Vrbanjusa is a neighbourhood located on the right bank of the Miljacka River in the old part of Sarajevo.
Even in the middle ages, the village of Budakovići existed on the south-eastern slope of Grdonj, where the medieval road of Bascarsija from Stara Varos passed towards Koseva and Nahorevo and further towards Central Bosnia.
Already by the 16th century, Sarajevo developed so much that the city of Sarajevo merged with the village of Budakovići. There, at the junction of Logavina and Sagrdzije, a small square – mejdan – developed.
Here, long before 1528 A.C. when it was first mentioned, some Sarajevan sarac (skinners) built a mosque, around which a graveyard and a neighbourhood formed.
More precisely the Sarac Alija’s neighbourhood is better known among the people as Vrbanjusa or Vrhbanjusa. “It is possible that it was named like that because it is located on top of a hill, above two spas. One can get down Sagrdzije to the Firuz-Bey’s Hamman-spa (Culhana) at Bascarsija or down Cadordzina to the Gazi Husrev-Bey’s spa (Hamman), only about a hundred meters from the bottom of the Logavina Street. Firuz-Bey conducted his waterworks from Sedrenik down the Vrbanjusa already in 1509”, said the historian and archivist Velid Jerlagic.
Vrbanjusa was a neighbourhood with the most cikmas – blind streets, and there were four or five of them. Nowadays it is one of the more or less preserved townscapes of old Sarajevo, consisting of Sarac Alija’s Mosque, Sinan’s Tekke, and a large graveyard in which is also located the grave of the founder of the Tekke Hajji Sinan-Aga and his wife Sakina. It was a custom of the Muslim population in Sarajevo, as well as in other cities and towns of B&H, to always establish graveyards next to the branching of the roads, neighbourhoods, or near a mosque, so they would recall the death and transience of earthly life while passing down the neighbourhood.
(Source: radiosarajevo.ba)
