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During the biggest rise of architecture of the Ottoman Empire, next to the Kosevo stream in Sarajevo was built Ali Pasha’s Mosque. It was constructed in 1560/61.
Ali Pasha was raised as adzami oglan (janissaries training) in Istanbul, and he later worked in Bosnia and Budapest as governor. Before his death, he left his will in which he requested the construction of this mosque next to his grave with the funds from his vakuf.
“Highest artistic level of classical style of Ottoman architecture was reached on the object of Ali Pasha’s mosque, one of the most beautiful and certainly the best proportioned mosques,” wrote Nedzad Kurto, architect, artist and professor.
Commission to Preserve National Monuments of BiH declared the architectural ensemble – Ali Pasha’s mosque with harem as a national monument in January 2005.
According to the method of proportioning the main architectural parts, the building reflects the full maturity of the classical Ottoman style. It belongs to the rank of the monumental buildings of this kind in Sarajevo, as stated from the Commission to Preserve National Monuments of BiH.
“Object of Ali Pasha’s Mosque is remarkable work of historical architecture and it is located in a wide and spacious park, which has a very well designed horticultural solution made by the architect Smiljan Klaic,” as stated from the Commission.
Park contains a large number of benches, and when the weather is nice, it becomes a small oasis of peace in the middle of the city crowd.
In the park next to the mosque is a cemetery, over hundred years older than mosque, as evidenced by the old tombstones. There was also buried the benefactor Ali Pasha in 1557, but there is no inscription on his gravestone.
“Near the mosque was located a stone bridge over the stream Kosevo, which was built in the sixteenth century, and which was demolished in 1884,” as said from the Commission to Preserve National Monuments of BiH.
Thanks to its stone construction, the mosque resisted the many fires that repeatedly destroyed whole neighborhoods, such as the one back in 1697 when the Austro-Hungarian Prince Eugene of Savoy broke in Sarajevo, and destroyed and burned it. The mosque, after numerous fires, was restored in 1884 by Zagreb architect Ciril Ivekovic.
During the siege of Sarajevo in the recent war in the period from 1992 to 1995, Ali Pasha’s mosque suffered certain damage. The last restoration was done in 2004.
(Source: Radiosarajevo.ba)
