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 architectural ensemble of the Hadzi Ali-Bey Lafo Mosque and harem (courtyard) are hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the National Monument).
The property stands on a site comprising c.p. 55/57, c.m. Mostar, Municipality Mostar South, 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 (hereinafter: the 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 resources for drawing up and implementing the necessary technical documentation for the rehabilitation 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
During the rehabilitation of the ensemble, the following conditions shall be met:
Ÿ The mosque and harem shall be reconstructed in their original form, with the identical horizontal and vertical dimensions,
Ÿ During reconstruction all original pieces of the building found at the site must be reintegrated into the building using the method of anastylosis and traditional building materials (mortar) and techniques; until such time as they are so reintegrated they shall be preserved;
Ÿ The surface layers of soil shall be removed to reveal the original foundation walls;
Ÿ The original sections of the foundations and walls shall be repaired and consolidated;
Ÿ Fragments that are too badly damaged to be reintegrated shall be appropriately conserved and displayed in the mosque harem;
Ÿ All usable material shall be rebuilt into the mosque building;
Ÿ All missing parts shall be made on the basis of existing technical documentation;
Ÿ The harem of the mosque and its entrance area, including the wall surrounding the ensemble, shall be reconstructed on the basis of information on its previous appearance;
Ÿ All tombstones shall be conserved and returned to their former positions, on the basis of available documentation. Those for which the former position cannot be exactly determined shall be conserved and appropriately displayed within the mosque harem;
Ÿ On the adjacent plots, 55/61, 55/58, 55/102, the only permitted construction is of housing units with a maximum height of 6.50 metres to the base of the roof structure, i.e. ground floor and one upper floor, and maximum dimensions of 12 x 10 metres.
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.: 08.2-6-539/03-1
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 received a petition from the Islamic Community of BiH, Mostar Majlis (Council), on 27 September 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:
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 (Municipality Mostar South: 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. Information on the Site
Location
The Hadži Ali-Bey Lafo Mosque is located in Mostar, in the residential area of Zahum (Podhum), at the crossroads between Franjevačka and Fra Franje Miličevića streets, and is owned by the Islamic Community of BiH, c.p. 55/57, c.m. Mostar, Municipality Mostar South, Federation of BiH, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Historical Information
The founder of the mosque was Hadži Ali Bey Lafo. The mosque was built before 1631, as can be ascertained from the records of the Mostar judge, where the Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mahala was among 24 registered mahalas in Zahum. This mahala was formed in the first half of the seventeenth century around the newly built Hadži Ali Bey Lafo Mosque, and was named after its founder.
There is little historical data on interventions to the Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque over the centuries. Certain conclusions can however be reached on the basis of the appearance of certain features of the mosque – the shape, dimensions and proportions of the windows. It was probably in the early years of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a result of needing to admit more light into the building, that the windows were altered by joining the upper and lower windows into one. The result was windows of unusual shape for their day, but one that can also be seen on certain buildings of later date.
During the night of 26 and 27 January 1929 lightning struck the minaret of the Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque, knocking off the upper section down to the šerefe or balcony. Somewhat later, the members of the congregation rebuilt the damaged section, but it remained somewhat shorter than the original. The pieces of the minaret that fell to the ground damaged the roof of the mosque, which was later replaced by industrial tiles.
2. Description of the Monument
The Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque belongs to the type of mosque with elongated ground plan, open sofas and a hipped roof. It was built of quarry stone and roofed with stone slabs, like the other mosques in Mostar. The stone-built minaret, some 15 m. in height, stood alongside the south-west wall.
The ground plan of the building excluding the sofas is a rectangle with internal dimensions of 9.20 x 7.10 metres and external dimensions of 10.50 x 12.20 metres including the sofas. The thickness of the walls varied, ranging in places from 70 to 75 cm. The sofas, which were 3.30 metres wide, were located on the north-east side, and were enclosed on the south-west and north-east sides by a wall some 65 cm thick. On the front were four 20 x 20 cm. oak pillars bearing the roof structure.
Inside there was a wooden mahfil extending across the entire width of the mosque. The mahfil was 1.85 m. wide and supported by four 16 x 16 cm. wooden pillars. The mahfil was entered via a separate staircase from the sofa area. The entrance door to the mahfil was in the north-west wall, and the staircase abutted onto the south-west wall of the mosque.
The entrance door to the minaret was about a metre below the mosque floor level, with six stone steps leading down to it. The minaret was of tenelija (a local limestone). The basal part of the minaret, immediately below the “waist”, had a carved curved arch motif on each side. The transition from the broader to the narrower stone annulus was also decorated with geometric motifs. The šerefe was plain.
Each of the walls of the Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque had two rectangular windows some 2.5 metres in height, which is unique among the mosques of Mostar; from this it may be assumed that during repairs to the mosque in the Austro-Hungarian period the windows were pierced or enlarged.
3. Current condition of the site
The Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque was completely demolished in 1993. The plot on which it stood was left abandoned and has become overgrown with self-sown weeds. Parts of the mosque (sections of the wall) and scattered fragments that remained after it was demolished are unprotected and at risk of deterioration caused by constant exposure to the elements.
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.ii. religious value
E.iii. traditional value
E.iv. relation to rituals or ceremonies
E.v. significance for the identity of a group of people
F. Townscape/ Landscape value
F.ii. meaning in the townscape
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
- Project for the reconstruction of the Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque in Mostar drawn up by the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural and Historical Heritage, Mostar, no. 142-08/02, dated August 2002.
Bibliography
During the procedure to designate the monument as a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina the following works were consulted:
Hasandedić, Hivzija, Mostarski vakufi i njihovi vakifi, (Mostar Endowments and their Endowers), Majlis of the Islamic Community of Mostar, Mostar, 2000
Institute for the Protection of the Cultural and Historical Heritage, Mostar, Reconstruction project for the Hadži Ali Bey Lafo mosque in Mostar no. 142-08/02 dated August 2002
Mujezinović, Mehmed, Islamska epigrafika u BiH (Islamic Epigraphy of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Volume II, Sarajevo Publishing 1998.
|
