Editorial Publishings

Two Post Ottoman Bilingual Newspaper Published in Skopje

Authors

  • Dr. Besnik Emini
    Dr., Institute of Spiritual and Cultural Heritage of the Albanians
Being an important city in different historical periods, Skopje also stood out as an important city in the publishing activity. In Skopje, since the Ottoman pe-riod, various periodicals were published, as well as various books in the lan-guages spoken in these areas. After the outbreak of the Balkan wars and during the First World War, periodical publications in Skopje experienced stagnation. The changes of borders in the Balkans and the creation of other states after the Versailles Conference in 1919 also found Skopje on the borders of the King-dom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later named the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). After these events, the newspaper HAK was published in Skopje from 1920 to 1924. The newspaper was published in two languages: Serbian (with the Cyril-lic alphabet) and Turkish with the Arabic alphabet. Based on the notes on the first page of issue 2 (123) of the year 1921 of the newspaper, it is written that the newspaper was published three times a week, twice in the Turkish language and once in the Turkish and Serbian languages as a joint publication. Unfortu-nately, not all issues of this newspaper have been preserved, while the archive I researched is in the National Library of Croatia in Zagreb, where numerous, but incomplete copies are found for the years 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1924. This newspaper was published as an organ of the political organization Xhemi-jeti (Yugoslavya’da Islam Muhafaza-i Hukuk Cemiyeti). The owner of this news-paper was H. Halid, while the responsible editor was Hasan Sabri. According to the note at the bottom of the second page, the newspaper was printed at the “Stara Srbija” printing house in Skopje. The newspaper published texts on vari-ous topics, mostly political topics, focusing on issues that affected the interests of the Muslim population. In number 2 (123) dated January 13, 1921, a letter from Kumanova is published, which talks about an acquisition of 400 dunams of land from the local farmers of the village of Novo Sella and given to Serbi-an settlers by the agrarian reform official Sima Čakarevic, although they pos-sessed the deed for the mentioned land. (HAK, no. 2 (123), 13.01.2021).

Two Post Ottoman Bilingual Newspaper Published in Skopje

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Publication Information

Abdula, S., & Murtezani, S. . (Eds.). (2025). Two Post Ottoman Bilingual Newspaper Published in Skopje. In The Balkans: History, Religion and Society: Vol. Research 5 (pp. 151-163). Idefe Publications. https://doi.org/10.5331/