Bajrakli Mosque (Belgrade)
The Bajrakli Mosque ( Serbian - Cyrillic Бајракли џамија , Bajrakli džamija , German about flag mosque ; originally Čohadži mosque ) is the last surviving mosque of the original 80 mosques in the Serbian capital Belgrade . It is located in the Stari Grad district in Gospodar Jevremova 11. The mosque got its name at the end of the 18th century because a flag was hoisted on it, which indicated that prayer should begin at the same time in the other mosques in the city.
Of the once more than 60 mosques and numerous smaller Islamic prayer houses ( mesjid ), the Bajrakli Mosque (1-4) at 11 Gospodar Jevremova Street is the only surviving and active object of Islamic sacred architecture in Belgrade. It is located on the slope towards the Danube , near the intersection with the Kralj Petar street . It once dominated the ambience of the predominantly low ground floor houses in the bustling trade and craft district of the Belgrade town of Zerek .
history
The mosque, which was probably originally built in 1575, was rebuilt from 1660 to 1688 (the information in the various sources is not uniform). Between 1717 and 1739 the mosque was used as a Roman Catholic church , but then came back to the Muslim cult, which is still cultivated today after an interruption from 1878 to 1893.
Descriptions of Belgrade from the 17th century have been preserved from the Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi , in which he illustrated the appearance of the city at the time of Turkish rule with various objects of Islamic architecture. The historians and travel writers Konstantin Jireček , Giuseppe Barbanti Brodano , and the archaeologist and ethnologist Felix Kanitz described the Bajrakli mosque in the second half of the 19th century. It is believed that today's Bajrakli Mosque was built on the site where the old Mesjid used to stand, probably in the second half of the 17th century as a donation of the Turkish ruler Sultan Suleyman II (1687-1691). According to restorers at the time, it was initially called the Čohadži Mosque - Haj Alijas Mosque - and later the Hussein-ćehajas Mosque, while it got its current name at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century. The muvakkit, the person who determines the exact hijra time according to the Islamic calendar (which begins in the year 622, i.e. the year of the hijra or the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad from the city of Mecca to Medina ) to determine the holy ones, also stayed in it as the main mosque Calculated days, regulated the clock mechanism and hoisted the flag on the minaret as a sign of the simultaneous beginning of prayer in all other houses of prayer in the city of Belgrade. During the Austrian rule 1717–1739 it served as a Catholic cathedral church and with the return of the Turks in 1741 its original purpose was resumed. In the 19th century they renewed rulers from the Obrenović dynasty, Prince Mihailo and King Aleksandar Obrenović .
In 1868, Prince Mihailo Obrenović instructed the Minister of Education and Church Affairs to choose one of the existing mosques and repair it for the performance of Muslim religious rites. At the same time, in addition to the mosque, the rear building was repaired. The Minister of Education and Church Affairs has served the State Council of the Principality of Serbia with the act of May 10, 1868 with the following content: “In order that the Mohammedans who do their business in Belgrade not remain without religious consolation, His Highness deigns to order that one of the local mosques is being repaired as their house of prayer. As a result of this high order, the “Bayrak” mosque has been selected as the most suitable, and at my request the building minister sent experts to inspect this mosque and a building next to it which the Hodjah will inhabit. . "
On the decree of Prince Mihailo Obrenović of May 1868, the Minister for Education and Church Affairs was authorized to "give the Hoddscha 240 and the muezzin 120 thalers a year". Employees of the mosque could also use income from real estate - goods of the Waqfs - finance the living. The first imam and muezzin in the Bajrakli Mosque were appointed in the same year, 1868.
Between the two world wars, the municipality of Belgrade also renewed the mosque when it was first protected by the Ordinance on the Preservation of Belgrade Antiquities in 1935. Damage from World War II was repaired by 1961; At the same time, the minaret was statically secured. The restoration was carried out several times by the People's Committee of the City of Belgrade and the Institute for Protection and Scientific Research of Cultural Monuments, and from the mid-1960s also by the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of the City of Belgrade. Since 1981 the mosque has been protected as a cultural monument of great importance (Spomenici kulture od velikog značaja). After the fire and damage as a reaction to pogrom-like riots and attacks against churches and monasteries in Kosovo in 2004, work was carried out on the renovation and restoration of the stone facade with renewal of the window openings.
investment
The architecture of the mosque is of the cubic one-room type with a dome and minaret . It was built of stone with massive walls and few openings and some segments were made of brick and stone. The building has a square base, while the octagonal dome is supported by eastern sub-dome arches and niches - the tambour , with modest ornamentation of the consoles . The number of window openings on the facades is unequal, while there is one on each side of the drum of the dome. The sub-dome girders and all openings on the building end with the characteristic oriental pointed arches. The minaret was erected on the outer northwest side - a narrow tower with a conical roof and a balcony around the outside near the top, from which the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer. Opposite the entrance, inside the mosque, is the most sacred room - the mihrāb , a shallow niche with ornate vaults, erected in the direction of the holy city of Mecca to the southeast, while the raised wooden pulpit ( minbar ) was erected to the right of the mihrab, in the southwest corner. Above the entrance there is a wooden gallery (mahfil) from which you can also get to the şerefe, the balcony of the minaret.
The decoration inside the mosque is very modest. The walls are not plastered and are provided with flat profiles, rare stylized floral and geometric motifs and calligraphic inscriptions of verses from the Muslim holy book of the Koran . In addition, names of the first legitimate religious heads of the caliph, as well as the divine, i.e. H. the sublime attributes and names of Allah , in Arabic script on specially decorated, carved tablets ( levha ). In front of the entrance to the mosque there was also a vaulted arcade gallery with three smaller domes. In the courtyard there is a fountain for ablution and a religious school ( medrese ) with a library. The Bajrakli Mosque is the main Islamic cultural center in Belgrade. Today it is a little hidden in the ambience of the higher residential buildings on Gospodar Jevremova Street.
Due to its age, rarity, preservation of the original purpose and the representativeness of the sacred building and Islamic culture, it was placed under state protection as a cultural monument in 1946 and in 1979 it was declared a cultural asset of great importance (decision, Official Gazette "Službeni glasnik SRS" No. . 14/79).
literature
- Е. Čelebija, Putopis: odlomci o jugoslovenskim zemljama I, Sarajewo 1979 (17th century; Istanbul 1896).
- F. Kanitz, zemlja i stanovništvo, Book 1, Belgrade 1986. (Leipzig 1909).
- А. I. Hadžić, Bajrakli džamija u Beogradu, Godišnjak Muzeja grada Beograda No. 4, Belgrade 1957.
- Ž. P. Jovanović, Iz starog Beograda, Belgrade 1964.
- Р. Samardžić, Novi vek: doba turske vlasti 1521-1804, in: Istorija Beograda 1, Belgrade 1974.
- D. Đurić Zamolo, Beograd kao orijentalna varoš pod Turcima 1521-1867, Belgrade 1977.
- А. Talundžić, Bajrakli džamija u Beogradu, Most - časopis za obrazovanje, nauku i kulturu No. 183, 94 - new series, Мостар 2005.
- S. Bogunović, Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda XIX i XX veka, Belgrade 2005.
- М. Đ. Milićević, Topografske beleške, in: Stari Beograd - putopisi iz XIX veka, Belgrade 2005.
- S. and D. Vicić, Pozdrav iz Beograda 1895 - 1941, Book 1, Belgrade 2008.
- Bajrakli džamija, dosije spomenika kulture, Dokumentacija Zavoda za zaštitu spomenika kulture grada Beograda.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rijaset ( Memento of 7 March 2015, Internet Archive ) of the Islamic Community of Serbia 10, October 2013
Coordinates: 44 ° 49 ′ 19.9 " N , 20 ° 27 ′ 27" E