MOSQUÉE DE MLIKE/MLIKA
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Surrounded by forest and crossed by the Brod river, the village of Mlike/Mlika has about 90 inhabitants (97% Gorans) and houses an amazing mosque (Mlička džamija, Xhamia e Mlikës). It is not the architecture of this one that surprises. It is a modest and square building, flanked by a small minaret. The whole was built in the twentieth century, probably on the site of an old mosque. But the building still has an old Arabic inscription indicating that a certain Ahmed-Aga had a mosque built here in the year 688 of the hegira, that is to say in the year 1288 or 1289 of the Gregorian calendar. If the inscription is correct, it means that the first mosque of Mlike/Mlika was built more than a century before the arrival of the Ottomans. The inhabitants of the region believe this. The proof is that several families in the Gora have the surname Halepovci and are descendants of Arabs from Aleppo, Syria. The local theory is that the mosque was built by Muslim masons from Aleppo driven out at the time of the Crusades. In fact, Syrians did flee at that time, but were driven out by the Mongols who took Aleppo in 1260. Some then found refuge with the Byzantines, who were much more tolerant than the Catholic kings towards Muslims. From this, one can imagine that the Serbian kings, more or less allies of the Byzantines, accepted that Syrians settle in the remote region of Gora. Perhaps. But no serious historian has yet looked into the matter.
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