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 to 27 January 2003 the Commission adopted a
D E C I S I O N
I
The site and remains of the historic building of the Podgradska Mosque in Stolac (also known as the Mejdan Mosque, mosque in the Mala čaršija, the Hadži Salih Buro mosque, the Zulfikar-kapetan mosque and the Ali-paša Rizvanbegović mosque) is hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The National Monument comprises the land designated as cadastral plot no. 1/487, cadastral municipality Stolac, Federation of 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 (hereinafter: Government of the Federation) 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.
The Government of the Federation shall be responsible for providing the financial and technical resources to draw up technical documentation for the rehabilitation and for the rehabilitation itself of the National Monument.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the Commission) shall determine the technical requirements and secure the funds for preparing and setting up signboards with the basic data on the monument and the Decision to proclaim the property a National Monument.
III
Protection measures:
Ÿ The national monument, with its shops and ghusulkhana (facility for washing and laying out the dead) at ground floor level and the surrounding area with the Hadži Burina well and fountain are located, as well as four graves, shall be reconstructed in its original form, with the same dimensions, using the same or the same type of material, with the use of the same building techniques wherever possible, and on the basis of documentation on the original appearance which forms an integral part of this Decision;
Ÿ All fragments of the mosque remaining on the site following demolition or recovered from the Bregava, adjacent plots, or the dump to which they were taken after demolition, shall be recorded, conserved, and reintegrated into the mosque by the method of anastylosis;
Ÿ All fragments recovered that cannot be reintegrated because of the degree of damage or for other justifiable reasons shall be displayed in appropriate manner within the ensemble of the mosque;
Ÿ Prior to the start of rehabilitation works on the mosque ensemble, the surface layers of soil shall be removed to reveal the original foundation walls, and the original parts of the foundations and walls shall be rehabilitated and consolidated;
Ÿ All usable material from the original building shall be rebuilt into the mosque, and the missing elements for which documentation is available shall be made from material of the same or similar sources as the original by the method of repristination;
Ÿ All those parts for which no reliable documentation is available shall be reconstructed as part of the project in such a way as to ensure that their interpolation is evident;
Ÿ All parts of tombstones recovered shall be displayed where there were graves within the complex prior to demolition;
Ÿ On all plots adjacent to the protected site only the rehabilitation of ruined or damaged buildings shall be permitted, to their original form and with the use of original materials (stone walls, pitched roofs covered with stone slabs 2.5 to 4 cm. thick);
Ÿ The remaining buildings in the Mala Ćaršija on the left bank of the Bregava may be rehabilited, but may not be demolished, extended or built on to, nor shall their appearance be altered in any way other than by reverting to their original state, in compliance with the terms and conditions laid down by the relevant heritage protection authority of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the relevant heritage protection authority);
Ÿ On the site where the Muftića-han, to the east of the mosque stood, on the right bank of the Bregava, the construction of a building of similar purpose, of the same proportions and the same horizontal and vertical dimensions as the han shall be permitted, in compliance with the terms and conditions laid down by the relevant heritage protection authority.
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, the Federal Ministry responsible for town planning, 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 (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 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 BiH.
This Decision has been adopted by the following members of the Commission: Zeynep Ahunbay, Amra Hadžimuhamedović, Dubravko Lovrenović, Ljiljana Ševo and Tina Wik.
No: 07-6-732/03
21 January 2003.
Sarajevo
Chairman of the Commission
Dubravko Lovrenović
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 to Preserve National Monuments issued a decision to add the Podgradska mosque in Stolac to the Provisional List of National Monuments as no. 581 with the designation “Remains of the Podgradska mosque (Hadži Ali-paša Rizvanbegović Mosque)”.
Pursuant to the provisions of the law, the Commission 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:
Ÿ Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (copy of cadastral plan and copy of land registry entry)
Ÿ The current condition of the property
Ÿ 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.
Ÿ 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 condition of the site are as follows:
1. Information on the site
Location
The Podgradska Mosque is situated in Mala Carsija, which is also the centre of Podgrad mahala (quarter), on the left bank of the Bregava adjacent to the Podgradska ćuprija (bridge) in Stolac. This is the first mosque that one comes upon when coming to Stolac from Mostar and Čapljina. The area between Podgradska bridge and Podgradska mosque was called Mejdan, which leads to the conclusion that under Turkish rule this location was a market where the cattle, agricultural products and other goods were traded. Here too stood the Muftića han and several shops and artisans’ workshops. Some of the shops, with stone arcaded entrances, still survive on the left bank of the Bregava.
Historical data
The first mosque in Podgradska mahala was built in 1732/33 by Hadži Salih Buro from Mostar, as engraved on the plaque above the entrance door to the mosque. The chronogram also noted that the mosque was built on an island between two branches of the Bregava. The original mosque deteriorated as time passed, so in 1812/13, fulfilling the terms of his father Mehmed-Zulfikar Kapetan's will, Ali-paša Rizvanbegović built a new mosque on the same site, as noted by another chronogram above the entrance. The third inscription, written in Indian ink and attached beneath the first two chronograms, indicates that Mehmed Ali-paša Rizvanbegović repaired the Podgradska mosque in 1890/91. On that occasion the roof structure was repaired and the minaret rebuilt, the works being carried out by the skilled craftsman Ahmed Burina.
The mosque was dynamited and demolished in 1993, and its building materials were dispersed on the adjacent plots, and dumped in the riverbed of the Bregava by the mosque and in the dump in the dry riverbed of the Radimlja in the immediate vicinity of the gravel pit.
Legal status to date
By Ruling of the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural and Historic Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the building was under protection and registered as a cultural monument. This Ruling was either destroyed or has been lost with part of the Institute’s archives.
The Podgradska mosque is listed on the Provision List of National Monuments of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments under no. 581, designed as “remains of the Podgradska Mosque (Hadži Ali-paša Rizvanbegović Mosque)” in Stolac.
The Regional Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina to 2002 reaffirmed the earlier protected status of the Podgradska mosque in Stolac and classified it as a Category I asset, or “an outstanding example of its class with a high degree of accomplishment, and of national significance.”
2. Description of the Monument
Architecture
The building, measuring 9.41 x 9.74 metres on the exterior, was built of hard limestone from the local quarry. The south-east wall is some 9.50 m. above the water-level of the river. The outside face of the wall was made of cut stone set in lime mortar, infilled with quarry stone and lime mortar. The quoins were of large ashlar blocks held together by iron cramps. The wall had six horizontal rows of pairs of oak beams joined by cramps to the quoins. The mosque had a hipped roof with wooden rafters of tent-like structure and was originally covered with stone slabs, and latterly with tiles.
The entire building was divided vertically into sections. There was a small bazaar at the ground-floor level, with the mosque prayer room above it. The shops were part of the mosque waqf (endowment).
In the part of the building entered via a porch beneath an arcade, from the south-west at street level, there were three shops, two of which had storerooms attached. The open height of the shops and ghusulkhana was 210-218 cm.
The ghusulkhana was located in an extension of the third shop, entered from the mosque courtyard, from the north-west.
Typologically, the small bazaar in the Podgradska mosque resembles the bazaar of the Šarena (“multi-coloured”) mosque in Travnik.
The arcade of the bazaar consisted of three almost semicircular arches made of cut sections of tenelija (a local limestone), abutting onto two strong stone pillars and the anta. The pillars had a marked entasis, and the bases were sunk below street level; they have never been investigated. Both the pillars and the anta had capitals with fold decoration, often known as “creased capitals”. On the south-east wall of the arcade was a small arched aperture facing the Bregava. Above the ground-floor part of the façade were two rows of three windows each. The axis of the arches of the arcade coincided with that of the windows. The lower row of windows had plain miljevina (local limestone) frames forming a rectangle topped by a relieving arch visible on the façade. In the interior the windows were set in vaults of depressed arch form. The upper row of three windows on the south-western façade had stone frames with semicircular window lintels. These windows had miljevina stone transennas with varying geometrical motifs. Similar windows feature at the same level on the south-eastern façade (two windows) and the south-western (three windows).
The entrance to the prayer space was from the south-west, where the sofas (porches) were reached by climbing ten steps. The overall dimensions of the sofas were 2.96 x 8.63 m. The four pillars of the sofas and the solid side sections of the north-east and south-west walls of the mosque formed the supports for the mahfil, set above the sofas (similar to the treatment of the mahfil in the Ćuprijska mosque). The double lengthwise beams with projecting crossbeams that carry the mahfil are visible on the façade of the mosque above the sofas, as are the three evenly disposed rectangular mahfil windows.
The mosque sofas were paved with even rectangular slabs of hard cut limestone. The frame of the portal, with a shallow arch of three sections, was made of miljevina with mouldings, as were the frames of the two windows in the wall of the mosque on the sofa side. The entrance to the mahfil was via a wooden staircase by the right-hand sofa wall. The minaret was reached from the mahfil. The base of the minaret was made of regular ashlar, 7.91 m. high and square in cross section. The transition from the base of the minaret to the barrel is simple, without a band. The barrel of the minaret is sixteen-sided. The minaret was built of tenelija, finely saw-cut. The minaret šerefe or balcony was of solid stone. The cap was covered with tenelija and reinforced with wrought iron rings. The minaret was 18 m. in height.
The upper part of the south-western façade had three windows in a row, with semicircular window lintels and stone transennas with varying geometrical motifs. At the same level on the south-eastern façade there were two similar windows with different motifs on the transennas, and beneath them, with the same axis, were two windows west of the mihrab and one east of it, all with depressed arches and set in vaults in the interior.
The interior of the prayer space has a stone mihrab with stalactite ornamentation, a stone mimbar, a wooden kursi and a mahfil extending across the whole width of the mosque, which can only be reached from the sofas, not from the interior of the mosque.
The building did not have a graveyard as such, but outside the mosque there was a fountain and a small raised area against the retaining wall with four tombstones on it. The Haždi Burina well is also located outside the mosque; it remained in use by the inhabitants of Podgrad and Zagrad until 1908, when mains water was laid on in Stolac.
3. Research and conservation and restoration works
In late 1991 the then Institute for the Protection of the Cultural, Historic and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina conducted an architectural survey and drew up technical blueprints of the condition of the mosque building at the time (Annex 4).
In June 2002 the site was cleared of garbage and fenced off, and the location of fragments of the demolished mosque was identified.
4. Current condition of the site
The mosque was dynamited and demolished in 1993, and its building materials scattered over adjacent plots, in the river Bregava beside the mosque, and in the Radimlja river bed beside the gravel pit.
III - CONCLUSION
Applying the Criteria for the adoption of a decision on proclaiming an item of property 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 was based on the following criteria:
A. Time frame
B. Historical value
E. Symbolic value
E.i. ontological value
E.ii. sacral value
E.iii. traditional value
E.iv. relation to rituals or traditions
E.v. significance for the identity of a group of people
F. Townscape/landscape value
F.i. relation to other parts of the ensemble
F.ii. meaning in the townscape
G. Authenticity
G.v. location and setting
G.vi. spirit and feeling
H. Rarity and representativity
H.i. unique or rare example of a specific type or style.
The photographs and graphic material annexed forms an integral part of this Decision:
- PROPERTY RIGHTS DOCUMENTATION
1.1 PODGRADSKA MOSQUE: COPY OF CADASTRAL PLAN
1.2. PODGRADSKA MOSQUE: COPY OF LAND REGISTER ENTRY
- PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN PRIOR TO DEMOLITION OF THE BUILDING
- PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN AFTER DEMOLITION OF THE BUILDING
- ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING –TECHNICAL SURVEY OF THE BUILDING – CONDITION PRIOR TO THE DESTRUCTION
4.1. SITE PLAN
4.2. GROUND PLAN AT ELEVATION – 1.55
4.3. GROUND PLAN AT ELEVATION + 1
4.4. GROUND PLAN AT ELEVATION + 4.00
4.5. PLAN OF ROOF STRUCTURE
4.6. LONGITUDINAL SECTION
4.7. CROSS SECTION
4.8. AXONOMETRY
The documentation annexed to the Decision is public and available for view by interested persons on written request to the Commission to Preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bibliography
During the procedure to designate the Podgradska mosque as a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina the following works were consulted:
Ayverdi, Dr Ekrem Hakki, AVRUPA 'DA OSMANLY MIMARI ESERLERI, II f.3 kitab, Baha Matabaasi Istambul 1981
Hažimuhamedović, Amra, personal documents and unpublished works on the mosques of Stolac.
Hasandedić, Hivzija, Muslimanska baština u istočnoj Hercegovini (Muslim heritage in eastern Herzegovina) El-Kalem Sarajevo 1990.
Slovo Gorčina '97, Predsjedništvo Općine Stolac (Presidency of Stolac Municipality), Mostar 1997.
Mujezinović, Mehmed, Islamska epigrafika Bosne i Hercegovine (Islamic epigraphy in Bosnia and Herzegovina) Vol 3, 3rd ed., Biblioteka kulturno naslijeđe, Sarajevo Publishing 1998.
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