Qualla: Sarajevo Haggadah

Sarajevo Haggadah: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Idan Perez, Public domain. Its pages are stained with wine. Not from damage or neglect, but from use -- centuries of Passover Seders where families passed the book, read the prayers, and spilled a little in the process. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a 14th-century illuminated manuscript created around 1350, most likely in Barcelona, its calfskin vellum pages filled with Hebrew text and gold-leafed illustrations depicting scenes from Genesis through the death of Moses. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in existence. And it has no business still being here. Expelled from Spain, smuggled through Italy, hidden from the Nazis by a Muslim librarian, rescued from a flooded basement during the Bosnian War -- this book has survived more catastrophes than most civilizations.

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Image: Idan Perez | Public domain

Sarajevo Haggadah: From Barcelona to the Balkans

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The Haggadah was probably created as a wedding gift, joining two families whose coats of arms appear on its opening page. For a century and a half, it was used at Passover tables in Catalonia. Then came the Alhambra Decree. In 1492, Spain expelled its Jewish population, and the S...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Sarajevo Haggadah: Saved by a Muslim Librarian

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kleinjp, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Nazis and their Ustashe allies occupied Sarajevo during World War II, the museum's chief librarian, Dervis Korkut, understood what the Haggadah's seizure would mean -- not just the loss of a priceless artifact but a symbolic victory for an ideology built on erasing Jewis...

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Image: Kleinjp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sarajevo Haggadah: Surviving Another War

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In 1992, as the siege of Sarajevo began and the city descended into violence, the National Museum was broken into and its basement flooded. The safe holding the Haggadah was in that basement. Professor Enver Imamovic, an archaeologist who had assumed directorship of the museum, e...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Sarajevo Haggadah: A Book That Belongs to Everyone

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kleinjp, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2003, the Sarajevo Haggadah was inscribed as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Reproductions have become collector's items; in 2006, a Sarajevo publisher announced 613 hand-printed copies on parchment, the number alluding to the 613 commandments in Jewish law. The...

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Image: Kleinjp | CC BY-SA 4.0