Hamdija Kresevljakovic was born in 1890 in Sarajevo, in the settlement called Vratnik, in the Lubina street, where he also grew up. He spent his professional career working at first as a teacher and later as a professor in schools all around Sarajevo. He sought knowledge and education for years, working on many projects at the same time. He learned many foreign languages on his own, including Turkish, which he learned so well that he was able to easily use the archives available in Turkish. He focused his interests on research of social and economic circumstances in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Ottoman rule.
He was a diligent collector of historic documents. He had a special talent to get close to people, obtain from them their stories, legends and knowledge of happenings or events, and then verify them through other, more reliable sources, both of which he was able to use as a source for scientific reconstruction of fragments of from our past.
He published his work meticulously working with editions of The Society of Scientists, the National Museum, the Society of Historians, the Oriental Institute, the Institute for Protection of Monuments, and Encyclopedia of Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.
His main works were: “Coppersmithing in Bosnia-Herzegovina”, “Editorials on History of Bosnian Towns Under the Ottoman Rule”, “Old Bosnian Towns”, “Old Herzegovinian Towns”, “The Dženetić’s – Editorial About Feudalism Studies”, “Captaincies”, “Boot Making Crafts”, “Guest houses and caravan rest houses”, “Saddler Crafts in the Old Sarajevo”, and many others of around 40 works that Kresevljakovic published.
Hamdija Kresevljakovic was not among historians that draw their own conclusions from the information they collected, so he never fell into the trap of adjusting the information to pre-established theoretic assumptions. He knew how to draw a good picture with his information, but never got involved into interpreting it himself. This is why his work remains a rich treasury for all generations, for all kinds of sources and a sound basis for further research and enlightening discoveries of many historical problems from various aspects of society’s scientific needs.
