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 8 to 14 November 2005 the Commission adopted a
D E C I S I O N
I
The site and remains of the historic monument of the Sheikh’s mosque (Kadi Osman-effendi’s mosque) in Foča is hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the National Monument).
The National Monument is located on a site designated as cadastral plot no. 1703, title deed no. 1426, cadastral municipality Foča, Municipality Foča, Republika Srpska, 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 Republika Srpska no. 9/02) shall apply to the National Monument.
II
The Government of Republika Srpska 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 Republika Srpska shall be responsible for providing the resources needed to draw up and implement the necessary technical documentation for the rehabilitation of the National Monument.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments (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
To ensure the on-going protection of the National Monument on the area defined in Clause 1 para. 2 of this Decision, the following measures are hereby stipulated.
Protection Level I consists of c.p. no. 1703. The following protection measures shall apply in this area:
- The Sheikh's mosque (Kadi Osman effendi's mosque) shall be rehabilitated on its original site, in its original form, with the use of the original or the same type of material and the original building methods wherever possible, on the basis of data on its former appearance, with the approval of the ministry responsible for regional planning in Republika Srpska and under the expert supervision of the heritage protection authority of Republika Srpska;
- All original fragments of the demolished building found and collected up on the site or on other sites to which they were removed after the demolition of the building must be collected up, registered, recorded and reintegrated into the reconstructed building. Until such time as they are so reintegrated they shall be properly preserved,
- Fragments that are too badly damaged to be reintegrated shall be conserved and displayed appropriately within the architectural ensemble.
To ensure the conditions for the rehabilitation of the National Monument, the following measures are hereby prescribed:
- the removal of temporary structures from the site of the mosque;
- fencing off the harem of the mosque;
- clearing the area of the harem;
- the conservation and restoration of the remains of the harem wall;
- the removal of the surface layers of soil in order to uncover the original foundation walls;
- the repair and consolidation of original parts of the foundations and walls.
Protection Level II applies to the area immediately contiguous with that of the National Monument, being the plots designated as c.p. 1704, 1705, 1712, 1678 and 1677. In this area the following protection measures shall apply:
- the construction of any buildings or facilities that could in appearance or use be derimental to the National Monument is prohibited,
- alterations to the height and dimensions of the buildings are prohibited,
- the height of new buildings shall not exceed two storeys (ground + first floor), to a maximum of 6.5 m to the height of the roof cornice and maximum horizontal dimensions of 10 x 8 m.
IV
All executive and area development planning acts not in accordance with the provisions of this Decision are hereby revoked.
V
Everyone, and in particular the competent authorities of Republika Srpska, and urban and municipal authorities, shall refrain from any action that might damage the National Monument or jeopardize the preservation and rehabilitation thereof.
VI
The Government of Republika Srpska, the Ministry responsible for regional planning in Republika Srpska and the heritage protection authority of Republika Srpska, 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 – VI 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.aneks8komisija.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.
X
This Decision shall enter into force on the date of its adoption and shall be published in the Official Gazette 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: 09-02-850/03-7
10 November 2005
Sarajevo
Chair 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 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 and 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.
On 22 May 2003 the Commission to Preserve National Monuments received a petition from the Centre for Islamic Architecture to designate the property of the Kadi Osman effendi mosque – Sheikh’s mosque – as a national monument.
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:
- Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (title deeds, copy of cadastral plan and copy of land registry entry)
- Data on the current condition and use of the property, including a description and photographs, data of war damage, data on restoration or other works on the property, etc.
- 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. Details of the property
Location
The Osman-effendi mahala is located by the confluence of the rivers Drina and Ćehotina, between the Ortakol(1), Džafer-beg(2), Sultan Fatima(3) and Careva (Emperor's)(4) mahalas. The Kadi Osman-effendi or Sheikh's mosque was erected below Pazarište, close to the former Donja čaršija.
The mosque was built on a site designated as cadastral plot no.. 1703, title deed no. xxx, land register entry no.xx, owned by the Islamic Religious Community, cadastral municipality Foča, Municipality Foča, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Access to the National Monument is from thewest, from Remzija Ćorić street (former street name).
Historical information
According to Husref Redžić, the Kadi Osman-effendi mahala took shape in the last three decades of the 16th century, a golden age in the building of Foča and the time at which the town came to occupy what was to be effectively its ultimate surface area(5).
According to an inscription in Arabic on a stone plaque, the mosque was built in 1002 AH, or 1593/94 CE. The inscription on the plaque, which measures 35 x 78 cm, mounted above the entrance to the mosque, consists of two lines of Arabic text in bold naskh script. In translation, it reads: „Perform the prayer; surely the prayer is a timed prescription for the believers“ (Qur'an 4, 103). The chronogram of the mosque reads: „May those who enter this place of worship in a state of purity find it pleasant. Year 1002“ (Mujezinović, 1998, p. 48.)
The name of the founder of the mosque, Kadi Osman-effendi, is known from documents, not from the inscription over the entrance. No precise details about him have been found. The mosque is better known to the local people as the Sheikh's mosque. How it acquired this alternative name is not known.
In the light of the various materials of which the mosque is built, and its elements, Alija Bejtić hypothesizes that at some time, possibly following an earthquake, the original building was destroyed or demolished, and a new one built on the same site of unbaked (adobe) brick, with some of the stone of the original building incorporated(6).
During World War II the mosque was quite badly damaged(7). It was repaired in the mid 1970s(8).
The mosque was dynamited and destroyed in its entirety on 1 June 1992(9). The remains of the mosque were thrown into the river Drina.
2. Description of the property
„In the way the Sheikh's mosque (Kadi Osman-effendi's mosque) in Foča is adapted to the plot on which it stands, and in its wealth of decorative features, the building is an interesting architectural monument. The plot on which it was built is unusually small, and of irregular shape. So as to gain the maximum space, the builder did not treat the interior space as a square or longitudinal rectangle, as is the norm, but gave it a transverse rectangular axis. A further feature of the building are the two mihrabs, the hazelwood door and the minaret on the left. All the stone built components of the building (minaret, window frames, perforated arabesques in the stone plaque above the window, entrance portal, mimber and the two mihrabs) are unusually richly decorated.” (Bejtić, 1956)
In layout, the Sheikh's mosque (Kadi Osman-effendi's mosque) in Foča is a single space mosque with open sofas and stone minaret.
It has a hipped roof.
The mosque is a cuboid structure, with the inside measurements of the walls 11.5 x 7.55 m. The minaret is 32 m in height.
The walls of the mosque, which are about 85 cm thick, are of unbaked (adobe) brick and timber.
The interior space of the mosque, which is rectangular in ground plan, has a wider transversal axis, north-east/south-west.
The hipped roof covers both the interior space of the mosque and that of the exterior open sofas, and is clad with tiles.
Unusually, the tall, slender minaret is built against the left-hand, north-east wall. It is of regular cut stone and decorated with stone carving.
The base of the minaret is nine-sided. All nine sides of the base are decorated with four different rosette designs. The transition from the base to the twelve-sided shaft of the minaret is decorated with a frieze of blind arcades terminating in pointed arches. Below the šerefe, the shaft is decorated with a frieze of blind arcades terminating in trefoils. The šerefe parapet is decorated with perforations.
The changes in diameter of the minaret at the top and bottom of the shaft are accentuated by string courses.
The cone of the minaret is clad with sheet lead.
The windows in the facades of the building are set in a single horizontal row.
There are two rectangular windows each on the south-east and north-east facades. The north-west entrance facade has three rectangular windows, and the south-west facade one. The unusually large window openings have moulded stone frames on the outside. On the north-east and north-west facades there are pointed relieving arches above the windows(10).The face of the relieving arches, made of freshwater marlstone, is perforated into a row of interlinked circles(11).
The exterior sofas of the mosque, measuring 12.0 x 3.90 m, are covered by the same hipped roof as the mosque itself. The eaves rest on eight moulded wooden pillars.
The exterior sofas are to the left and right of the entrance portal. The right-hand sofa is markedly larger than the left, and has an exterior mihrab at the centre. The exterior mihrab terminates in stalactite decoration matching that of the interior mihrab.
During renovation works on the building(12) two inscriptions were found on the mihrab in the exterior sofa. One of them is a calligraphic text ”In the name of Allah the Merciful”, in the form of a tughra, with no indication of its date. The other inscription consists of two parts, written in the same hand in 1078 AH, or 1668 CE(13).
As a result of the differing sizes of the exterior sofas, the entrance portal is offset from the central axis of the building towards the north-east wall.
In general design and typological features, the entrance portal belongs to the third group of portals (as classified by A. Andrejević, Islamska monumentalna umetnost XVI veka u Jugoslaviji [Islamic Monumental Art of the 16th Century in Yugoslavia]). The central panel of the portal is separated by a simple moulding from the rectangular stone frame, which terminates in a crown. The area above the shallow segmental arch terminating the entrance opening encloses an equilateral triangle, the sides of which consist of shallow stepped stalactites. The central part of the portal, in the band around the triangle, is painted white and covered with calligraphic inscriptions.
The tarih (chronogram) of the building of the mosque, incised on a stone plaque measuring 35 x 78 cm, is mounted above the entrance portal.
Until World War II the entrance to the mosque was closed by double doors made of a single piece of wood, supposedly hazelwood.
The interior of the mosque has a stone-paved floor, as has the passageway between the sofas.
The wooden mahfil is set along the entrance wall, a so-called front mahfil.
The mimber of the mosque is of stone, of small size – 3.0 x 0.85 m. The mimber balustrade is perforated into circles and hexagons. The low baldaquin rests on pillars linked by pointed arches.
The mihrab niche is in line with the entrance portal, which means that it is offset to the left of the axis of the south-east wall. The mihrab area, which is 2.30 m wide, projects out from the face of the wall by 20 cm. The mihrab is of stone, with the upper part decorated with stalactites.
The Sheikh's mosque (Kadi Osman-effendi's mosque) has no harem with graves(14).
The harem of the mosque is surrounded by a simple stone wall.
3. Legal status to date
By Ruling of the National Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments and Natural Rarities of 9 October 1950, no. 1316/50, the Sheikh's mosque (Kadi Osman-effendi's mosque) in Foča was placed under state protection.
By Ruling of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of NR BiH of 18 April 1962, no. 02-855-3, the Sheikh's mosque (Kadi Osman-effendi's mosque) in Foča was entered in the Register of Cultural Monuments.
4. Research and conservation and restoration works
Research and conservation and restoration works were carried out on the building in the mid 1970s. The extent and type of the works is not known.
5. Current condition of the property
The Sheikh’s mosque was dynamited and completely destroyed on 1 June 1992. All the fragments were removed from the site. According to Faruk Muftić, the fragments of the mosque were thrown into the river Drina(15). All that remains of the Sheikh's mosque is a small part of the west harem wall.
The site of the harem of the mosque is currently occupied by temporary structures – kiosks – selling various goods and food.
III – CONCLUSION
Applying the Criteria for the adoption of a decision on proclaiming an item of property a national monument (Official Gazette of BiH nos. 33/02 and 15/03), 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.ii. religious value
E.iii. traditional value
E.v. significance for the identity of a group of people
F. Townscape/ Landscape value
F.ii. meaning in the townscape
F.iii. the building or group of buildings is part of a group or site
The following documents form an integral part of this Decision:
- Copy of cadastral plan nos. 15 and 16, land register entry and proof of title;
- Copy of Ruling on the entry of the Sheikh's (Kadi Osman's) mosque in Foča in the Register of Immovable Cultural Monuments;
- Record card of the monument with written description (Institute for the Protection of Monuments of NR BiH)
- Photodocumentation (photograph of the condition of the building at the time of adoption of this Decision by the Commission, October 2005;
- Drawings (geodetic map of the relevant area of Foča).
Bibliography
During the procedure to designate the site and remains of the historic monument of the Sheikh’s mosque (Kadi Osman effendi’s mosque) in Foča as a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina the following works were consulted:
1951 Herald of the Islamic Religious Community II (1951), nos. 7-9
1956 Bejtić, Alija, Povijest i umjetnost Foče na Drini,(History and Art of Foča on the Drina) Naše starine III, Annual of the National Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments and Natural Rarities of NR Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 1956
1983 Redžić, Husref, Studije o islamskoj arhitektonskoj baštini, (Studies on Islamic Architectural Heritage) Cultural heritage series, Sarajevo, 1983.
1997 Faruk Muftić, Foča 1470 – 1996, neprolazna ljepota (Imperishable Beauty), TKP «Šahinpašić», Sarajevo 1997.
1998 Mujezinović, Mehmed, Islamska epigrafika Bosne i Hercegovine, (Islamic epigraphics of BiH) bk II, Sarajevo-Publishing, Sarajevo, 1998.
1998 Šemso Tucaković, Aladža džamija – ubijeni monument (Aladža Mosque – a murdered monument), Sarajevo 1998
2003 Faruk Muftić, Ranjeni grad – Foča: Sve džamije su porušene (A Wounded Town – Foča. Every mosque destroyed), Bosniac Institute Sarajevo, ALEF 2003
(1) The founder of the Ortakol or Hamzabeg mahala swas Hamza-beg, first sandžak-beg of Herzegovina, from od 1470 to 1474. Ortakol is also the oldest mahala in Foča. Husref Redžić, Studije o islamskoj arhitektonskoj baštini, p. 323.
(2) The Džafer-beg mahala took shape in the mid 16th century. Husref Redžić, Studije o islamskoj arhitektonskoj baštini, p. 323.
(3) Sultan Fatima, or Princess Fatima, was the wife of the third sandžak-beg of Herzegovina, Ahmed-beg. The Fatima Sultan mahala came into being in the late 15th century and is the second oldest in the town. Husref Redžić, Studije o islamskoj arhitektonskoj baštini, p. 323.
(4) The Careva (Emperor's) mosque is the main mosque in Foča, built in 1500/01 from state revenues. Husref Redžić, Studije o islamskoj arhitektonskoj baštini, p. 324.
(5) Husref Redžić, Studije o islamskoj arhitektonskoj baštini, p. 325.
(6) „It is interesting that in this massive building there should feature two materials of entirely different nature as regards resistance and aesthetic impact. The walls of the mosque, the basic structural elements, are of unbaked brick, while all the other more prominent features, including the interior fittings and the minaret, of selected and usually precisely finished stone. The brick walls, which are already becoming dilapidated, are in marked contrast with the brilliant, richly decorated stone elements, which makes it very likely that the present building dates from two periods, the first massive building and a later adaption when the more easily obtainable unbaked brick was used.“ Alija Bejtić, Povijest i umjetnost Foče na Drini, Naše starine III (1956), p. 54.
(7) Glasnik Islamske vjerske zajednice II (1951), nos. 7-9, p. 307.
(8) Details from the record card of the building supplied by the Centre for Islamic Architecture Sarajevo.
(9) Šemso Tucaković, Aladža džamija – ubijeni monument, p. 211.
(10) Describing the mosque, Bejtić writes: „...the eye is drawn equally by the windows in the left-hand and front walls, terminating in the form of oriental arches.“ Alija Bejtić, Povijest i umjetnost Foče na Drini, p. 55.
(11) „The surface of freshwater marlstone surrounding the arach is perforated into a row of interlinked circles – a purely Algerian design. The circles are so arranged that there are four at the corners of the rectangle, the ratio of the sides of which is exactly the golden mean (4:7), while the fifth is set in the centre of the rectangle, linking all four outer circles into a single unit. The entire geometric design is highly studied and executed with a great degree of precision.“ Alija Bejtić, Povijest i umjetnost Foče na Drini, p. 55.
(12) These works on the building were carried out in the mid 1970s.
(13) „This year of 1078, on the fifty-fifth day before the start of spring, the trees blossomed, to which end this inscription is put in place. Year 1078.“ and „Written by poor Alija, son of Muhamed, may God's mercy be upon him, muderis, in the middle of the month of Muharam one thousand seventy eight.“ Mehmed Mujezinović, Islamska epigrafika BiH, str. 48
(14) Faruk Muftić, Ranjeni grad – Foča: Sve džamije su porušene, p. 65.
(15) Faruk Muftić, Ranjeni grad – Foča: Sve džamije su porušene, p. 66.
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