Hasanaginica

Hasanaginica, also Asanaginica, (first published as The Mourning Song of the Noble Wife of the Hasan Aga)[1] is a South Slavic folk ballad, created during the period of 1646–49, in the region of Imotski, which at the time was a part of the Bosnia Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire.

[4] Walter Scott was the second foreign author to translate Hasanaginica in 1798 under the title "Lamentation of the Faithful Wife of Asan Aga", from the German of Goethe.

[6][7] Hasanaginica, "The Mourning Song of the Noble Wife of the Hasan Aga" is a ballad about the Muslim family Arapović in Dalmatia.

[2] The incidents take place along the Eyalet of Bosnia's frontier in Vrdol (today Zagvozd), near the Biokovo mountains of Dalmatia, where the lord (Turkish: ağa) Hasan Arapović had large estates.

The ballad relates that following a battle, whilst lying wounded, Hasan-aga summons his wife, Fatima, who was unwilling to accompany him to the battlefield.

The version published by Fortis was probably copied from an ikavian text and changed in accordance with the style of language spoken in Dubrovnik.

However, the following people did actually exist and are believed to be the basis of the ballad: As concluded by Bosnian writer Alija Isaković (1932–1997) in his 1975 monograph, the poem originated in the Imotski frontier.

[10] Hasan-aga held courts in Vrdovo (modern-day Zagvozd) and Župa (villages on the Biokovo northern slopes), and belonged to the Arapović clan, whose descendants still live in Ljubuški, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A dress worn by actress Nina Vavra [ sh ] in a 1909 production