With the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 and the Austro-Hungarian occupation which lasted up to the end of the WWI, Bosniak ulama started turning from Istanbul (as their previous center of religious authority and learning) to Cairo for education and different kinds of intellectual and religious guidance. This orientation had tremendous consequences not only for the development of Islamic reformist thought in Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout the 20th century, but also for the complex answers Bosnian Muslim community had to offer in terms of their migrations to the Middle East. The focus of my paper will be on the post-WWI developments among the Bosnian intellectuals and the ulema regarding the overarching role of Rashid Rida in the fierce debates over the translation and interpretation of the Qur'an, as shown in the journals and publications of the period. The connections of the ulama with Rashid Rida were forged in three ways: through the translations of Tafsir al-Manar into Bosnian, Bosniak ulama participation in the World Islamic Congresses in Mecca (1926) and Jerusalem (1931), and with the role played by the Bosnian students in al-Azhar. With the belated coming of the press and establishment of various journals (Novi Behar, Glasnik IVZ, Narodna Uzdanica, Hikjmet), two distinct ulama groups (''reformists'' and ''traditionalists'') acquired suitable media for the contest over the ideological primacy. In the center of the debate over the translation of the Qur'an and Tafsir was the struggle between the self-perceived enlightenment tendencies and the traditionalist conservative forces, which both used Rashid Rida's quotations from his Tafsir as the arguments in their favor. That the relationships of the reformists and the traditionalists with Rashid Rida were more than textual is shown by the repeated interest in meeting with him, attested to in the travel literature of the period, such as the Hajj travelogues of Bosnian ulama Ibrahim Čokić and Muhamed Krpo. This paper aims to show how the persistance of the Bosnian ulama's specific pursuit of Rashid Rida's guidance can be ascribed to the need of the establishment of the firm religious authority. It also tries to point to the ever increasing wish of Bosnian ulama to be a part of the wider Islamic intellectual network that could prevent Bosnian Muslim marginalization in the hostile context of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.