Croatian Cyrillic Manuscript as a Monument of Croatian Historical Linguistic and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The State Archive in Zadar keeps many manuscripts written in Croatian Cyrillic in the Mletački Dragoman collection. Many of these writings refer to the Venetian and Ottoman authorities’ correspondence about border incidents on the Venetian-Turkish border. For this paper’s purposes, a file stored under box number 10, position 57/89 from the year 1680. was almost randomly selected from the mentioned fund. In that file Gračac captain Muharem Gešain informs the Zadar general about the kidnapping of three children and cattle from Udbina. The manuscript also reveals the revenge for the actions of the people of Vinjerka, who had previously killed and abducted cattle on the pastures of Velebit and in the area of Krupa above Žegar. That is the period after the Candian War in which Venice expanded its possessions in Dalmatia (Linea Nani). Within the Venetian Republic, there are some places in the Zadar hinterland that are mentioned in the document. This Croatian Cyrillic manuscript served the author to study the graphic linguistic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical peculiarities typical in the direct communication of the representatives of the then two states’ authorities. The linguistic analysis allows the author to present, at least in some segments, the cultural peculiarities of the people of the Zadar hinterland in the period of frequent Venetian-Turkish conflicts and wars. Also, on the example of this manuscript, the author wants to show how every document stored in the archives is our cultural heritage. And for that heritage to indeed be ours, we must know, understand, and learn from it.