Ferhad-Pasha's Mosque to be Rebuilt in Heart of Bosnian Serb Territory

Two stones are all that is left of Banja Luka's once proud main mosque. Today however, Muslims in the Bosnian Serb capital hope to see Ferhadija finally rebuilt in its 16th century splendor. On the night of May 7 1993, while Bosnia was experiencing the bloodiest combats of the 1992-95 war, a group of Bosnian Serbs set explosives against what was for them a despised symbol of Islam. Eight years later the site where the mosque used to be in the center of Banja Luka, an empty lot covered with grass, does not attract passers-by's attention. There are no signs of the ancient mosque's walls, arches, cupola, fountain, nor of the adjacent mausoleum of its builder who gave it his name, Ferhad-Pasha. It has been eight years since a Muslim priest climbed the 41.5 meter (137 foot) high minaret to call for the prayer. All that remains is the old house of the mufti, which has become the only place where Banja Luka's small Muslim community -- 5,500 today, as compared with 60,000 before the war -- can gather to pray. According to one of them, the first Bosnian pasha under the Ottoman occupation of this region, Ferhad-Pasha, decided to build in Banja Luka a mosque more beautiful than Aja Sofija in Istanbul, and brought in from Dubrovnik and Split a group of the best Serb masons for it. He provided the funds from the 30,000 gold ducats ransom he received to free kidnapped Austrian count Wolf Engelhard von Ausperg. When work was completed in 1579 Ferhad-Pasha had the Serb masons locked up inside the minaret, sentencing them to death so that they could never make anything as beautiful as his pious endowment was. But one night, the legend says, they made artificial wings and flew away from the tower.