Grand reopening of the museum at the local Islamic foundation (trust-busting having been thankfully unknown in Turkish circles in the 16th c., resulting in many schools and water fountains). Free admission, and therefore I was there. If you've never seen the strongbox of a 16th c. Islamic potentate, it's quite impressive. Folks in town for the local security conference would likely swoon. Interesting curation, good mix of the quotidian and the large-scale. A modernist 1979 mosque that the national government might have had something to do with looked very impressive in photographs. The photo of the installation of the local religious head at around that time shows him signing the bureaucratic documents, rather than preaching or holding court. Tito's compact with the peoples. (And there's a fellow off to the side who to my amateur's eye looks like Andric, but almost certainly not, as he was in Belgrade retirement at the time.)
Tapestry that rested on the tomb of the founder of the religion accorded a place of honor, apparently a significant cultural possession. All of the holy books appeared to be in Arabic-eque (Persian, Turkish, etc.) no codices in the exhibits in the vernacular, and certainly not the 19th/early 20th c. Cyrillic form. Apparently a classicism that required a sense of distance.
Emphasis on collaboration with the West -- a few photos of the local head, at his installation, processing past the onlookers on the arm of the Austrian/ A-H authorities. A permission given to the Franciscans in the 15th c. on behalf of Catholics generally is described, perhaps correctly, as a foundational document of enlightenment religious freedom.
Interesting capsule biographies of the many scholars who have used it as their base over the centuries. Individual souls are the point of these grand schemes.
There's a production of Loves Labours set in this sensibility that's still percolating in my mind. Matched perhaps with a postwar Much Ado, in the manner of the recent London staging.
There's something about the language-based elements of the digital age that causes us to see these ewers and lamps and other bric-a-brac with decorative text on them a bit differently, perhaps. These are social practices, reinforced by a sort of code, programming the mind through text. But unlike computers, the point isn't running the program. The point is lifting up the life so that the individual mind and spirit can be freed. Hence these social compacts and compulsions, and their (largely textual) social transmission.