SINAN-PACHA MOSQUE

This mosque (Xhamia e Sinan Pashës, Sinan-pašina džamija) is the most beautiful in Prizren. It was completed in 1615 for its patron, Sofi Sinan, a prominent Albanian and former Ottoman governor of Bosnia. Built with stones from the Holy Exchange Monastery, it retains much of its original structure: raised foundations, a square base (about 14 m square), walls 1.65 m thick, a main dome up to 25 m high, a half-dome at the back housing the mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca), and a minaret 43.5 m high. Although the mosque still has its 17th-century wooden frame, it has lost its triple-arched porch topped by three domes. This was destroyed by an explosion in 1919, when the building was used as an ammunition store for the Serbian army. The porch and the stone staircase leading to it were rebuilt in the 1960s-1970s, during which time the interior decoration, which had been damaged by a leak in the lead roofing of the dome, was also redone. The mosque was closed to worship from 1912 onwards, and was briefly converted into a museum in the 1970s to house many documents from the Ottoman period. The municipality wanted to reopen the museum after the Kosovo war. But faced with pressure from local imams and Turkey (which funded further restorations between 2007 and 2013), the mosque was finally reopened for worship in 2011.