Sedad Bešlija

History, Ottoman history

Researcher, Univerzitet u Sarajevu - Institut za historiju

Dr. Sedad Bešlija was born on July 12, 1985, in Prijedor. He completed his secondary education at the Gazi Husrev-bey Madrasa in Sarajevo. He studied history and Turkish language and literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, where he also completed his postgraduate and doctoral studies with the highest marks, specializing in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Ottoman period.

Since September 12, 2009, he has been employed at the Institute of History of the University of Sarajevo. From May 7, 2019, to July 9, 2020, he served as Acting Director of the Institute of History, and on July 9, 2020, he was elected Director of the Institute for a four-year term. In April 2024, he was elected for a second term. In January 2020, he was appointed Senior Research Associate in Early History – Ottoman Period, for a period of six years. In the academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25, he was elected President of the Humanities Group at the University of Sarajevo, and is also a member of the University Senate. Since 2024, he has been a member of the Committee for Historical Sciences of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 2017, the Institute of History published his first scholarly study, Istimalet: Bosnia in the Ottoman Political Strategy – 15th and 16th Century. He is also the author of the monograph The Herzegovina Sanjak in the 17th Century, published by the Institute of History UNSA in 2023, and co-author of the books The Arabic Language in Bosnia and Herzegovina (King Fahd Cultural Center, Sarajevo, 2021) and Sinan-pasha Borovinić: Social Status, Origin, Political Rise, the Beginning of the Urbanization of Mostar (University of “Džemal Bijedić” and the Islamic Community Council of Mostar, 2023). In addition, the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey published a Turkish-language translation of his book in Ankara in 2024 under the title Osmanlı İstimâlet Siyaseti ve Bosna: XV. ve XVI. Yüzyıl, translated by Edina Nurikiç. To date, Dr. Bešlija has published 34 scholarly and professional papers in historiography.

In 2023, in his capacity as editor-in-chief and project coordinator, he completed the publication of a major national scholarly project, the first institutional synthetic overview, the six-volume edition History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, produced by the Institute of History UNSA, involving 9 editors and 47 PhDs.

In 2023 and 2024, for the results achieved as Director of the Institute of History, he received collective awards – the Plaque of the Council of the Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals and the Plaque of Sarajevo Canton.

In his scholarly work so far, Dr. Bešlija has mainly focused on the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Ottoman period, especially from the 15th to the 17th centuries, with research topics covering military-political, diplomatic, religious, and cultural history. He has also occasionally worked on significant historical figures as well as the scholarship of distinguished Ottomanists.

He has also applied his knowledge of Turkish and Ottoman Turkish in professional translation work of various content, as well as in reviewing and editing important scholarly works in the fields of Ottoman diplomatics and paleography. Beyond this, through media and public appearances, he has made his expertise in the humanities, historiography, and translation accessible to a broader readership.

Dr. Bešlija has expressed his scholarly and professional work in other forms of a historian’s and translator’s activities, including participation in journal editorial boards, research projects, book promotions, book editing, and attendance at numerous domestic and international scholarly conferences. To date, he has been the holder or member of 12 research projects.

From 2018 to 2020, he was an external associate for the subject History of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Islamic Pedagogical Faculty of the University of Zenica, and since the academic year 2020/2021, he has been appointed as an external associate in the capacity of Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo, teaching History of Bosnia and Herzegovina and History of Southeast Europe. He served as editor-in-chief of four issues of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s leading historiographical journal, Contributions of the Institute of History.

He is socially active through several educational and cultural NGOs and associations.

He is married, a father of four children, and lives and works in Sarajevo.