, works in the premodern period, his observation that in most instances, these kinds of spaces have been negatively affected by the rise of nationalism. And we just had actually a very useful presentation to that effect about the Saloniki, as well as, of course, in the case of Dalmatia. But the task is then not just to brush history against this grain of nationalism and going back to what Chloe mentioned about politicization, the political aspect of this process, but to write history of lost cultures and ways of life in some ways does not fit into these national historiographies, which is especially the case in the Balkans, where we have actually the whole narrative of the Balkans has followed this, rather by now, exhausted by, quote me, bifurcation between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans. And that's the only really narrative that feeds into the way in which the population has been located in the national imaginary, but also in terms of the historical presence and absence in the heritage. So in that sense, we are talking about the question of the discursive representation of geopolitical space. And the third question that has framed my work is, how do we look at tombstone, not just as a, initially when I started actually looking at tombstones, I was really looking for the epigraphic evidence, primarily, to see what it can tell us. But in fact, rather than just treating it as a telephone book, how do we, in fact, bring it out and treat it as a dynamic cultural text, which relates to other texts that might exist in the presence? And how do we treat the dead as subjects rather than objects? So how do we animate them through our understanding of what the tombstones have to say and how they can be placed in not just in history, but also in the way in which we inherit them? So my direct research questions primarily related to the issue of Islamization of Bosnia. And here I was especially concerned or intrigued by the way in which we know that among the very few places that had intense process of conversion to Islam, Bosnia and Albania really stand out. But there is really no understanding as to why that had happened. And there are quite a few theories. We know that this was not the process of propaganda fee that the Ottomans were not particularly interested in saving the souls of the Christians of the Balkans in which some other colonial empires were, but projects were. But they first and foremost, and they themselves actually, so the Ottoman sources indicate that the Ottoman administrators are very surprised by the numbers of conversions that we encounter in places like Bosnia. And while we have Ottoman bureaucratic machinery was so very detailed with its deftels, with its documents that tell us about the conversion, these documents don't really tell us what that meant in qualitative terms. They tell us how many people, but what exactly that meant in terms of the reality of life, is it possible to recover? And very few conversion narratives exist, and they're usually polemical. So for me, the tombstone was, in a way, an additional source which tells us of how, at least in this case, death was Islamized. How did new Muslims treat death? And how were they remembered as dead among their neighbors who were not Muslim, as well as among their family who was Muslim? So these are the questions, and also, of course, relate to the question of gender or cultural reality in literacy, how death is bounced against the death culture, how the changes in literacy in Bosnia and the adoption of new languages, Ottoman languages also affect the culture of death. And in more general terms, how do the death do the death and how does death occupy the historical space as well as current space? A map of the Ottoman Empire that we already actually see, this is from the 1600s, which you can see its extent. And Bosnia is right there as part of Romania. These are the defters which are the standard documents on the conversion. They are terribly boring, and they which is why I did not really want to go too much into them. But they are really quite, there are so many to there, so helpful, of course, but again, it's very statistical. In medieval Bosnian landscape of death consists of incredibly interesting tombstones which are referred to as Stechak. Necropolis Stechak is a huge monolith that exists all around Bosnia, which are now under UNESCO protection as part of the tripartite heritage of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, as well as Montenegro. But they are, for the most part, located in Bosnia. They are enormous monoliths that have been understood in many different ways, particularly in association with the so-called dualist history of Bosnia, the Bogomel past, but that thesis has been rebuked. This is, however, these are the residues of this medieval landscape of death that you can find all around Bosnia. Another here. After the fall of Bosnia in 1463, which is the official fall under the Ottoman rule, we have a process, of course, as I said, in terms of very rapid Islamization, but we also have something that I would like to differentiate from the question of religious change of the religious landscape. It's also a change of the cultural landscape that can be observed in the culture of death. The early Muslim race stones in Ottoman Bosnia, these are some of the older ones. If you paid attention to the size of, these are enormous tombstones. The size of these stones is quite disproportionate to the idea that somehow these people trying to hide themselves from the Catholics and the Orthodox churches. I mean, this is not the way to hide yourself. So, but what we have actually as a result is a kind of process of verticalization of the tombstone in style of the Ottoman commemorative culture, a funerary culture, but equally scarce in terms of their representation iconographic and the graphic representation in the early period, but somewhat also disproportionate. Many of them are extremely large. One here on the left side is over three meters tall. We encounter some which are almost five meters tall. Again, they look enormous, but there's really no sense as to why exactly they are, like that other than that this is a period in which the horizontal becomes vertical in an equally disproportionate way. We don't have really any reason to, we don't know why other than, the circumstantial evidence of these are Muslim tombstones. There's nothing on them precisely that indicates that they are Muslim because there are no writings, there are no necessarily any kind of symbolism that would tell us that this is actually a Muslim tombstone other than of course in this case, we have a turban, but in many cases we don't even have the turban. So in this early period, we have actually this just the kind of transposition from horizontal to the vertical. In terms of the Catholic tombstones, likewise we have actually, you see this tombstone on the left is very similar to the tombstone that you have with the Monty, the Muslims, but it just happens to be of course in the Catholic tombstones, so we assume it's a Catholic tombstone. There is very little that becomes visibly identifiable in this early period. Later on we actually, there is a rise of the so-called, this is referred to as Bosnian Crige, a form of anthropomorphic cross that we actually encounter elsewhere. There are some in Ireland and in Southern, South of France, that become characteristic of the 16th century and 17th century Catholic tombstones in Bosnia. Also those tombstones likewise, if you see, look at this one here. Again, there is no clear identification of it as being orthodox. The ones in the foreground indicated this is another orthodox graveyard and they are much more visibly so. So I'm here actually trying to indicate these points of notes of similarity that make it very interesting to see how people did not necessarily see themselves as heading to be commemorated in specifically a Muslim Catholic or orthodox way, but rather it was a way of saying, I belong perhaps to a different religious now identity, but I also belong to the community that is more complicated than that this is a way of being part of a more public, not the only personal way of commemoration. Spatial intimacy was also very important. In the early Ottoman period, the Muslim and as well as the Christian tombstones rose out of the same, the landscape of medieval landscape. So very frequently we will find the Stachak cemetery right here in the middle, on this side in the foreground, the Muslim tombstones in the background and active orthodox graveyard. So in other words, there was no taboo of mixing the dead and this is actually I think very important to acknowledge that this was not, if we are looking, if we follow what Michel Rogan says that the necropolis is the other side of the necropolis, that this is an indication and in fact, people didn't see a problem of mixing the dead and what is actually quite interesting is that in the 19th century onwards within the sterilization modernization of the region, we have more and more roads broken through these cemeteries, through these places that were jointly, that existed jointly and are now separated apart. As you've seen here, actually there is now a fence that stands apart to separate the orthodox tombstone from these historic tombstones. Here likewise, this is a Catholic Muslim tombstone cemetery, which is now separated by a big fence, but otherwise it was a space of continuum. You have here a stake tombstone then followed by an early Catholic tombstone and then down there the Muslim graveyards, the Muslim gravestones, but now separated by a big, this is from central Bosnia by a big fence. Likewise, you have a similar thing in the Jewish cemetery. Sarajevo's Jewish cemetery is the largest cemetery, second largest in Europe after Prague and it is quite well preserved and in it we find likewise, quite a few examples of recycling of the funeral. I think here a stake cemetery becoming a Jewish tombstone with inscription in Hebrew. So moved on to a different epoch. This is one of my most favorite cemeteries that there are, if you want to speak of favorite cemeteries, this is my favorite cemeteries. It's in a little central village of Junobi, an orthodox village that is the size of this room and that contains absolutely every example of historical tombstone that there is. So we have here a Muslim tombstone and in the back there is a Catholic one, here there are two stake cemeteries and then the active orthodox tombstones in such a small spatial intimate space, intimate setting, all of them are represented. Likewise, as much as we see the spatial intensity, we see also shared iconography. In these are the early Muslim tombstones with the representation of, in this case, the face of a girl with a braid. How Slavic of her to have a braid on top of her head, you know, this is, you know, it's still, it's, again, we talk about the, you know, we don't normally associate visual representations with Islamic tombstones, but this is quite common in this period in Bosnia. Here as well, a man, I don't know what he's doing, dancing or something, but with a kind of national, you know, in a traditional, where the other side of this tombstone has a snake on it, this one here has a dagger. There's the snake, a lamp here on the Muslim tombstones. And again, these are symbols that exist in all other tombstones. I'm focusing on the Islamic tombstones because of the concern that I had. And they're actually a very interesting phenomenon in which we have the combination, the joint usage of the cross and the crescent, even though of course the crescent of this period is not still the official symbol of the Ottoman state, but nevertheless is a rather recognizable symbol of the Islamic culture. And there had been, of course, crescent present in, for used in different way on the stage of cemeteries, but it's now being used in certain cases together with the cross. So this is a tombstone, which has on one side the crescent and the other side of the cross. We don't really know whether it's, unless we have other way of determining whether this is a Muslim or a Christian tombstone, we don't really know. Likewise, in this case, it's a Muslim tombstone, so we assume it's a Muslim cross, it's a Muslim cemetery, that's what I wanted to say. The stage check is there, but there is a cross on this big Muslim tombstone. Crescent is on the other side and the symbol of a bird. In Livno, in Herzogovina, in the Catholic graveyard, likewise, there are these cross and crescent combinations, which are equally presented, equally present again. And then in one of the open cemeteries that is not being claimed, that is referred to as the Cemetery of the Wedding Martyrs. It's a very common folk narrative about these cemeteries. It gives us actually a different take on it. And when I ask the villagers what they think, what they can tell me about this particular cemetery, which has cross and crescent, the story goes as follows. And this is a story that you see all around Bosnia. There was a wedding procession one morning of Christians, and then a Muslim gang came by and they all killed each other, and the tombstones that were raised were to honor them both. In another part of Bosnia, they would say, oh, Muslim procession, and the Christians came and they killed each other. So these are common, it's a common cause of the, they are called the cemeteries of Wedding Martyrs, or Krivavi Statovi, or all around Bosnia. But again, in recognition that they are mixed together. And I'm going to be done very soon, so for, I thought that Chloe was, and here is another example of one of these. This one actually has an inscription that it is a Muslim tombstone. So it is, but again, with the cross on it, and with this anthropomorphic cross, which is similar to Bosnian creige, which is common to the Catholic tradition. So this is the bigger view of that wedding martyr. And then we have the question of shared epigraphy. These two tombstones are now located in the yard of the National Museum in Sarajevo, and they have, they are absolutely identical. We know by the names that one is a Christian and one is a Muslim. Mahmut and Radevoi, but the inscriptions are identical. And they're written in the same way, and they in fact commemorate the same thing. So the stone makes it obviously the same, and they use the completely similar iconography as well. And going back to the question of translation and the issue of literacy, this is an interesting phenomenon that I have encountered in Bosnia and nowhere else in my study of Islamic commemorative epigraphic culture. In whatever few inscriptions we have on the stage of tombstones, and out of 60,000, there are only 4,000 that I inscribed. The common phrase is, ase bilik, this is the marker. And it's written in the Bosnian Cyrillic. And in this case, this is a Muslim tombstone which says, ase bilik suleiman na oško pice. So by the name we know that this is Muslim, it's a suleiman inscribed in, again, given the inscriptions. It's one of the rare inscriptions that has been preserved that is in Bosnian Cyrillic. On the right side is a typical inscription in Arabic that becomes common in the late 17th century on, which states hada sahib nishan, or sahib hada nishan, or the resident of this marker. Nishan is a word that is used, common that has become the central Indian nishan in Bosnia for tombstone. And in Ottoman idiom, it's mezartash. Bosnia, it's called nishan. Nishan doesn't mean anything other than being a target. When you shoot at something, that's a target. So, however, bilik is a word which also means the target. So what we have here is a translation, in fact, from medieval idiom into the Arabic from the local culture. So we have, in fact, enrichment of the Ottoman, because it's sort of that imperial, funerary idiom with the local Bosnian idiom that comes from medieval period. In, likewise here, two tombstones next to each other in Herzegovina, in Birilec, as elegi skender, here lies skender, Muslim, and as elegi Ivan, here lies Ivan. These rare examples of completely identical inscriptions, but just differentiated by tombstone. Here is a very interesting tombstone. Muslim tombstones usually are dedicated just to one person. It's part of the theology of Islam that you need to be buried. And it's part of the whole theology of resurrection in a single tombstone. In the medieval Christian practice of Bosnia, this was not necessarily the case. And this tombstone dedicated to brothers Hassan and Ahmed, to Muslims, is an indication that actually there is a continuation of the practice, contrary to the standard Islamic way of burial of individuals. And this is another example of shared epigraphy, translation of a very common expression. It's there in Latin, it's there in the Catholic tradition all over the place. This one is, I took a picture of this long time ago actually in Croatia, in Tucepi, next to Makarska. But it is, I happen to have it. And of course, it's everywhere else in among the Catholic tombstones. What you are now is what we are now is what we were and what we are now is so you shall be and in all kinds of variations of this theme. And here on the left side is a direct translation of this inscription in Arabic. Again, it's very uncommon. You won't find this in Muslim cultures elsewhere. This is a translation from the Catholic tradition in Bosnia. Or you who stops at my grade, you remember what I say this yesterday. I was as you are now tomorrow, as you shall be. Ya wakifel and qabri. It's a rather, again unusual for a Muslim to be remembered in this particular way. As a kind of final statement on this, I want to just give you an example of a tombstone that was erected in early 20th century for a Jewish, an eminent Jewish thinker and a member of the Jewish community in Sarajevo. Zeki Effendi Rafaelovic, who died in 1916, which is a unique example of this kind of shared epigraphy, multilingual shared epigraphy. And his tombstone contains three inscriptions in Bosnian, in Hebrew, in Bosnian, and in Ottoman Turkish. And usually you wouldn't find these kinds of commonalities. And some argue that this is actually the only Jewish tombstone in the world which has an Arabic inscription. I mean, it's not Arabic, it's Turkish, but this is one of those claims that I don't know about. But what is actually interesting here is that the three inscriptions say completely three different things. So in other words, there is a recognition that it is not, you are not to be necessarily identified with the members of your community, of everybody in your community, or for that matter that you are going to be remembered in the same way, but rather that you, in fact, respect the fact that people who might come to your grave might read different things out of this, might be readers of a different kind of commemorative culture and that you can be remembered in this kind of shared way of commemorative intimacy, which I think is social intimacy, which I think is really quite an extraordinary statement that in fact you wanna speak to everybody around you rather than just immediate community that you belong to. And for me, these kinds of tombstones represent precisely that important intervention in the way in which we remember the past as being constantly a cremonious between, as if somehow people lived in history by taking sides rather than simply living it rather than making it. In other words, that when we look at these cemeteries of the, particularly outside of the cities, these rural cemeteries, they indicated that in fact, life went on despite of what your religious identification was, it just didn't necessarily mean that it had to be, that you were not authentically to be identified with the religious community that you belong to, but rather that those religious identifications were much more porous than what we assume them nowadays to be. There is an expression in Bosnia, which is very common for this period in history, which has usually been translated as all those Bosnians who don't really care about religion. But in fact, I think it is the opposite. It's precisely saying that the identity is not necessarily what it is, and the expression goes do podne ilia, posle podne alia, which is until the, in the morning Elijah in the afternoon Ali. So, you know, you can be, in other words, that you are, that the issue of identity is not to be seen as carbon stone. Thank you. Thank you.