Allajbeg Mosque

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The Allajbeg Mosque ( Albanian  Xhamia e Allajbegisë ) is an old mosque on the outskirts of the village of Burim near Maqellara in the eastern Albanian municipality of Dibra .

The exact date of construction is unknown. It is assumed, however, that the mosque was built in the 16th century before 1578. The mosque is a witness to the ongoing Islamization of Albania, which at the time gradually included rural villages after the cities. The builder Alaj Beg could originally come from the region. Originally it was maybe just a mescite .

The cubic structure represents the single-dome mosque type - with a square interior, the sides of which are only a little longer than six meters, it is one of the smallest of its kind. The mosque is very similar to the Naziresha mosque in Elbasan . Three walls built using the box technique have three windows each; there is only one window on the side with the door. Originally the mosque had a minaret and a vestibule. The dome rests on an octagonal drum .

The mosque is surrounded by a cemetery. The rural village of Burim is only two kilometers from the border with North Macedonia , off the main roads .

The mosque was declared a national cultural monument in 1970 , two years after the dictator Enver Hoxha declared Albania an atheist state and banned Islam as a religion . In December 1967 the mosque was badly damaged in an earthquake . At the beginning of the 1970s, restoration work was carried out, during which the original condition was often restored. In the 1990s, the mosque was given a minaret again, which was created in a very simplified and simple form and plastered white, and instead of the vestibule, a modern, also white plastered extension. A restoration of the building was announced in August 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Xhamia e Allajbegisë. In: Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sport. Archived from the original on May 20, 2012 ; Retrieved December 12, 2012 (Albanian).
  2. ↑ a b c Machiel Kiel : Ottoman architecture in Albania (1385-1912) . In: Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture (Ed.): Islamic art series . tape 5 . Istanbul 1990, ISBN 92-9063-330-1 , pp. 83-86 .
  3. ↑ Gëzim Hoxha, Bashkim Lahi: Islamic Art and Architecture . In: Werner Daum , State Museum for Ethnology (Ed.): Albania between cross and crescent . Pinguin-Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7016-2461-5 , p. 145 .
  4. ↑ Objects fetare monumente kulture. In: Komiteti shtetëror për Kultet. Retrieved July 17, 2016 (Albanian).
  5. ↑ Xhamia e Allajbegisë në Dibër, drejt restaurimit. In: Telegrafi.com. August 28, 2018, accessed November 15, 2018 (Albanian).

Coordinates: 41 ° 34 ′ 41.5 ″  N , 20 ° 27 ′ 56.9 ″  E