Bosnian
Read Bosnian through four scripts, not one
Few languages have recorded themselves in as many alphabets as Bosnian: a local Cyrillic minuscule called bosančica, an Arabic script fitted with extra letters for sounds Arabic never had, the administrative hands of four centuries of Ottoman rule, and today’s Latin alphabet. A single Franciscan monastery archive can hold documents in all four. Evidano reads each on its own terms and shows the source page beside every line it produces.
Sample pages
Real pages from public collections, shown beside their transcriptions. Pages whose transcription is still being checked are marked.
Transcription
A diplomatic Latin-letter transliteration of the bosančica portion of the charter, from an unsigned Bosnian Wikisource edition credited to the standard reading; the separate Latin text at the head of the document, addressed to Count Krvaš of Dubrovnik, is not included here.
U ime oca i s(i)na i s(ve)toga d(u)ha. Ja ban' bos'n'ski Kulin' prisezaju tebě kneže Kr'vašu i v'sěm' građam' Dubrov'čam' pravi prijatelj' biti vam' od' selě i do věka i pravi goj dr'žati s'vami pravu věru dokolě s'm' živ. V'si Dubrov'čane kire hode po mojemu vladanju tr'gujuće, gdě si kto hoće krěvati godě si kto mine pravov' věrov' i pravim' sr'dcem' dr'žati je bez v'sakoje z'ledi raz'vě što mi k'to da svojov' voljov' poklon'. I da im' ne bude od' moih' čest'nikov sile. Tako mi b(og') pomagaj i sie s(ve)t(o) evan'đelie. Ja Radoje dijak ban' pisah' siju knjigu poveljov' banov' od' roždstva H(risto)va tisuća i s'to i os'm'deset i devet' lět', měseca av'gusta u d'vadesete i deveti d'n'.
Transcription from Povelja Kulina bana, Bosnian Wikisource (CC BY-SA 4.0).
World Digital Library, composed before 1821; this copy 1831 · Source · Public domain
Transcription being verified
Ilhamija’s Arebica poetry and handbooks have been studied and partly transliterated by Bosniak literary scholars, but a transcription matched line by line to this specific copy has not been located.
What the model is told to watch for: Produce a diplomatic transcription in Bosnian.
Transcription being verified
Discussed in Fuad Baćićanin’s study of alhamijado literature (2016); a full transcription and translation of this specific page has not been located.
What the model is told to watch for: Produce a diplomatic transcription in Bosnian.
National Library of Serbia, digital newspaper collection, 2 July 1891 · Source · Public domain
Transcription being verified
The National Library of Serbia’s digital collection carries a page image only; no proofread transcription of this issue has been located.
What the model is told to watch for: Produce a diplomatic transcription in Bosnian.
What Bosnian writing has looked like
Bosančica, a rounded Cyrillic minuscule that diverged early from the Cyrillic used further east, is the script of the oldest surviving state document from any South Slavic land: Ban Kulin’s 1189 charter guaranteeing safe trade to the merchants of Dubrovnik, drafted with a Latin version for the Ragusans above a Bosnian Cyrillic version below. The same script fills medieval land charters, merchants’ correspondence, and the carved epitaphs on stećci, the distinctive standing tombstones scattered across the Bosnian highlands, and it went on serving notaries and Franciscan friars for centuries after most of the rest of the Slavic Cyrillic world had standardised its letterforms differently.
After the Ottoman conquest of 1463, Bosnian Muslims adapted the Arabic script to their own language, adding letters and diacritic marks for consonants and vowel qualities Arabic itself does not distinguish. This adapted script, Arebica, carried devotional poetry and popular verse for four centuries: the executed poet Ilhamija’s handbook of religious duties, printed in 1831, and the alhamijado love poetry of Umihana Čuvidina are both written in it. A reformed, more phonetic Arebica was fixed for print in the early twentieth century by the reisu-l-ulema Džemaludin Čaušević, shortly before the script fell out of everyday use.
Ottoman administrative Bosnia ran in Ottoman Turkish, written in its own family of Arabic-script hands: the formal naskh of an ahdname, the flowing cursive of an imperial dīvānī document, and the abbreviated, almost illegible siyāqat used for tax registers and court records. The Latin alphabet Bosnia uses for the language today, fitted with the same č, ć, đ, š and ž devised for Croatian, only became the everyday standard after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of 1878 pushed Ottoman administration and its scripts into history within a single generation.
Why ordinary OCR struggles here
Four scripts with almost nothing in common
Bosančica, Arebica, Ottoman Turkish and Latin share no letterforms at all. A system has to identify which of the four it is looking at before it can read a single character, and getting the script wrong on a mixed archive shelf means failing completely rather than making a small error.
Bosančica is not Serbian or Russian Cyrillic
Bosnian Cyrillic shapes several letters differently from the Cyrillic used further east, and a system trained mainly on Serbian or Russian manuscripts corrects these Bosnian forms toward the wrong tradition rather than reading them as written.
Arebica’s invented letters have no Arabic equivalent
Arebica adds diacritic marks to ordinary Arabic letters to represent Slavic consonants and vowel distinctions the Arabic alphabet was never built for. A model trained only on Arabic or Ottoman Turkish either drops these marks or reads the base letter as if it were a normal Arabic sound.
Ottoman administrative hands compress words past recognition
A dīvānī document elongates and interlocks its letters for visual effect, and a siyāqat tax register abbreviates so heavily that even trained Ottomanists need the register’s own conventions to read it. Neither hand behaves like the printed or handwritten Arabic most systems are trained on.
Who works with this material
Medieval and Ottoman-era historians
Charters, ahdnames and court sicils are the primary sources for Bosnia’s medieval and Ottoman centuries. A transcription that keeps bosančica or Ottoman Turkish letterforms as written, rather than guessing at a more familiar script, gives a historian a text to check against published charter collections.
Alhamijado and Arebica literary scholars
Bosniak studies departments and literary historians working on Ilhamija, Umihana Čuvidina and the wider alhamijado tradition need Arebica’s invented letters read as the distinct sounds they represent, not silently collapsed into ordinary Arabic.
Franciscan and monastery archivists
Monasteries such as Fojnica hold ahdnames, land records and correspondence spanning bosančica, Ottoman Turkish and Latin script in the same collection. Cataloguing them well means a first-pass reading of each script on its own terms before conservation or digitisation decisions are made.
Genealogists and local historians
Family and property history in Bosnia often runs through Ottoman-era sicil entries before it reaches Austro-Hungarian civil registers in Latin script. Both stages of that record need to be read accurately for a family tree or a land claim to hold together.
Getting the best transcription
Say which of the four scripts you are uploading
State whether the page is bosančica, Arebica, Ottoman Turkish or Latin, since a single monastery box can hold all four and the script is the first thing that has to be identified correctly.
Flag bosančica as Bosnian Cyrillic specifically
For Cyrillic manuscripts, note that the hand is Bosnian bosančica rather than Serbian or Russian Cyrillic, so distinct letterforms are not corrected toward the wrong tradition.
Describe Arebica’s extra letters
For Arabic-script Bosnian, mention that some letters carry marks for sounds Arabic itself does not have, so the model treats them as the Slavic consonants they represent rather than as unusual Arabic spelling.
Name the Ottoman document type
Tell the model whether an Ottoman Turkish page is a formal ahdname or firman, a flowing dīvānī grant, or an abbreviated siyāqat register, since the three hands need very different handling and a wrong guess wastes the first pass.
Frequently asked questions
- Can Evidano read bosančica, Bosnian Cyrillic?
- Yes, bosančica is read as its own tradition, with letterforms kept distinct from the Serbian and Russian Cyrillic conventions a general model expects.
- Does it read Arebica, the Arabic script used for Bosnian?
- Yes, including the extra diacritic marks Bosnian Muslims added to represent Slavic sounds Arabic does not have, so those letters are read as themselves rather than as ordinary Arabic.
- Can it handle Ottoman Turkish documents from Bosnia’s archives?
- Yes, formal chancery hands such as an ahdname or firman are read directly; heavily abbreviated siyāqat fiscal registers are harder and benefit from being told in advance what kind of document they are.
- Can it read the inscriptions on stećak tombstones?
- A clear photograph of a carved bosančica inscription can be read the same way as a manuscript page, though weathered stone benefits from a raking-light photograph that makes shallow carving easier to see.
- How does it treat a bilingual document like the Charter of Ban Kulin?
- Each script is transcribed as its own block rather than merged into one stream, so a Latin passage and a bosančica passage on the same sheet come back as two clearly separated readings.
- Does it get modern Bosnian diacritics right?
- Yes, č, ć, đ, š and ž are recognised as distinct letters in printed and handwritten Latin-script Bosnian, which matters most for names and place names in forms and civil records.
Related scripts and pages
Turn your Bosnian sources into text
Upload a bosančica charter, an Arebica manuscript, an Ottoman document or a modern Bosnian page, and check the reading against the image before you export.