Mustafa Hilmi Hadžiomerović

Mustafa Hilmi ef. Hadžiomerović (1816 – 10 February 1895) was a Bosnian cleric who served as the first Grand Mufti for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1882 to 1893.

Born in Kulen Vakuf in 1816, Hadžiomerović received his basic religious and general education in his birth town. He later studied at a high school in Prijedor, before attending the Gazi Husrev Bey's Madrasa in Sarajevo.

In 1837, Hadžiomerović went to the Ottoman capital Istanbul to study at a Madrasa there for 15 years. He then returned to Bosnia to work in Bosanski Novi and was then posted to the Kuršumli Madrasa in Sarajevo as a schoolteacher. A year later, he was appointed imam at the Arebi-Atik mosque.

In 1856, Hadžiomerović was appointed Mufti of Sarajevo, but he continued his teaching duties, giving lectures until 1888. Following the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, he made public appeals for peace and calm. On 17 October 1882, the Austro-Hungarian authorities appointed him Grand Mufti (Reis-ul-ulema) in order to gradually separate Bosnia from Ottoman authority. Hadžiomerović officially took over the position on 15 December 1882. He issued a number of Fatwa, encouraging the Bosnian Muslim population to stay (over 100,000 emigrated to Turkey during the 1880s^[1]) and collaborate, and also to serve in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Infantry.^[2]

Exhausted from many years of work, Hadžiomerović resigned as Grand Mufti in 1893 and died two years later on 10 February 1895.

• Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History, 1994
• Fikret Karčić, The Bosniaks and the Challenges of Modernity: Late Ottoman and Hapsburg Times (1995)