The Keepers of the Homeric Tradition
    
Affiliation: University of Tuzla
 Not so long ago, Albert Bates Lord, in his book The Singer of Tales (1960), the named epic singer of Avdo Međedović as "our Yugoslav Homer". In the thirties, in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Lord was in the team of his professor Milman Parry from Harvard, when they found this and many other great epic singers. These singers served as an argument for Parry in solving the long existing dilemma about the origin and authorship of the Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey (Homeric Question). Avdo Međedović on the05/07/1935, in one day, got inspired to sing the now famous epic The Wedding of Meho, Son of Smail length of 12 311 lines. In addition to this, Parry and 15 years later Lord, recorded other longer and shorter epics of this bard of epic singing, so his work today has more than 100 000 lines. However, the Bosniak epic poetry can not be reduced to Avdo Međedović and other singers from Sandžak. It is was also known to Milman Parry, so in those years he found many great singers in eastern Herzegovina (Stolac and Gacko) in northwestern Bosnia / Bosnian Borderland (Bihać, Cazin, Velika Kladuša). The evidence of this was found in the previously collected and published collections: the first under the leadership of Kosta Hörmann Folk Songs of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina I-II (1888) and the other in the framework of the Croatian Heritage/Matica hrvatska under the leadership of Luka Marjanović (1898) Epic Songs (Mohammedan) I-II.

In this paper, I will try to point out the achievements of all Bosniak Homeric epics.