THE NINETIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEPARTMENT FOR ORIENTAL STUDIES IN BELGRADE

Abstract

The systematically study of university-level oriental disciplines began in our region since 1925 after introducing a course in Persian literature and Turkish language at Facultu of Philosophy in Belgrade. A mere year later have been established
an indipendent Seminar for Oriental Philology (by the July 15, 1926 decree). The founder of the Dipartment for Oriental Philology is Fehim Bajraktarevich (1889-1970), the Orientalist of Viennese, London and Alger school and a scholar who already gaind
renown in Europe. In the course of four decades of his scholarly and pedagogical activity Bajraktarevich reised and brought up numerous generations of philologists dealing with the Oriental Studies and created a great and diverse scholarly work. The
bibliography fo his works consists of 350 items from the field of widely understood traditional Oriental Studies.
In studying and doing research on the oriental languages and literatures, as well in studying cultural and historical relations between european literatures and the Orient Bajraktarevich took to the positivistic method adapting it to the needs of Oriental
Studies which he considered ih their traditional form, as studies dealing with the languages, literatures and culture of the people of the Islamic civilization circule. Besides Bajraktarevich’s pioneer works, his strong activity on the popularization of Oriental Studies in our country is obvious as well as the affirmation of Yugoslav Oriental Studies in Europa, through systematic collaboration with a number of outstanding oriental magazines and publications such as “Orientalistische Literaturzeitung”, “Oriens”, “Der Islam” etc. and specially The Encyclopaedie of Islam (first edition) and with regular participation in the International Experts Meetings. During the school year 1960/1961, the Faculty of Philology was separated from the Faculty of Philosophy. In the same year, new study groups were introduced, including the Steam for Arabic language and literature and Steam for Turish language and literature, which continued along the lines of concept of the classical philological Oriental studies. In the year 1955, when professor Dusan Glumac arrived, the new Group was formed at the Department, thereby introducing the study of Hebrew language and literature. This attempt at further specialization towards Semitics however failed at the group discontinued work five years later. But in the year of 1990, the two-year course of Hebrew was opened.
A large qualitative step in the development of Yugoslav Oriental Studies is to be founded in the introduction of Far Eastern Philology. The two-year courses of the Chinese language (established in 1974), and on the Japanese language (established in
1976), in the course of school year 1985/1986 became indipendent Study Groups. In the year of 1999, the two-year course of Persian was opened. The necessary conditions for teaching and learning process have been obtained including staff as well
as the corpus of suitable textbooks.