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at the Congress of Berlin to place Bosnia and Herzegovina under the administration of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. They rose as one and resisted with their simple weapons the Austrian legions equipped with the most advanced weapons of that time. Alone, without the other citizens, they inflicted heavy losses on them for three months.

The Bosnian Muslims took pride in Islam and adhered to its teachings. Many among them distinguished themselves as scholars deeply versed in Islamic sciences and educated in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. They left valuable works in those fields. Biographies of some of these scholars and writers can be found in a valuable volume published in 1349 AH by the late Bosnian scholar Muhammad ibn Muhammad Haji Khalili, an Azhar graduate, entitled The Most Sublime Jewels in the Biographies of the Scholars and Poets of Bosnia.

The Muslim people of Bosnia had rich charitable endowments. They dedicated their countryside to various charitable purposes, foremost education. The cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina were adorned with Islamic schools and institutes filled with students. In 1932 a great celebration was held to mark four hundred years since the establishment of the most famous of these schools, the Gazi Husrev-beg School in Sarajevo. The following year a special secondary school for girls was established from the endowment of this great benefactor, with a boarding section for girls who came to the school from all the cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I visited the Husrev-beg School, met its teachers and students, and admired their eloquence in Arabic.

In 1887 the Austro-Hungarian occupation authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina established the School of Sharia Judges, from which Sharia judges graduated to serve in the religious courts. Their jurisdiction remained limited to personal-status matters and endowments until the end of the last world war. In 1935 this school was converted into the Islamic Academy for advanced Islamic studies. Graduates of the Gazi Husrev-beg School and the secondary religious school attended it, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia funded it.

The Bosnian Muslims were not satisfied with the Islamic sciences their young people acquired in the cultural institutions of their homeland. During the Ottoman period they sent their graduates to advanced schools in Istanbul. After the abolition of the Islamic caliphate, they replaced these with al-Azhar in Egypt.

The Bosnian Muslims had reached a high degree of Islamic awareness, as the late Prince Shakib Arslan, who visited them several times before the outbreak of the World War