Foreword from the book
Destruction
of Islamic Heritage in the 1998-1999 Kosovo War
By András Riedlmayer
May 2014
Since ancient
times, Kosovo has been a crossroads of the Balkans, where the
great religious and cultural currents of the Mediterranean world
have met and interacted with each other and with rich indigenous
traditions. These cultural interactions have given Kosovo a
remarkable legacy, including a still thriving, 600-year-old
European Islamic tradition, a part of its heritage that deserves
to be better known. The oldest Islamic sites in Kosovo are
linked to the memory of Sari Saltuk Baba (d. 1298), a legendary
Sufi master from Anatolia, who, accompanied by a group of this
dervishes, traveled and preached Islam in the region a century
before the arrival of the Ottomans. However, the first major
monuments of Islamic religious architecture in Kosovo are
connected with the establishment of Ottoman rule in Kosovo in
the 1400s.
The Ottoman
sultans and their local officials—many among the latter being
natives of the region—established pious endowments (vakuf or
waqf) for the building of mosques, medresas (theological
schools), mektebs (schools for Qur’an-readers), Islamic
libraries, charity soup kitchens, hamams (bath-houses), tekkes
(dervish lodges of the Sufi lay brotherhoods), and bazaar shops,
whose rents supported these charitable and religious
institutions.
Notable
Islamic monuments from the early Ottoman period in Kosovo
include the Mosque of Sultan Murad (built 1389-1440), in
Prishtina, the Mosque and hamam of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror
(1461), in Prishtina, and the Bazaar Mosque (1471), in Peja—all
of them endowed by Ottoman emperors. The Ghazi Ali Beg Mosque
(1410) in Vushtrria, and the mosque and hamam of Hajji Hasan Beg
(1462-85), in Peja, were founded by early Ottoman governors. The
Llap Mosque (1470), in Prishtina, was endowed by a pious local
Muslim resident.
Mosques and
other Islamic monuments continued to be built in Kosovo
throughout the period of Ottoman rule. Much of this construction
took place during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
by which time the majority of Kosovo’s population, including
most Kosovo Albanians but also many Slavs, had become Muslims.
Many of them rose to join the Ottoman elite as soldiers,
statesmen, Islamic jurists and scholars. Some attained the
highest posts. Between 1453 and 1912, close to 40 of the
individuals who held the office of grand vizier, the chief
minister who ruled the Ottoman Empire in the name of the sultan,
were ethnic Albanians.
From the
sixteenth century on, the great majority of the patrons who
endowed mosques and other Islamic institutions in Kosovo were
local people, as were the builders and craftsmen who built them.
The styles and methods of construction of Islamic monuments in
Kosovo reflected local tastes and building techniques, as well
as broader trends in Balkan and Ottoman architecture.
In Kosovo’s
mountainous west and on the Dukagjin plateau, mosques were often
built in the same manner and of the same materials as the kullas,
the traditional Albanian tower-houses of the region—the house of
God taking on the form of the houses of the faithful. Notable
examples of this regional style are the Çok Mosque (1580), near
Junik, and the Mosque of Deçan (1813). In many mosques and
tekkes (dervish lodges) in Kosovo, local craft techniques were
employed to good effect in elaborately carved wooden ceilings
and other interior decorations, as seen in the Defterdar Mosque
(1570) and the Kurshumli Mosque (1577) in Peja and in the tekke
of Sheh Islam Efendi (1881) in Gjilan.
Islamic
religious architecture of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
in Kosovo was distinguished by the exuberant use of colour and
by the murals depicting landscapes, architecture and floral
motifs that covered the interior walls of mosques. This painted
decoration was a characteristic feature of mosques built during
this period, among them the Red Mosque in Peja (1744) and the
splendid Jashar Pasha Mosque in Prishtina (1834). Lavish mural
paintings were also used to decorate older mosques that were
renovated at this time, such as the Hadum Mosque in Gjakova
(built 1592-95, renovated in 1842), the Sinan Pasha Mosque in
Prizren (built 1615, renovated in the early 19th century), and
the Bazaar Mosque in Peja (built 1471, renovated by Haxhi Zeka
in the late 19th century). The first Balkan War (1912) brought
an end to the long centuries of Ottoman rule in Kosovo, which
was partitioned between Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of
Montenegro. Following the end of the First World War, the two
kingdoms merged to form a new state, which in 1929 was renamed
Yugoslavia.During the 70 years that followed, not very many
mosques were built in Kosovo and some were destroyed or seized
by the authorities.
At the end of
Ottoman rule in 1912, Prishtina had 18 mosques. At the end of
World War II in 1945, there were still 16 mosques left. The new
communist Yugoslav regime that took power after the war closed
all but five of the city’s mosques, turning them into warehouses
and other secular uses. As part of a socialist urban redesign of
the centre of Prishtina in the 1950s, three historic mosques
were ordered razed by the authorities, among them the Llokaç
Mosque (built 1551). Some of the city’s closed mosques were
allowed to reopen for worship during the era of political
liberalization in the 1970s an d early 1980s, but no new mosques
were built in Prishtina between 1912 and the end of the
twentieth century.
Mosques and
other Islamic heritage sites elsewhere in Kosovo did not fare
significantly better during the communist period. In the centre
of Prizren, the historic Arasta Mosque (built 1594) was torn
down in 1963 to make way for a new post office and market
stalls; only its minaret was left standing, as a ‘civic
monument’. In Peja, the sixteenth-century Kurshumli Mosque was
closed after the end of the Second World War and turned into an
arms depot for the Yugoslav army. It was returned to worship
after a lapse of twenty years in 1965. In the post-war years,
the regime also suppressed Islamic religious education and
seized the property of the pious endowments that had sustained
the mosques and their activities. However, some mosques
continued to be built in villages, remote from the centres of
power. About two dozen of the mosques documented in this volume
were built between 1945 and 1989. Although the 1990s in Kosovo
were years of severe repression in most respects, communist-era
restrictions on the building and repair of mosques were eased
somewhat during this final decade of Belgrade’s rule, at least
outside of the major cities. Close to 20 of the mosques listed
in this volume were built or reconstructed in the 1990s. In some
cases, unfortunately, this new building activity also involved
damage or destruction of Islamic heritage.
More than
two-thirds of the 560 active mosques in Kosovo on the eve of the
1998-1999 war were buildings dating from the Ottoman era. Many
of these were monuments of historical and architectural
significance. However, this part of Kosovo’s cultural and
religious heritage received relatively little attention from the
state authorities charged with the protection of monuments.
Between 1947
and 1990, a total of 425 monuments and sites in Kosovo were
officially designated for state protection. These included 96
archaeological sites, 16 cemeteries, 116 secular buildings and
monuments, and 174 religious sites. Of the last category, 139
were Orthodox churches or monasteries, while only 32 Islamic
religious monuments had been listed for protection. Since listed
sites received priority in attention and in conservation funding
from state agencies, this meant that by the 1990s much of
Kosovo’s Islamic built heritage was in a dilapidated state,
after decades of neglect. In practice, the authorities not only
failed to provide the funds and expertise needed for the
preservation of these historic houses of worship, they allowed
even listed Islamic monuments to be altered or demolished
without intervening. The years of peacetime neglect were
followed by the massive wartime destruction of Kosovo’s Islamic
religious heritage in 1998-1999. As has been documented in this
book, roughly 40 percent of Kosovo’s 560 mosques were damaged or
destroyed during the war.
The damage in
most cases was clearly the result of deliberate attacks directed
against the mosques. There is evidence of explosives planted in
the mosque or inside the minaret, of artillery projectiles aimed
at the minaret, and of mosques set ablaze. In some places, the
mosque was the only building in the vicinity that had been
singled out for attack. More often, the destruction of a mosque
was accompanied by the burning of the surrounding homes of the
local Albanian residents. The devastation of Islamic sacral
sites was widespread and systematic, with few areas of Kosovo
left untouched.
Among the
worst hit was the northwestern region of Peja, where every one
of 49 Islamic sites was attacked in 1998 and 1999. Among the
sites targeted were the region’s 36 mosques (half of them dating
from the 15th-18th centuries), the offices, archives and library
of Peja’s Islamic Community Council, a historic medresa, a
15th-century hamam (Turkish baths), 9 schools for Qur’an readers
(mekteb), one dervish lodge (tekke), and several mosque
libraries.
In some
places, those responsible for these attacks had left behind
their “signatures”— in the form of anti-Albanian and
anti-Islamic graffiti in Serbian scrawled on mosque walls, or in
the deliberate desecration of Islamic sacred scriptures, torn
apart by hand, defiled and burned. Examples of this sort could
be seen in the Gjyfatyn Mosque in Peja, the Mosque of Carraleva,
the Mosque of Livoç i Poshtëm, and the Mosque of Stanofc i
Poshtëm, and in a number of other mosques. Of the 218 mosques
and 11 tekkes in Kosovo that were destroyed or damaged during
the war, 22 mosques and 8 tekkes were in the most severe damage
categories. Among these, 13 mosques and 5 tekkes were completely
razed, the ruins levelled by bulldozer; 9 mosques and 3 tekkes
were reduced to rubble, but the ruins were not bulldozed. Among
examples of completely levelled Islamic houses of worship are
the Bazaar Mosque (built 1761-62; renewed 1878), in Vushtrria,
the Ibër Mosque (built 1878) in Mitrovica, the Mosque of Halil
Efendi in Dobërçan (1526), the Mosque of Loxha (1900), and the
Bektashi tekke in Gjakova (1790). More than 100 other mosques in
Kosovo suffered serious structural damage from explosives or
fires. Many of these mosques were completely burned out, their
roofs collapsed, the interiors open to the sky with a carpet of
burnt roof tiles underfoot, and only the four outer walls left
standing.
An additional
95 mosques suffered lesser degrees of damage, ranging from shell
holes in the walls, through the roof or in the shaft of the
minaret, to vandalism, including fires set inside the mosque,
smashed-up interior furnishings, and the desecration of sacred
scriptures.
A total of 31
mosques and 2 tekkes (dervish lodges) were attacked by Serb
forces during the first year of the war, in the spring and
summer of 1998. Two-thirds of these religious buildings were
burned down, blown up or otherwise destroyed or seriously
damaged. Ten of the mosques that were damaged during 1998 were
subjected to repeat attacks and further damage during the spring
of 1999.
During the
second year of the war in 1999, a total of 197 mosques and 9
tekkes in Kosovo were damaged or destroyed by Serb forces. One
mosque, in the village of Jabllanica (Prizren region), had its
roof partly destroyed by a NATO air strike in the spring of
1999. Otherwise, the destruction of mosques and of other Islamic
heritage in Kosovo during the war was entirely attributable to
attacks from the ground, carried out by Serbian troops, police
and paramilitaries, and in some cases by Serb civilians.
The
destruction also encompassed the written record of Islamic
religious and cultural life in Kosovo. The Central Historical
Archives of the Islamic Community of Kosovo were burned by
Serbian police in June 1999, hours before the arrival of the
first NATO troops in Prishtina. Six of the regional archives of
the Islamic Community were also attacked and wholly or partially
destroyed, among them the archives of the Islamic Community
Councils in Peja, Gjakova, Gllogoc, Lipjan, Peja, Skenderaj, and
Suhareka.
Kosovo’s
Islamic religious libraries were also singled out for
destruction. Notable losses include the manuscripts and old
books of the library of Hadum Syleiman Efendi in Gjakova,
founded in 1595 and burned in 1999, as well as the libraries of
dervish lodges in Gjakova, Mitrovica and Peja, also destroyed in
1999. However, the losses go far beyond this. Many old mosques
in Kosovo had been endowed with collections of Qur’an
manuscripts and Islamic religious books that were destroyed or
damaged in 1998-1999.
Among the
historic centers of Islamic culture in Kosovo, only the city of
Prizren escaped largely unscathed. The only Islamic monument
destroyed in Prizren was a small building, part of the Medresa
of Ghazi Mehmed Pasha, in which the League of Prizren, a group
of Albanian civic leaders campaigning for autonomy within the
Ottoman Empire, met in 1878. The building, which housed a
memorial museum of the nineteenth-century Albanian national
revival, was destroyed by Serbian police in March 1999.
Remarkably,
not a single Serb Orthodox church or monastery in Kosovo was
damaged or destroyed by Albanians during the 1998-1999 conflict.
Unfortunately that changed after the end of the war, as
thousands of Albanian refugees who had been forced out of Kosovo
during the war returned to their burned-out home towns and
villages. Following the end of hostilities in June 1999, dozens
of Serb Orthodox churches and monasteries were damaged in
revenge attacks. Some 40 Serb Orthodox sites were vandalized,
while another 40 suffered serious structural damage or were
destroyed completely. Many of these buildings were village
churches, some of them built during the previous decade. But
about 15 to 20 of the destroyed churches dated from the medieval
period. By the end of the summer of 1999, as a result of the
efforts of KFOR and the UN administration to restore order, and
in response to public appeals by Kosovo Albanian political and
religious leaders, attacks on Serb Orthodox religious sites
largely ceased.
This book is
an attempt to document, to the extent possible, the Islamic
sacral heritage of Kosovo that was lost during the 1998-1999
war. As Kosovo and its people come to terms with the painful
memories of the recent past and work towards a common future it
is well to recall that, for most of Kosovo’s long history,
houses of worship were protected by all communities and had
traditionally been held immune from personal and communal
vendettas. The rich cultural heritage that remains in Kosovo,
despite the ravages of time and the destruction of war, is the
common patrimony of all of Kosovo’s people. It is up to them, as
it was up to their forefathers, to jointly value and preserve it
for future generations.
András
Riedlmayer directs the Documentation Centre for Islamic
Architecture of the Aga Khan Program at Harvard University. In
1999-2001, Riedlmayer and his colleague Andrew Herscher, an
architect and architectural historian, conducted a post-war
field survey of cultural heritage in Kosovo. The results of the
field survey were submitted to the UN Interim Administration
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and to the UN war crimes tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He has since testified about these
findings as an expert witness at the war crimes trial of former
Serbian president Slobodan Milošević and in several other cases
before the ICTY.
Originally posted at
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