It was Gazi Husrev-beg who would, over 20 years, help grow Sarajevo into a ЕЎeher. Crumbling remains of this stone fortress, together with later Ottoman-era defenses, still dot the cityвЂ™s forested highlands like broken teeth.

The founder also built a fortification on a rocky outcrop to the east, the cityвЂ™s natural gateway where the Miljacka chisels its way through the mountains. The city was named after the saraj ( sar-eye), or royal court, IshakoviД‡ erected on the south side of the river near a large ovaЕЎi (oh- vah-shee), or field, and hence Sarajevo, a Slavic contraction of SarajovaЕЎi. Donia observed, made it an increasingly important commercial, administrative and military center for Ottoman expansion into вЂњRumeliaвЂќ-the Balkans. Still, its strategic location, within marching distance of вЂњthe empireвЂ™s shifting boundaries with Venice and the Hapsburg Monarchy,вЂќ as historian Robert J. Though well sheltered by surrounding mountains and well watered by the Miljacka, at the same time the city was potentially vulnerable to aggressors who could scale those selfsame mountains encircling the valley town. Founded by IshakoviД‡ around 1462, it lay within the boundaries of the medieval Bosnian kingdom of Vhrbosna, conquered by the Ottomans a decade earlier. The year Gazi Husrev-beg took up his governorвЂ™s residence, Sarajevo was classified in Ottoman records as a kasaba, meaning it was bigger than a village but smaller than a ЕЎeher, or city. This is their story: Of one man who regarded books and knowledge as essential legacies and of another who risked his life to preserve them both. With the help of others who shared his devotion to the library and commitment to BosniaвЂ™s intellectual history, the dedicated librarian led the spiriting of the collection from one hidden location to another throughout the war until, in 2014, it ultimately came to rest in a brand-new and secure building just steps away from the site of the original library established by Gazi Husrev-beg. JahiД‡ was determined to save Gazi Husrev-begвЂ™s legacy from the same fate. In addition to claiming the lives of nearly 14,000 in Sarajevo alone-5,400 of whom were civilians-the Serb militia also systematically attacked BosniaвЂ™s cultural identity: by August 1992, two of SarajevoвЂ™s top libraries, the National Library and the Oriental Institute, had been reduced to cinders. In Sarajevo, both Muslim Bosniak and Catholic Croatian populations found themselves targets of Orthodox Serb nationalists supported by neighboring Serbia. Established in March 1992 following the breakup of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina had turned almost immediately into a battlefield. JahiД‡ and his colleagues were willing to take those risks to preserve part of the surviving cultural heritage of their city and newly declared country.

And again, over the next three years, throughout the besieged city. In the buildings and hills around them, Serb snipers waited to train crosshairs on anyone drifting into the exposed thoroughfares that became known during the 1992-1995 Siege of Sarajevo as вЂњsniper alleys.вЂќ If they made it today, they would do it again. Clutching boxes filled with the libraryвЂ™s precious collection literally and figuratively close to their hearts, they calculated their chances of making it across the river alive. Nearly five centuries later, in 1992, the latest in the line of scholars to whom Husrev-beg had entrusted his legacy, Mustafa JahiД‡, then director of the library, warily approached the southern end of the landmark bridge together with a handful of colleagues.

The SultanвЂ™s Mosque, the libraryвЂ™s home from 1935 until 1992, stands in the background. Sarajevans walk north across the EmperorвЂ™s Bridge, the same route JahiД‡ and his team took under the guns of snipers.

With fire and sword hidden cache