Ferhadija Mosque

Destruction

The mosque was one of 16 destroyed in the city of Banja Luka during the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995 despite the fact that the city was spared any physical fighting.

The Ferhadija and Arnaudija mosques were destroyed on the night of 6–7 May 1993 within 15 minutes of each other. May 6 is the date of the Serbian Orthodox holiday of Đurđevdan (Saint George's day). The almost simultaneous destruction of the two mosques required large quantities of explosives and extensive coordination. This probably would not have been possible without the involvement of Banja Luka and Republika Srpska authorities.

The minaret of Ferhadija Mosque survived the first explosion, but was then razed to the ground.

Most of the debris was taken to a secret dump site; some stone, and ornamental details, were crushed for use as landfill or taken to a secret dump site. The leveled site was turned into a parking lot. Though Bosnian notables begged the Serb militia to keep the rubble, their pleas were denied. UN officials who tried to salvage pieces of the demolished mosque were detained by the Serb militia. Several weeks after the destruction of Ferhadija the nearby Sahat Kula, one of the oldest Ottoman clock towers in Europe, was also destroyed.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a Serb leader from Banja Luka, Radoslav Brđanin, was convicted for his part in organizing the destruction of Muslim property including mosques, and also in the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs. He was sentenced to a single prison term of 32 years.

The Brđanin case proved that the destruction of the mosques was orchestrated as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. In addition, the Bosnian side in the Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice has cited the destruction of Ferhadija Mosque as one of the elements of ethnic cleansing and genocide employed by the RS authorities during the Bosnian War.

Reconstruction

In 2001, a building permit was granted to reconstruct the mosque. On May 7, Serb nationalists attacked about 300 Bosniaks attending the ceremony to mark the laying of the cornerstone. The New York Times reported that about 1,000 Orthodox Christian Serbs participated in the attack and threw rocks and burned vehicles, a bakery, Muslim prayer rugs, and the flag on the Islamic center, where they hoisted the Bosnian Serb flag; drove a pig onto the site of the mosque as an insult to Muslims; and trapped 250 people in the Islamic center including the head of the UN in Bosnia, the ambassadors from Great Britain, Sweden and Pakistan, and other international and local officials. Bosnian Serb police eventually released them. More than 30 Bosniaks were injured and at least eight were taken to the Banja Luka hospital. One died later from head injuries. The disrupted ceremony took place on the eighth anniversary of the mosque's destruction, a date subsequently chosen as the country's official Day of the Mosques. A few days later, in secret and under heavy security, the ceremony was performed successfully. But because of the earlier attack, reconstruction was not undertaken.

The ensemble of the Ferhadija mosque consisted of the mosque itself, the courtyard, a graveyard, the fountain, 3 mausoleums ("turbes") and the surrounding wall with the gate. The original canopied wall was pulled down after 1884 and a more massive wall partly of masonry and wrought iron was built with a new gate and a drinking fountain. In the courtyard there was an ablutions fountain ("šadrvan") with a stone basin and twelve pipes. The water for the fountain was brought from a spring that is still known as Šadrvan. Above the stone basin was a decorative wrought iron trellis, and in the 19th century a wooden baldaquin and dome and painted attic in the so-called Turkish baroque style was added which was demolished in 1955. One of three small adjacent mausoleums - Ferhad Pasha Turbe - contained the tombs of Ferhad Pasha Sokolović, the others were for his granddaughter Safi-kaduna, and his ensign. A clock tower ("Sahat kula") was added later.

Like most buildings of this type in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the mosque was on a modest scale: 18 metres (59 ft) wide, 14 metres (46 ft) long and 18 metres (59 ft) high at the top of the main dome. The minaret was 43 metres (141 ft) high. According to legend, when the mosque was completed in 1579, Ferhad Pasha had the masons locked inside this minaret, sentencing them to death so they could never make anything so beautiful, but one night they made wings and flew away.

Ferhadija was listed as a Bosnia and Herzegovina cultural heritage site in 1950. It was subsequently protected by UNESCO until its destruction in 1993. Today the site, with the mosque's remains, is listed by the Commission to preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (KONS) as a National monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.