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 1 to 7 July 2003 the Commission adopted a
D E C I S I O N
I
The harem of the Town Mosque in Prnjavor is hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the National Monument).
The mosque being built on the site of the Town Mosque destroyed in 1992 is not subject to protection since it has not been built in conformity with the state of the building before demolition and has not been rehabilitated in compliance with the Law on the Implementation of 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) and other valid standards and principles of protection, and thus does not meet the criteria for the designation of properties as national monuments (Official Gazette of BiH nos. 33/02 and 15/03).
The National Monument is located on cadastral plot 741/1, cadastral municipality Prnjavor, Municipality Prnjavor, 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 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 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
Measures:
Ÿ The harem of (courtyard/burial ground) of the Town Mosque in Prnjavor is hereby under protection.
Ÿ The original use of the protected site may not be altered.
Ÿ All fragments of the mosque remaining after demolition on the site or in the dumps to which they were removed after demolition or that may be found during the course of building works being carried out on the site of the Town Mosque shall be surveyed and recorded, conserved, returned to the mosque site and displayed appropriate within the mosque ensemble.
Ÿ The construction of any buildings that did not exist prior to 1992 is prohibited
Ÿ The mosque harem shall be set in order, the epigraphic material of the harem shall be documented, and the damaged nišans repaired.
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 specified in Clause I of this Decision 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-V 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.
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 Republika Srpska.
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
Amra Hadžimuhamedović
No: 08.1-6-804/03-2
2 July 2003.
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 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.
In August 2002 the Commission received a petition from the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, office of the Banja Luka Mufti.
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 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 Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (copy of cadastral plan and copy of land registry entry)
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. Details of the site
Location
Prnjavor is south-west of Derventa, where the Lišnja flows into the Vijaka, a tributary of the Ukrina. In the administrative division of the Bosnian pashaluk in the nineteenth century it belonged to the Banja Luka kajmekamluk.
The town mosque and harem is in the centre of Prnjavor on c.p. 741/1, c.m. Prnjavor, Prnjavor Municipality, Republika Srpska.
Historical information
Who built the Prnjavor mosque,or when,is not known. Some written sources suggest that it was built in 1800, but according to the local inhabitants there was an older religious building on the site before the mosque was built (material supplied by the Majlis of the Islamic Community of Prnjavor, 2003). In about 1850 the mosque was repaired and the roof was tiled. A new mosque was built on the site of the old one in 1962.
«Beside the mosque was a spacious burial ground, but with only a few nišans, most of them without epitaphs. One of them (the nišan of Herceglić Halil), with a turban, standing 70 cm high, there is an epitaph incised in small naskh script on the date it was erected, 1295 AH (1878 CE). To one side of the Herceglić nišan the name Muhammad is incised four times in ornamental script.» (Mujezinović, 1998, p. 231)
The mosque harem is still in use. The nišan of Herceglić Halil was destroyed at the same time as the mosque, in 1992. Work is in hand to find and return the nišan to its former position (material submitted by the Majlis of the Islamic Community of Prnjavor, 2003).
The mosque was destroyed (dynamited and set on fire) in 1992 and is currently being rebuilt.
2. Description of the monument
The mosque has altered in appearance over the years. Old photographs show that it was a single-storey building of rectangular form with a single steeply pitched, high hipped roof (the pitch was greater than 45 deg.) covering both the porch with sofas and the main prayer space. It was plastered and whitewashed. There is no information available about the appearance of the interior of the mosque at this time. Such mosques generally had whitewashed walls, wooden ceilings, multicoloured carpets on the floor, and simple decoration.
A typological link can be established, to judge from the outward appearance on available photographs, the ground plan and the arrangement and concept of this mosque, with the Čaršija mosque in Prijedor. By analogy it may be assumed that the main prayer space was rectangular in form, with a deep central mahfil against the entrance wall, opposite the mihrab. The mahfil would have covered between a quarter and a third of the interior space of the mosque and would have rested on two pillars. In the majority of mosques built before the eighteenth century in this part of the world, the mahfil had a projection for the muezzin, set in the centre (Bećirbegović, 1999, p. 60). The portico of the mosque was enclosed, and the main entrance to the mosque was in the inner frontal wall of the portico. By analogy it may be assumed that access to the mahfil was from the sofa area, to the right or left of the entrance, and that inside the mosque were a mihrab, minber and ćurs (Ar. kursi, «throne»). One may also assume that the mihrab wall had four rectangular windows in two rows, approximately of the same size as the windows on the side walls. Until 1962 the mosque had a central, slender, octagonal wooden minaret which «emerged from the roof» and had a covered gallery and medium-sized openings above the wooden railing of the šerefe. After it was rebuilt in 1962, a new concrete minaret was built alongside the mosque, and the old roof cladding was replaced with tiles. The windows were set in two rows on the facades, giving the building a typical appearance. On each of the long side walls there were three windows, and on the mihrab wall two upper and two lower windows. Both sets of windows were rectangular and of the same size.
In 1992 a project for the repair and adaptation of the Town Mosque in Prnjavor was drawn up, but never implemented. The project provided for the foundations and walls of the main mihrab area of the mosque to be retained and strengthened with reinforced concrete ring beams (reinforcing the existing walls). The entrance area was to be pulled down and a new one built with a basement area, ground floor and upper floor measuring approx. 5.00 x 9.00 m, with its exterior height the same as the roof of the mosque, approx. 6.50 m. from ground level at the entrance of the mosque. The rafters of the old mosque would be removed and a new concrete structure for a flat roof built, with a reinforced concrete dome over the main area and three small domes over the entrance area. The plan was to clad the dome with copper sheeting. The minaret was to be built of reinforced concrete, with two šerefe (balconies) and a height of about 30 m.
The project was never implemented, and given that the building had been demolished, in 2001 the investor – the Islamic religious community of Prnjavor – commissioned a new design project to build the Town Mosque in Prnjavor, for which it received planning permission and a building permit from Prnjavor municipality. This design was for an entirely new building on the site of the destroyed mosque. The new design was largely based on the 1992 design, and provided for the new building to have external dimensions of approx. 15.00 x 9.00 m, with a free-standing reinforced concrete minaret alongside the west wall of the mosque. The entrance to the minaret is from the mahfil area on the upper level and was designed in the form of a footbridge.
In late 2001 work began on the rebuilding of the Town Mosque in Prnjavor.
Legal status to date
According to data submitted by the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural, Historial and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Town Mosque in Prnjavor was not a protected monument.
3. Research and conservation and restoration works
No conservation or restoration works have ever been carried out by the heritage protection authority.
All interventions to the building have been carried out by the congregation.
4. Current condition of the property
Works are under way to build the new mosque.
An on-site inspection in June 2003 revealed that all the carcass work had been completed and that work on the interior had begun.
The new building is constructed as a framework structure of reinforced concrete ring beams and beams with brick infill. The wall is 25 cm thick. The design project shows that the dimensions of the new building are about 15.00 x 9.00 m. In ground plan, at ground floor level the building consists of three parts: an open and a closed portico and the main prayer space. In the basement area (2.30 m light-well height, 2.70 m below ground floor level), which lies beneath the portico space, is the abdesthana for ritual ablutions and ancillary premises. The open portico is about 1.50 m deep, with four reinforced concrete pillars linked by arches. The enclosed portico is entered from this area, and is also linked with the exterior area by windows on both sides of the entrance door. To the right of the door are reinforced concrete steps leading to the upper mahfil floor, and to the left of the entrance is a cloakroom area. The main prayer space has interior dimensions of approx. 10.60 x 8.30 m. At ground floor level it is spatially divided into two parts: the area by the entrance wall is covered by the mahfil, about 2.60 m deep and resting on two reinforced concrete pillars, linked by arches on which the concrete floor slab of the mahfil rests. Along the lateral walls at ground floor level are four pointed-arch windows with dimensions of some 1.25 m. On the mahfil wall are two lower and two upper windows of the same size as those of the lateral walls.The mahfil area is visually and physically separated from the rest of the space by two wall projections 60 cm long. On the outside this mihrab area is emphasized by a horizontal ledge projecting some 30 cm from the plane of the façade and extending along the entire height of the façade. At the upper floor level (3.20 m above ground floor level) there is the air space of the open portico, a space with a staircase and the mahfil. The pillars bearing the mahfil structure on the ground floor extend to this level where they form the load-bearing elements for the roof slab of the entrance part. The entrance to the minaret is also at this level, linked to the mosque by a footbridge about 1.50 m. long. The air space in the central area beneath the done is about 8.20 m. in height. The central part of the mosque is covered by a reinforced concrete dome with a radius of about 8.30 m. resting on concrete pendentives. The open part of the portico is covered by three small concrete domes with a radius of 1.45 m at a level of some 7.80 m. from the ground floor. The mahfil area is covered by a flat reinforced concrete slab. All the domes are clad with copper sheeting. The mosque building has been built exactly according to the design project, but there are differences in the treatment of the minaret, which has been built to the 1992 draft project – a reinforced concrete minaret with two šerefe and a height of about 34.50 m.
III CONCLUSION
Pursuant to the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments established pursant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, every national monument, and every property for which a petition has been submitted, must be restored in compliance with the approval for rehabilitation issued by the relevant Entity Ministry. The Commission has enacted the Decision cited above, which stipulates that the new building of the Town Mosque in Prnjavor is not a national monument, by 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). It was determined that the new building does not meet the following criteria:
A. Timeframe
B. Historical value.
Pursant to the above, the provisions of the Law on Implementation of Decisions of the Commission to Preserved National Monuments established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina do not apply to the new mosque.
Applying the criteria for the adoption of a Decision to designate a property as a national monument, the Commission has enacted a Decision designating the harem of the Town Mosque in Prnjavor as a National Monument.
The Decision is based on the following criteria:
A. Time frame
E. Symbolic value
E.ii. religious value
E.iii. traditional value
E.iv. significance for the identity of a group of people
The following documents form an integral part of this Decision:
- Copy of cadastral plan
- Copy of land register entry and proof of title;
- Photodocumentation;
- Drawings
Bibliography:
Mujezinović, Mehmed, Islamska epigrafika Bosne i Hercegovine (Islamic epigraphics in BiH), Vol. II, 3rd ed., Cultural Heritage Collection, Sarajevo Publishing, 1998.
Materials submitted by the Majlis of the Islamic Community in Prnjavor, 2003.
|
