| Staka Skenderova | |
| Birth Date: | c. 1831 |
| Birth Place: | Sarajevo, Ottoman Empire |
| Death Date: | 26 May 1891 (aged 60–61) |
| Death Place: | Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary |
| Resting Place: | Holy Archangels Cemetery, Sarajevo[1] |
Staka Skenderova (c. 1831 – 26 May 1891) was a Bosnian teacher, social worker, writer and folklorist.[2] She is credited with establishing Sarajevo's first school for girls on 19 October 1858.[3] The following year, she became the first published woman author in modern Bosnia.
Skenderova was born in 1831 in Sarajevo to parents from Prijepolje in Sandzak. Her older brother sewed for the Ottoman Army, and Skenderova learned the Turkish language at a young age and taught herself to write.
Skenderova, by permission of the Ottoman authorities, was allowed to open the first school for girls in Sarajevo in 1858. She was also the first woman teacher in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
She eventually decided to become a nun. Since Bosnia at the time had no Serbian Orthodox female monastery, she was ordained as an Eastern Orthodox nun in Jerusalem in 1870.[4]
Skenderova died in May 1891. While she was enjoying some entertainment in Ilidža, a horse-drawn carriage ploughed into the crowd and Skenderova was severely wounded.[5] She was cared for by a friend, Paulina Irby, but died of her injuries soon after. Irby arranged the funeral and Skenderova was buried in Sarajevo.
Skenderova was featured in the multi-media ŽeneBiH project, devised by activists and scholars in Bosnia to highlight the achievements of women in the country's culture and history. She is also one of the principal subjects of the essay collection No Man's Lands: eight extraordinary women in Balkan history, by the British-Kosovan writers Elizabeth Gowing and Robert Wilton.