Moving buildings in Bosnia
posted by istanbul on 2009/06/24 10:12
[ From the Media ]
A rather odd event took place in Divic/Bosnia recently: That community's mosque had been destroyed during the war in 1992 and was now to be rebuilt. In the meantime (and not by mere coincidence), however, a church had been built on the mosque's foundations. Proposals to built a new mosque nearby or to simply add a minaret to the new church were put down, the Islamic Community of Bosnia insisting on this particular site. The compromise reached: the Community paid almost 200,000 euros to move the church a couple of hundred meters away so that the mosque can be "rebuilt" on its original location. Some (quite rightfully) found it rather odd that the IC had to pay for this move, while local Serbs see it as a move toward improving interfaith relations. (Full article: here.)< previous Posting next >
<< previous Topic next >>
Balkancities
Welcome to [BalkanCities], a weblog established to serve a "community of interest" holding stake in a diverse but interconnected range of topics (Urban and Architectural History, Cultural Heritage, -Policy, -History, -Studies, Urban Life and -Development) related to the study of cities of Southeast Europe. Readers are encouraged to participate in this process, either through adding comments to existing postings or posting news to the editor, Maximilian Hartmuth. To subscribe to the notification service (a roughly monthly digest), send a blank email to this address.
Antworten
Tanja M. had some technical difficulties with posting a(n interesting) comment, so she sent it to me:
"Moving buildings is a known practice in the cultures where people bring different cultural artifacts with them, including also relocation of bones of many national representatives, for example. Thus the Orthodox church Sv. Arhangela Mihajla i Gavrila in Munjava in Croatia was relocated to from a Catholic to an Orthodox village, in the first half of the 18th century. Or, a very famous case is so-called Inat kuca in Sarajevo, relocated from the place where Gradska vijecnica should have been built, to the other side of Miljacka. As it can be checked, the moving process was always done and paid by the institution or the group of people which/who suggested it...
And yes, building churches and mosques on the each other foundations certainly have never happened by coincidence. This was actually the sign of respect and belief that the place where a sacral building once existed must be a special place, the most convenient for locating the object with similar purpose. Therefore, a case of Divic is not so odd event as it presented in the media, or as it could seem from Western point of view. The best thing is it happened by compromise and peacefully.
This is not even characteristic only for the Balkans. For instance, two years ago a church building was moved from Heuersdorf to Borna in Germany, or the case of the Møstings Hus in Copenhagen -- where, by the way, Balkan literature was promoted -- was moved only about 200 meters in order to be closer to some lake."