Conversation is an art of the arts, we can already experience this in Plato's dialogues. So conversation is one of the archetypes. Even politics can be an art when politics is practiced as an art and not just as a technology of power. And Plato's dialogue model proves the art of mutual complementarity. In this sense, Fra Anđeo Zvizdović and Sultan Mehmed II al-Fatih are artists because both accept the conversation and as a result they create peace. There is no peace today because we have probably forgotten how to talk.
On May 28, 1463, the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II. al-Fatih (the conqueror) met Fra Anđeo Zvizdović the provincial of the Franciscan province of Bosna Argentina (Silver Bosnia) "at his" request, as it is probably called in diplomatic language. I don't know how long their conversation lasted and what course it took, I only know that the consequences of that conversation lasted for more than five centuries. Judging by that, their encounter is undoubtedly one of those events that make history.
Let's recall the accompanying circumstances: the Turks had just finished taking Bosnia, and from the so-called Christian countries, that is, from the European north and west, from where Bosnia had not received the required and expected help in defense against the Turks, now came calls, yes demands, to resettle the Catholic population of Bosnia, to resist the Turks to the last man, to commit collective suicide or to do a fourth, no matter what, but to refuse in any case and at any price, to live in a country where "The Unbelievers" rule. Fra Anđeo apparently remained being resist against such calls, just as before the rulers of Hungary and Austria, Spain and France, the Vatican State and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had resisted to make calls helping Bosnia. Neither did he call on a people to commit collective suicide, he asked for a meeting with the Turkish sultan and offered him the political loyalty of Bosnian Catholics if the Turkish rulers guaranteed them the liberty of belief. The Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, called the Conqueror, not because of the conquest of Bosnia, but because he had conquered Constantinople, complied with Fra Anđeo's request and issued him an Ahdnama, a charter guaranteeing all Bosnian Catholics the sanctity of religion, property and guaranteed to all personally.
Fra Anđeo certainly knew that his step was, strictly speaking, a quotation, a consistent repetition of what his great idol, the founder of the Franciscan order, Saint Francis of Assisi, had done in 1219 when he visited the Egyptian Sultan al-Malik al Kamila. The Fifth Crusade had just failed ingloriously, in Catholic Europe the ideological-theological formula of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was still being prayed - like a vow - according to which "the Christian seeks his glory in the death of the pagan" - and there goes Saint Francis and wants to convert the vanquisher of the crusaders. Naïve as his venture may have seemed, Francis actually got what the warriors could not, achieved more in negotiations than they did with their crusades, and was later able to pour out his hearty scorn on the Crusader armies and the whole Crusade ideology.
The sultan did nothing special on that important May 28, 1463, he simply did what his religion and his cultural tradition and presumably also his reason-guided state interests obligated him to do. In Islam, all revealed religions, that means all "book religions" as it says in the Quran (these are, besides Islam, Mazdaism, Judaism and Christianity, i.e. all religions that know a revelation), are recognized as true. According to this, Mehmed, as a Muslim and a ruler who refers to Islam, is obliged by his Holy Book to ensure the liberty of belief for the members of every book religion and to guarantee the inviolability of property, faith and life, so that at the famous meeting with Fra Anđeo he did nothing more than did his job and fulfilled his obligation.
The consequences, however, can be described very briefly as the Bosnian cultural system, as the way of life that is characteristic for Bosnia. The moment Fra Anđeo Zvizdović leaves Sultan Mehmed II's tent, the Bosnian cultural system begins to emerge, structurally extremely interesting and probably unique in some respects. The charter that Fra Anđeo was allowed to take with him made it possible for the Catholic population to remain in Bosnia and thus live together with the Muslim and Orthodox inhabitants of this country. Then, around 30 years after this encounter in 1492, the Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain and some of them moved over to Bosnia, all the technical prerequisites for the emergence of what I call the Bosnian cultural system were already established: representatives of all four religions were found in a relatively small area and the cultural paradigms derived from them, due to the technical conditions they were forced to cohabit and to look for forms of behavior that would make this common life bearable by building mutual relationships in the course of this search, which, in Goethe's expression, is named as "toleration without indifference". However, an inner, perhaps psychological condition must be added to the technical prerequisites mentioned - namely that all these people, regardless of their religious affiliation, are actually at home in their living space, i.e. not a minority, not guests and also not "second-class locals". . .

Dževad Karahasan was and is a Poet, a Dramatist and the Dramaturge of ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre

Herbert Gantschacher is Author, Director, and Producer