Sultan Sulayman’s Mosque in Jajce from its Foundation (1528) until the Second World War (1941)

Abstract

After the conquest of Jajce in 1528, by order of the Ottoman rule, the former Church of St. Mary was converted into a mosque which was named after the then sultan, namely Sultan Suleyman’s Mosque or the Emperor’s Mosque. Without referring to the pre-Ottoman period of the construction and activities of St. Mary’s Church for which our literature accumulated considerable material, this paper will focus on the period of the foundation of the mosque in 1528 until the beginning of the Second World War. Based on the archival material and published sources, this paper tries to explain why St. Mary’s Church had been converted into a mosque and how that had been done. More significant events from the history of the mosque are highligted, and also imams, hatibs, muezzins and other mosque officials are portrayed chronologically to the present day. Special attention is focused on the history of Sultan Sulayman’s Mosque in the 19th century when a fire broke out at the mosque, and it has never been restored to the present day. Referring to the sources from the archives of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the author has pointed to the causes of the fact that the mosque was not restored after the fire.