Status of monument -> National monument
Pursuant to Article V para. 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Article 39 para. 1 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, at a session held from 21-27 January 2003 the Commission adopted a
DECISION
I
The historical building Sinan-Bey or Okić Mosque is hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The building stands on c.p. 926, c.m. Jajce I and is owned by Jajce municipality, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The provisions relating to protection and rehabilitation measures set forth by the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of the Federation of BiH nos. 2/02 and 27/02) shall apply to the National Monument specified in the preceding paragraph.
II
The Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be responsible for ensuring and providing the legal, scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures necessary to protect, conserve, display and rehabilitate the National Monument specified in Clause I of this Decision.
The Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be responsible for providing resources needed to draw up the technical documentation for the rehabilitation of the historic monument of Sinan bey's mosque in Jajce.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall determine the technical requirements and secure the funds for preparing and setting up a signboard with the basic data on the monument and the Decision to proclaim the property a National Monument.
III
For the purpose of the ongoing preservation of the building located on c.p. no. 926, all works are prohibited other than works of conservation and restoration as approved by the relevant ministry and under the professional supervision of the heritage protection authority of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The following conditions shall be complied with during restoration:
- the mosque shall be restored to its pre-1992 condition, with its sofas
- all original fragments of the mosque that have been preserved shall be reincorpoted into the building by the method of anastylosis, using traditional building materials and binding media (mortar) and construction techniques, and ensuring that they are protected until they are so reincorporated,
- the surviving parts of the building shall be retained unless so damaged that they cannot be reincorporated,
- all elements arising from later unprofessional works on the building and that endanger its stability, authenticity and integrity, shall be removed,
- all the decorated stone elements of the interior shall be retained,
- all wooden elements shall be protected using natural materials,
- the interior and exterior walls shall be plastered using only lime mortar in several thin layers to be laid on horizontally in the same order as the masonry (bottom to top) with a final layer of lime milk,
- the octagonal wooden minaret shall be reconstructed on the basis of existing documentation,
- the roof shall be covered with deal shingles,
- no construction shall be permitted on the adjacent plots, c.p. nos. 925 and 297, other than the reconstruction of buildings damaged during the war and on the basis of design projects approved by the relevant authority of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Residential buildings shall be reconstructed in their original form, with identical horizontal and vertical dimensions and roof pitch and using materials that will not be detrimental to the landscape value of the site.
IV
All executive and area development planning acts not in accordance with the provisions of this Decision are to be revoked.
V
Everyone, and in particular the competent authorities of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Canton, and urban and municipal authorities, shall refrain from any action that might damage the National Monument specified in Clause I of this Decision or jeopardize the preservation and rehabilitation thereof.
VI
The Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federal Ministry of Urban Planning and the Environment, the Federation heritage protection authority, and the Municipal Authorities in charge of urban planning and land registry affairs, shall be notified of this Decision in order to carry out the measures stipulated in Articles II, III and IV of this Decision, and the Authorized Municipal Court shall be notified for the purposes of registration in the Land Register.
VII
The elucidation and accompanying documentation form an integral part of this Decision, which may be viewed by interested parties on the premises or by accessing the website of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments (http://www.anek8komisija.com.ba)
VIII
Pursuant to Art. V para 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina are final.
IX
This Decision shall enter into force on the date of its adoption and shall be published in the Official Gazette of BiH and the Official Gazette of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This Decision has been adopted by the following members of the Commission: Zeynep Ahunbay, Amra Hadžimuhamedović, Dubravko Lovrenović, Ljiljana Ševo and Tina Wik.
Chairman of the Commission
Dubravko Lovrenović
No.: 01- /03
Sarajevo
E l u c i d a t i o n
I – INTRODUCTION
Pursuant to Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a “National Monument” is an item of public property proclaimed by the Commission to Preserve National Monuments (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) to be a National Monument pursuant to Articles V and VI of Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter referred to as Annex 8) and as property entered on the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of BiH no. 33/02) until the Commission reaches a final decision on its status, as to which there is no time limit and regardless of whether a petition for the property in question has been submitted or not.
The Commission received a petition from the Islamic Community of BiH, Jajce majlis (council), on 27 December 2002, and proceeded to carry out the procedure for reaching a final decision to designate the property as a National Monument, pursuant to Article V of Annex 8 and Article 35 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments.
II – PROCEDURE PRIOR TO DECISION
In the procedure preceding the adoption of a final decision to proclaim the property a national monument, the following documentation was inspected:
· Data on the current condition and use of the property, including a description and photographs, data of war damage if any, data on restoration or other works on the property if any, etc.
· Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (Jajce municipality: copy of cadastral plan and copy of land registry entry)
· Historical, architectural and other documentary material on the property, as set out in the bibliography forming part of this Decision.
The findings based on the review of the above documentation and the present condition of the property are as follows:
1.Information on the Locality
Location
The Sinan-bey or Okić mosque is located in Gornja Mahala, in the vicinity of the old Jajce ramparts, c.p. 926, c.m. Jajce I, and is the property of the United Waqf of the Islamic Community of BiH, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Historical Information
According to unverified information, the mosque was built around 1689 as an endowment of Sinan-bey Džabić. Local people also call it the Okić mosque, because for many years its imams came from the Okić family (Mujezinović, 1998, p. 266).
Legal Status to Date
The Sinan-bey mosque in Jajce has never been under the protection of the state, but under the previous regime it did enjoy a certain level of protection as a result of forming part of the Jajce urban landscape, which was registered in the Regional Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina to 2002 as a category 0 ensemble, meaning that it was of international significance.
2. Description of the Monument
It is difficult to place the Sinan-bey mosque in Jajce in any of the typological series of mosques built in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It belongs to the type with a single central space, and originally had no wooden balconies (so called sofa). The entire space is roofed by an ellipsoidal dome made of limestone, which is concealed by a tent-shaped hipped roof. Prior to its destruction during the war in 1992, the roof was covered with wooden shingles. The mosque had an octagonal wooden minaret some 14 metres high.
The mosque did not differ essentially in appearance from the surrounding residential buildings in Gornja Mahala. It stands right on the street and has no courtyard.
There is a water fountain in the south wall of the mosque, with an inscription on a stone slab measuring 34 x 73 cm, with three lines of carving in Turkish, some of which has been damaged and is illegible. The inscription recounts that there had been an earlier fountain on this site, built by the dizdar (fortress commander) of Jajce, Ali Firaki, in memory of his father Sulejman (Mujezinović, 1998, pp. 266, 267).
The mosque was entered from the side, through a porch (sofa) on the northwest side. Both the building and the porches were covered by the same roof. The northwest entrance wall is approximately 75 cm thick and 6.5 m long, and was made of limestone. In places it can be observed that at some point in time, which is difficult to determine exactly, the wall was built over, up to the level where the dome begins. This destroyed a row of limestone blocks which marked the start of the dome and which can be seen on the part of the wall that was not built over. It is highly probable that this intervention was related to the subsequent construction of outer porches (sofas), which were not a part of the original building. Evidence for this is the different manner of construction of the porches and their structural discontinuity with the main building – holes that were made later for the ceiling beams of the porch, which damaged some of the carved stones, as well as a specific specific opening measuring 94 x 78 cm, which partly encroaches on the dome. This opening served as the way into the minaret from the main building before the porches were added.
The entrance portal with carved limestone lintels is located on the northwest wall. The arch shaped lintel consists of three segments while the vertical jambs are made of one piece of stone 30 cm wide. The southwest wall is 85 cm thick and 7.30 m long. There are three windows in this wall, one of which was later walled up.
The northeast wall has no openings and is 85 cm thick, and 7.33 m long. Two arch windows are symmetrically located on the southeast, mihrab wall. The limestone mihrab is located between the windows, and is divided into three horizontal rows of stalactites on the top of which is a very distinctive floral ornamental decoration. The mihrab had carved stone decorations within the niche.
The ceiling has the form of a shallow ellipsoid dome. Both the dome and trompe on which the dome rests were made of limestone with exact and clean horizontal lines.
3. Research and Conservation and Restoration Work
Prior to 1993, certain works were carried out on the mosque on a number of occasions, most of them relating to the exterior and the porches (sofa). The porch on the south-western side was walled in, first using stone and later slag concrete blocks. None of these works were carried out with the involvement of the relevant protection authority, but were done by the local congregation on their own initiative. In the 1970s the floor of the mosque was damp-proofed and a new concrete floor was laid.
A detailed survey of the building was conducted by the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage of BH in July 2001, and a Reconstruction Project was drawn up in September 2001. The project is presently being implemented with assistance from the Swedish foundation CHwB.
4. Present Condition of the Property
The Sinan-bey mosque was damaged during the war in BiH, in 1993, when all its wooden components burned down – the minaret and the roof structure. From then on, it was directly exposed to rain and frost, as a result of which both the interior and external plaster and stucco disintegrated completely. As a result both of the fire that destroyed the roof structure and the subsequent exposure to the elements, cracks have appeared on the interior of the dome, varying in length from 10 to 45 cm, while the self-sown weeds have taken root on the outside. The plaster on the interior walls was completely destroyed by the high temperatures reached during the fire, as a result of which the wall paintings have not survived.
III CONCLUSION
Applying the Criteria for the adoption of a decision on designating an item of property as a national monument, adopted at the fourth session of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments (3 to 9 September 2002), the Commission has enacted the Decision cited above.
The Decision is based on the following criteria:
A. Time frame
B. Historical value
C. Artistic and aesthetic value
E. Symbolic value
E.ii. sacral value
E.v. significance for the identity of a group of people
F. Townscape/landscape value
F.ii. Meaning in the townscape
H. Rarity and representativity
The following documents form an integral part of this Decision:
- Copy of cadastral plan
- Copy of land register entry and proof of title;
- Photodocumentation;
- Site plan
Bibliography
During the procedure of designating the Sinan-bey mosque in Jajce as a National Monument, the following works were consulted:
Mujezinović, M, Islamska epigrafika u BiH (Islamic Epigraphy in BH), Vol II,Sarajevo publishing 1998. pp. 266, 267.
Jadrić, Radivoj, Revitalizacija istoriskog jezgra Jajca (Restoration of the historic nucleus of Jajce) Sarajevo, 1970
Institute for the Protection of the Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage of BH – Reconstruction Project for the Sinan Bey Mosque – Aličić Azer, B.Sc. in Architecture, 1999
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