By praying the Zuhr prayer and teaching, the central ceremony of the 509th anniversary of Ajvatovica is completed today.
The program of today’s celebration started this morning when a large number of believers were led by horsemen from various parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Prusac to Ajvatovica plateau, MINA reports.
The mufti of Travnik Dr. Ahmed ef. Adilovic, addressed the gathered guests as a host, welcomed the guests with the traditional speech and reminded on the tradition and culture which has been marked in this area for more than five centuries.
“The motto of this year’s Ajvatovica is inspirational: They are proud of their faith, tradition and homeland. With this motto, we point to three extremely important elements of our identity, which are a precondition for the survival of our people. Since we are a people in these beautiful Bosnian and Herzegovinian territories, there were controversies and rages on us, as well as other elements of our identity, such as a nation, a language, etc. There were, and today are, those who blame our ancestors for leaving religion of their ancestors, that we do not have our culture and tradition, nor our language, so we cannot be a people and we cannot have our own language and our homeland. It is clear that they are malicious people who have pretensions to other peoples and territories and who have often attacked us and our homeland,” Mufti Adilovic emphasized.
Ajvaz-Dedo, by which the spring and the surroundings were named Ajatovica, came into today’s Prusac from the East after the Turkish conquest of Bosnia. He was a learned and highly ambitious man who worked tirelessly on improving his new homeland and the education of the people.
A river Prensa flows through Prusac (the former name of the settlement), which even at that time was not good for drinking, nor were the numerous wells sufficient for the needs of the place. According to legend Ajvaz-dedo, not far from Prusac, found a powerful spring of water but the spring had been shut off by a rock 74 meters long and 30 meters wide.
The rock obstructed the construction of a running water system so this bold and godly good doer spent 40 days praying to Allah to split the rock. On the fortieth morning, following his prayers, Ajvaz-dedo dreamt that two white rams collided and split the rock. When he awoke, he saw the rock split in half. Along the newly formed canyon wooden pipes were placed to take water into Prusac.
Seeing it as a sign of God’s miracle and blessing, people began going on pilgrimages to the place where the rock had split.
It is not certain when the first “pilgrimage to Ajvatovica” was held. It is interesting that the “pilgrimage to Ajvatovica” finds its periodic time frame in the tradition of the country of Bosnia, since it is not tied to any Hijri calendar for any of the two only constitutively certain Muslim holidays. Specifically, the commemoration of the Day of Ajvatovica falls on every seventh Monday by St. George’s Day.
