Abstract:

After the physical withdraw of the Ottomans from the Balkans, a time of uncertainty started for Muslims left behind. Policies aiming to bring those ruled for more than 500 years to the position of rulers of the new period resulted in the migration of vast numbers of Muslims from the region. Those who didn’t participated to these waves of migration for different reasons and remained struggled so as to protect their historical existence and their own identities. In this survival process, it was the ulema who have always sided with the people, helped them to retain their consciousness and worked for the national and cultural unity of their own societies. For this reason, these manners of ulema were not appreciated by authorities so information about activities and lives of these Muslim clergy would be available only in the memory of those Muslim societies in which they lived. As for their written works, they could not free themselves from those notebooks inside their personal libraries. For this reason, information available at the public memory is essential for researches that had already been finished or the ones still in progress. In this respect, a letter available at the personal library of Kemal Aruçi who is one of the recent-period ulemas of North Macedonia, is a significant example. This paper explores general conditions for the clergymen of that period focusing on the letter/petition of Kemal Aruci to the then President of Higher Council of the Muslim Union of Yugoslavia

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