On the top of the Abdulaha efendije Kaukčije Street in Sarajevo, known among the people as Logavina Street, there is a humble mosque which was built in 1585 by Hasan Haji Buzadži. People know it as the Buzadžijska mosque. For centuries, stories have been told about how this mosque was built, and writers and journalists each add their personal touch to the story. However, the backbone of the told and the written remains the same.
A poor man, unsophisticated, but God-fearing, lived in a small house in the Logavina Street. They were leading a humble life, fighting for their survival every day. His wife would make a drink, pour it into a copper ewer, and then he would tie to ewer to his back with belts and some pots around his waist, and go down the Logavina Street to Baščaršija. He would then sell the drink to people for nickels. That is how they lived. It went on like this until he heard a voice in his dream. The voice told him that his wife should make more drink and that he should sell it and divide the earned money to two piles: one for himself and his wife, and the other half should be kept aside so that they could build a mosque.
So it was. His wife would make three ewers of drink which he would then sell. By the sunset, he would sell all three ewers. When he collected enough money, he heard a voice in his dream once again. This time, the voice told him to go to Makah, to measure the Kaaba, and to build a mosque according to those measures. When Hasan got there, he dreamt of his mosque as it was supposed to look like: with a huge dome, stone pulpit with a wooden fence, a mihrab, three small domes above the porch, and flower decorations. When he came back home, he told the masters and workers what the mosque should look like.
One story like this exists in the recent time as well. This one begins in the seventies and ends in 1987. Nurija Milić had no home or wife. He had nothing, and he built a mosque in the village Mahala in the Rogatica Municipality. Locals call it the Nurija Milić’s Mosque. In 1992, Nurija passed away, grieving for the mosque, at the age of 51. Those who remember him say that he was healthy, but that his heart suffered.
Nurija lost his parents quite early. He finished four grades of elementary school but he spent a lot of his time with an imam who taught him Arabic letter and religion and who told him stories from the lives of prophets. At the age of 19, he was called to join the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). He was dismissed from the army after only three months and no one knew why. He left the army full of fear and anxiety. He put on his fez and went straight to Sarajevo, where he intended to live, but he had no home. Only on the weekends he would go to his village Mahala.
Everyone knew him in the Old Town, mostly those who would sit around the Bey’s Mosque and drink coffee. Nurija got around well in the city. He sold Islamic literature, tasbihs, amulets, Preporod magazine, paintings with oriental motives. He was always well-groomed, with a fez on his head, willing to talk while people gathered around him and bought things from him.
Nurija would sell things during the day, and he would spend the summer nights in a park or one of the inn owners would let him sleep there. Years passed. Someone gave him a list of poor children who attended madrasah, and he visited them and gave them all the money he earned from the sales.
Nurija would tell those gathered in front of the Bey’s Mosque that he wants to build a mosque in the village Mahala. Everyone laughed at him. However, Nurija would not stop talking how he is collecting money and how he will launch the construction of the mosque. In the seventies that was so unimaginable that many people started publicly mocking him for his intentions.
Did Nurija also hear a voice in his dream which told him that he should built a mosque, no one knows. Nurija became even more hard-working, he sold many other items, and he would sell everything he took with him to the city. After two years in the Old Town in Sarajevo, everyone started talking how workers are digging foundations for Nurija’s mosque in his village Mahala in Rogatica. This news echoed like a bomb. Since then, Nurija spent every weekend in his village with the workers, and he slept in a cave.
Years passed, twenty years passed, and no one believed that Nurija will build the mosque. He was getting older as well. Many people even forgot that he was building a mosque, but still they bought everything he was selling. They did not know anything about his troubles. There were bad people who would destroy what has been built, and Nurija had to pay the workers again to rebuild that. Nurija stood all alone against the others.
Year 1987 came, when the mosque was finished. Nurija was reborn. He brought an imam whom he paid, so prayers in the mosque started. Nurija would go from house to house, bringing children to religion classes. After the classes, he would give them chocolate and juice. Nurija found nothing too hard, as long as the children came. When people in Sarajevo heard about this, they bought whatever he sold just to help him. Many prominent imams and citizens of Sarajevo went to the village Mahala just to pay in Nurija Milić’s Mosque. And Nurija, good as he always was, welcomed them all.
(Source: stav.ba)
