Bosnian language in Novi Pazar in the salnames of the Kosovo Vilayet: A sociolinguistic approach

The Kosovo salnames are official annual reports of the Government of the Kosovo Vilayet and, in an administrative-legal sense, they are closest to what is referred to today as an official gazette. These documents encompass a wide range of thematic content related to social life, including the sectors of education and language rights, as reflected in official records concerning the use of specific mother tongues within a particular narrower or broader administrative and territorial framework, in this case, within the Kosovo Vilayet. Geographically, during the Ottoman rule, the Novi Pazar region previously belonged to the Bosnian Vilayet, whose salnames (official gazettes) also testify to the use of the Bosnian language; from 1877 onward, the area of the Novi Pazar Sandžak became part of the Kosovo Vilayet, allowing for the continuity of the official use of the Bosnian language during the Ottoman administration in Novi Pazar to be traced based on Ottoman archival documents. Therefore, this paper employs historical and analytical methods to examine the content of the salnames of the Kosovo Vilayet, aiming to investigate the status of the Bosnian language in the sociolinguistic context of the city of Novi Pazar.