Introduction

This book, "From Bato to Kulin", Suad Haznadarevic and I have been writing together for three years, while our contemplations and research have been ongoing for much longer, almost 30 years. We wrote it for a few basic reasons. The first and fundamental reason is that we love Bosnia and Herzegovina, as our motherland, and that we love history, which we are reading and researching our whole lives, as we are conscious of the Latin maxim "historia magistra vitae". Additionally, we like researching lesser-known and unknown facts and terrains in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and more broadly in the region of Illyricum. Also, we do not aspire to give any final solutions, but leave the book open to further studies, conclusions and theses.

One of the reasons is that some historiographers from our surroundings are writing falsities, ill-intentioned conclusions and some fabrications, for now more than 150 years, and all to appropriate our history, divide and destroy our country, and that action is still ongoing. The aim of this book is to confirm or even change the findings up until now with scientific facts, and to raise awareness about that problem and encourage younger historiographers to openly and courageously advance towards new research, analyses and interpretations of our older history. Of course, we were mindful not to fall into the trap of interpreting history from the perspective of today, in addition to citing as many primary sources of data as possible, so that our theses would be founded in historical documents.

However, the immediate cause for our writing is the non-existence of a complete book dealing with the theme of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, except for the separate work by Muhamed Hadzijahic: Bosna u 9. i 10. stoljecu (Bosnia in the 9th and 10th century). Living through time with understanding is something that is greatly lacking in the people of Bosnia, and, to cite George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

That the Bosnian-Herzegovinian people are culturally and educationally neglected, and that it does not sufficiently understand their history, was clear to me when I first visited the royal city of Bobovac in 1987. I saw unmarked trails, unmown knee- height grass, everything around the mausoleum - the tomb of kings, overgrown by thorny shrubs and weeds. The most painful thing was when I opened the door of the mausoleum, the tomb of the last Bosnian kings, and saw that someone had a bowel movement inside it.

Two years later, in 1989, I was present on a celebration of 800th anniversary of the Charter of Ban Kulin, which was organised in a well-known traditional restaurant "Aeroplan" in the heart of Bascarsija in Sarajevo, where there were only about thirty people in attendance, mostly artists, public service workers and journalists. They looked like political agitators, like some secret conspiratorial sect on some mysterious mission. Only a few years later, in 1992, the long-prepared large military aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina occurred.

The period that this book is concerned with begins with Bato's revolt (6-9 CE) against the Roman occupation of Illyricum, and ends with the first written traces of the Bosnian Bans Boric and Kulin. Records exist of the many problems that Roman emperors had in conquering Illyria, and the fact that the Illyrian military leader Baton (born in what is nowadays called Breza) spent the rest of his life as a guarantor of the peace accord between Rome and Illyricum in Ravenna, Italy. From Bato to Ban Boric or Ban Kulin, the events from that period related to Bosnia are not sufficiently researched. Many artefacts and documents were destroyed by Avars and Slavs, as well as by Rome, Vatican, and Byzantium, the conquering peoples of that time, and the Ottomans also took with them the remains of the heritage of the ruling dynasty Kotromanic, which certainly additionally complicates access to this millennium-long period.

What can be seen in Bosnia with the naked eye are stecci, Illyrian forts, medieval cities, the cultural and historical heritage of Bosnia that yearns for our attention and respect for those who built them. Those are our ancestors, the old Illyrians and the Good Bosniaks. They, and many questions tied to them, played a decisive part in our ever-deeper commitment to the research of Bosnian history. What can be found in the literature are interpretations in which we, on multiple occasions, using the comparative method, came to understand that there exist two theses about one historical fact, those being the Croatian and the Serbian thesis. It has forever been believed that the history of Bosnia, according to the literature, only begins with the Middle Ages, with the fall of the Bosnian Kingdom and the arrival of the Ottomans. The period about which we wrote in this book has been called a "unclarified period" in historiography. We do not know what problems some Bosnian historians have with the interpretation or a liberal approach to the understanding of historical facts. There likely exists a fear of the academic community that could ridicule them or call them by derogatory names, as is the case with some historians that attempted to write about the history of Bosnia, about the fall of the Bosnian Kingdom and the arrival of the Ottomans, as did, for example, Dr. Ibrahim Pasic and others.

I began my involvement with the stecak, as one of the most significant historical monuments which only Bosnia has, in the early 2000's; out of curiosity, out of love for history and stecci, I visited many locations (more than 2000) in which necropoleis are found and read almost everything there was to read about that.

Reaching most of the locations was laborious, often trodding along kilometres of impenetrable undergrowth and forests, some of which even the local populace was not aware of.

Visiting those numerous locations, I am once again saddened by that cognisance that the relationship towards history has not changed much. In most locations, I could see that the stecci were destroyed, neglected, moved, built into the foundations of houses and religious buildings, garages, barns, chicken coops, as well as bisected by roads, etc. Hundreds of stecci are bisected by roads, even the most beautiful amongst them in Radimlja, Mile, the Wedding Cemetery in Morine, etc. By disturbing the stecci, the spiritual world is disturbed as well, retaliating against all these horrors of the material world.

Imagine what the level of consciousness among the ruling political structures in Bosnia and Herzegovina is, that the entire necropolis is moved from Donji Cevljanovici to Bijambare, where tourists visit it and pay their entry fee, without previously having provided for the bones of the buried, nor archaeological research being conducted. They do not understand that those stecci are the spiritual anchors of our past and our future.

We want to leave the door open for all further discussions about whether stecci are a classic medieval creation of Bosnian history and headstones, or a continuation of previous periods of Illyricum or the Early Middle Ages under Arian and Gothic influences.

Always upon reaching a location, I feel a special energy which makes me happier and more fulfilled, I feel a special inspiration which is hard to explain, but I know that it keeps pushing me to visit some new locations. Sometimes I seem to the people around me to be an eccentric who, well, purely out of love, spends his time, money, and energy just to find and visit some location where there are stecci.

However, that strange and beautiful feeling always drives me forwards. Some messages I may see clearly, and some I may think about for months and years. It is obvious that the stecci are telling us something, we just have not yet figured out - What?

The first thing that comes to my mind is: How good that they wrote it down on a big stone, so it cannot be easily destroyed, and so that information may be transmitted across thousands of years.

The second thought that crosses my mind is...