KURSHUMLI MOSQUE
This mosque (Xhamia e Kushumliut, Kuršumlija džamija) is surrounded by a small park and a cemetery with old Muslim graves. It is one of the four historic mosques in the city, together with the Bajrakli Mosque, the Defterdar Mosque and the Bulla-Zadeja-Hasan Mosque (next to the Haxhi-Bey Hammam). Built between 1577 and 1580, it was burned down by Serbian nationalists in 1999 and renovated in 2011 with the help of Turkey. Its name is a distortion of the Turkish word kurşuni (lead), which recalls that it originally had a large dome made of lead plates. Some of the city's inhabitants still call it xhamia e Plumbit ("Lead Mosque"). Several buildings with the same name can be found throughout the Balkans, such as the Lead Mosque in Shkodra (Albania) or the Kuršumlija Mosque in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Its patron was Mere Hüseyin Pasha (c. 1540-1624), a powerful and bloodthirsty Albanian clan leader from Peja/Peć who later became governor of Egypt, and then twice briefly grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire just before being executed for incompetence and embezzlement. The architecture of the Kushumli Mosque is simple and typical of Sunni places of worship in the Balkans during the Ottoman era. Built of stone and mortar, the building is square in shape and covered with tiles, preceded by a porch and dominated by a high minaret. The finely carved and painted wooden interior decoration was replaced during the 2011 restoration.
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