The contemporary Mostar writer Ibrahim Kajan wrote an incredibly wise dedication for his book “The City of Great Light”. All of us who knew the late Hivzija Hasandedić during his lifetime, the main historian of old Mostar, came “on our own” with the dedication of this wonderful book to that vertical of the city’s spirituality on the Neretva.
The book “City of Great Light” is wonderful. It doesn’t belong in a travelogue, and yet it is a travelogue! It does not belong to native but to cosmopolitan literature, and yet it is a deeply native book. Cultivating the authentic Mostar language and extremely refined poetic expression, Ibrahim Kajan created a small miracle in the middle of Mostar.
A poetic way
If I mention just one of the titles of the texts from this powerful book – Emina: The beauty we all imagine, then I have sufficiently illustrated the imagination of a poet from Mostar who knows and knows how to write about the history of his city in a deeply poetic way.
With some strange magic of a poet-travel writer, native nostalgia and the golden thread of an interpreter of the history, but also of the modernity of Mostar, Ibrahim Kajan will with passion and exceptional devotion to all Mostar’s vedutes write gold inscriptions about Mujaga Komadina, about the house of Đabić, about Ivan Fran Jukić (Gutenberg in Vukodol ), about the Lakišićs for hating selfishness, about my favorite Mostar toponym Turbet Šejha Juja, which was and remains a source of legends and riddles, about Ijepotica Karađoz-beg’s mosque, about Ijepotica Kriva ćuprija…
Ibrahim Kajan, in his rich poetic, short-story, dramatic, travel writing opus, includes this unusual book…
Because the “City of Great Light” is not just a collection of Mostar vedutes…
A true story about imagination
This book is a true book about imagination and a fantasy about Mostar’s truths! On the cover of this book, two symbols from two eras of Mostar are mirrored! With a reason! Bogdanović’s endowment work – the Partisan monument and the Stari most illuminated by the light of the Mediterranean, Mostar…
The publishers of this book, the Museum of Herzegovina and IC Štamparija, I’m sure, are not even aware of what they have done?! In the same book, history and present, and imagination and reality, brilliant art and decent graphics were found. After this book by Ibrahim Kajan, Mostar has its own ID card!
