NADA KLAIĆ AND SIMA ĆIRKOVIĆ ON EARLY MEDIEVAL BOSNIA – TWO EXAMPLES OF APPROACHES TO THE ISSUES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL BOSNIA

Abstract

This article presents the attitudes of two respectable historians, Nada Klaić and Sima Ćirković, on the earliest history of medieval Bosnia. Although mutually conflicting to a large extent, their attitudes represent a breakthrough in studying Bosnian history but also the history of the Middle Ages in the Balkans. Challenging the concepts related to this subject developed during the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, Klaić’s and Ćirković’s positions faced difficulty reaching not only history enthusiasts but also some experts. Sima Ćirković’s approach is analytical, cautious, and meticulous, written with the wish to encourage divergent thinking rather than to provoke. He points out the problem of researchers’ subjectivity and frequent projections of the present onto the past. Nada Klaić’s approach is more polemical and imbued with the need to refute the theories that projected modern times onto the past, and in those efforts, she often fell prey to the very errors she tried to correct in other people’s work.