Kubelie Mosque

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Photo from 1939

The Kubelie Mosque ( Albanian  Xhamia e Kubeliesë ) was an Ottoman mosque in the city of Kavaja in western Albania that was destroyed in the 1970s after Albania was declared the world's first atheist state in 1967 . The mosque was built under the Ottomans between 1735 and 1736.

history

The Kubelie Mosque was built in the city's central market when the city already had several other mosques. Its builder was Kapllan Pascha , probably a local ruler, which is why it was also called "Mosque of Kapllan Pascha" (Xhamia e Kapllan Pashës) . Other names were "bachelor mosque" (Xhamia e Beqarëve) or simply "great mosque" (Xhamia e Madhe) . The construction of the “extremely monumental” mosque was strictly planned, so that a stable, harmonious structure of a very special kind emerged.

In 1817 a clock tower ( Kulla e Sahatit ) was built next to the mosque , on which the Arabic sayingما شاء الله maschallah is engraved. In 1928 a clock was installed in the tower.

In the 1970s, the city center of Kavaja was redesigned and much of the Ottoman heritage was destroyed with the narrow streets of the bazaar surrounding the mosque. The Kubelie Mosque also fell victim, in an act of an incomprehensible "barbaric sacrifice" ( Machiel Kiel ).

Description of the construction

The Kubelie Mosque is described as “a large, beautiful building, with a dome and a portico. Marble facades rise up under the cypress trees, with their Byzantine columns and Arabic arches. ”The interior was richly decorated with wall paintings that contained many floral elements.

The mosque consisted of several elements. The prayer room had sides each ten meters long and was roofed by a brick dome. The windows were not typically Ottoman but were evidence of local influence. In front of the stone building there was a 15-meter-wide porch, which was covered by a wooden roof supported by twelve narrow columns. In front of this vestibule stood a second portico made up of seven columns and without a roof, which, as an independent structure, formed the entrance to the mosque. It was probably the burial site of the founder of the mosque. The pillars and capitals of the vestibules were probably all antique , some probably came from Apollonia .

New mosque construction

The new mosque with the clock tower and the old columns

The ancient columns and arches were in the Archaeological Museum of Durres issued after the mosque was destroyed in the years after the 1967th Inscriptions from the entrance to the prayer room have been transferred to the Kavaja Museum.

In 1994 the new building of the Central Mosque on the site of the former Kubelie Mosque was completed. The old pillars from the museum in Durrës were placed in front of the mosque.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Edmond Sharka: Kavaja, "Qyteti Islam i Shqiptarëve". In: Drita Islame. September 30, 2013, archived from the original on November 28, 2014 ; Retrieved January 11, 2015 (Albanian).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f 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 , Kavaje, p. 155-159 .
  3. ↑ Formimi i qytetit te Kavajes ( Memento from November 26, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ Arkitektura Ottoman Shqiptare: Image Clock Tower Kavajë. In: Facebook. December 29, 2014, accessed October 27, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Basile Nitsiakos Vassilis: On the Border: Transborder Mobility, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries Along the Albanian-Greek frontier . Ed .: LIT Verlag . Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10793-0 , pp. 203 ( online version [accessed December 9, 2012]).
  6. ↑ Arkitektura Ottoman Shqiptare: Fig. In: Facebook. October 1, 2016, accessed October 28, 2017 .

Coordinates: 41 ° 11 ′ 2.4 ″  N , 19 ° 33 ′ 43.5 ″  E