Ferhat Pasha’s mosque, better known as Ferhadija, which was declared a national monument and one of the most significant monuments of sacral architecture of the Ottoman period.
Today’s Ferhadija was built according to the original architectural plan, according to which the first Ferhat Pasha mosque was built, demolished on May 6, 1993 during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and part of the materials of the first demolished Ferhadija were used for construction.
The original Ferhadija was built in 1579, as an endowment of Ferhat Pasha Sokolović, and was under the protection of UNESCO. It is not known who the architect was, but it is assumed that he was one of the students of Kodža Mimar Sinan, a famous Ottoman architect from the 16th century, because Ferhadija has similarities with Mimar’s Muradiye Cami mosque in Manisa.
Ferhat Pasha Sokolović started the construction of this mosque on behalf of the ransom of the son of the Habsburg general, young Wolf Ausperger (whom he captured in the battle on the Radonja River in Croatia after defeating the Habsburg army), in the amount of 30 thousand gold ducats.
In Ferhadija’s courtyard there is the tombstone of Ferhat Pasha, the tombstone of Safi-kaduna, his granddaughter and the tombstone of Ferhat Pasha’s bannermen, in the triangle of which the mosque is located. There is a fountain with 12 fountains at the entrance, and a small cemetery in the back.
The most representative part of the interior of Ferhadija is its portal, built of travertine. Above the entrance door there is a stone tablet with a carved text of a prayer and a stone tarih with construction data.
The height of the minaret is 41.5 meters, which ranks it among the highest in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Author: Marijana Mališanović
The Srpska Times
