Story

The story of Ferhat Pasha Mosque

Ferhat Pasha Mosque

There is a legend about the slender minaret above you. When the mosque was finished in 1579, Ferhad Pasha Sokolović is said to have locked the masons inside it, condemning them to death so that they could never build anything so beautiful again. But one night they made themselves wings and flew away.

The money for the building, tradition says, came from the Auersperg family, who paid for the severed head of the Habsburg general Herbard VIII von Auersperg and a ransom for his son after a battle on the Croatian border in 1575. The design most probably came from a pupil of Mimar Sinan, the Ottoman chief architect. Its minaret reached 43 metres, and in the courtyard stood an ablution fountain with twelve pipes. On the night of 6 to 7 May 1993, during the Bosnian War, the mosque was blown up, and the levelled site was turned into a parking lot.

It reopened on 7 May 2016.

This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗

Hear this story on the spot, in a natural voice

On Sightlore, the story of Ferhat Pasha Mosque is narrated in a natural voice in 5 languages. When you arrive, say "I'm here" and get your passport stamp.

8 more stories from Banja Luka in the app

Coming soonApp StoreAn Android version is on the way.