Husein-pasha Mosque

Visiting

This is a working mosque. As in any mosque, take your shoes off at the door, cover shoulders and knees (women also their hair) and avoid prayer times. Beside the mosque stand the šadrvan, the fountain for ablutions, and a 25 m clock tower. Pljevlja is far from the coast: Žabljak is 60.2 km away (about 1 hour 25 minutes by car), Bijelo Polje 68.5 km (about 1 hour 55 minutes) and Podgorica 162 km (about 3 hours 30 minutes).

What to see

• The domes. The building rests on the base of the main dome, with two smaller domes over the mihrab wall and a row of domes over the porch, all in dressed stone.
• The minaret, 42 m of stone, repaired and redecorated several times over the centuries.
• The interior: marble from Alexandria, walls painted with floral motifs and Qur'an quotations, restored by nine conservators over eight months in the works completed in 2006-2007.
• The Qur'an of 1579, commissioned by Husein-pasha: 233 leaves of about 39 by 28.5 cm, 13 lines to a page and 352 miniatures on gold ground, by an unknown calligrapher. It left the building for the first time in December 2016, for an exhibition at the Army House in Pljevlja.
• The carpet of 1573, sent from Egypt, leather-backed and weighing 400 kg.
• A hair of the Prophet's beard, shown only on the 27th night of Ramadan, and an old lunar calendar.

History

Pljevlja grew from a medieval market place into an Ottoman town (kasaba) in the second half of the 16th century and from 1576 to 1833 was the seat of the sanjak-bey of Herzegovina. Husein-pasha Boljanić, born in Boljanići near the town, served the empire as sanjak-bey of Herzegovina, governor of Baghdad and of the Bosnian eyalet, and imperial vizier. His mosque in his home town was built in 1569. The 17th-century traveller Evliya Çelebi compared it with the imperial mosques.

The mosque was classed as a cultural monument of the first category under Montenegro's older categorisation. Its restoration began in 2003, when the Pljevlja coal mine offered to pay for it, with a first donation of EUR 250,000 in 2005; the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Podgorica prepared the studies, Sarajevo firms carried out the building and interior works, and the restoration was completed in 2006-2007. An 80 m wall around the courtyard (harem) followed in 2009. The 450th anniversary was marked on 7-9 June 2019 with a postage stamp and an international conference on Husein-pasha and his endowments.

Nearby

• Monument on Stražica, the memorial above the town.
• The Ćehotina river and the Ćehotina meanders viewpoint.
• The Tara canyon and Durmitor National Park, west and south-west of the town.
• Other churches, monasteries and mosques in Montenegro.