Pursuant to Article V para.

4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for

Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Article 39 para. 1 of the Rules of Procedure of the
Commission to Preserve National Monuments, at a session held from 7 to 11 October 2003
the Commission adopted a

DECISION

The site and remains of the architectural ensemble of the Azizija mosque with
harem in Brezovo Polje, Brko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is hereby designated as
a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the National Monument).
The National Monument is located on cadastral plot no. 1322, cadastral municipality
Brezovo Polje, Brko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: Brko District).
The provisions relating to protection and rehabilitation measures set forth by the Law
on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments,
established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia
and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of Brko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina, no. 2/02)
shall apply to the National Monument.

II

The Government of Brko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the

Government of Brko District) shall be responsible for ensuring and providing the legal,
scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures necessary to protect, conserve,
display and rehabilitate the National Monument.
The Government of Brko District shall be responsible for providing the resources for
drawing up and implementing the necessary technical documentation for the rehabilitation of
the National Monument.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(hereinafter: the Commission) shall determine the technical requirements and secure the
funds for preparing and setting up signboards with the basic data on the monument and the
Decision to proclaim the property a National Monument.

III

To ensure the on-going protection of the National Monument, the following measures
are hereby stipulated:
the building of the Azizija mosque in Brezovo polje shall be reconstructed on its
original site, in its original form, using the original or the same type of materials and
original building methods, based on information on its previous appearance which forms
an integral part of this Decision
all original fragments of the demolished building found on the site shall be registered,
recorded and reintegrated into the reconstructed building. Until such time as they are so
reintegrated they shall be properly preserved;
fragments that are too badly damaged to be reintegrated shall be conserved and
preserved appropriately within the building;
the harem shall be surveyed epigraphically, landscaped and damaged nian tombstones
repaired;
the Government of Brko District is responsible as a matter of urgency for providing the
financial, scientific and technical measures for the protection and consolidation of the
parts of the building that survived demolition (dug out wall foundations, fragments of the
building etc.) and for finding and restoring to the site fragments that were removed to
dumps;

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 on plots c.p. 1323,1321,1319,1318,1317, which border on c.p. 1322, the restoration,
reconstruction and adaptation of existing buildings and the construction of new residential
buildings of a maximum of two storeys (6.50 m to the base of the roof) with pitched roofs
is permitted. The construction of manufacturing and catering facilities on these plots is
not permitted.

IV

All executive and area development planning acts not in accordance with the
provisions of this Decision are hereby revoked.

Everyone, and in particular the competent authorities of Brko District, shall refrain
from any action that might damage the National Monument specified in Clause I of this
Decision or jeopardize the preservation and rehabilitation thereof.

VI

The Government of Brko District, the authority responsible for regional planning in
Brko District and the heritage protection authority of Brko District shall be notified of this
Decision in order to carry out the measures stipulated in Articles II to V of this Decision, and
the Authorized Municipal Court shall be notified for the purposes of registration in the Land
Register.

VII

The elucidation and accompanying documentation form an integral part of this

Decision, which may be viewed by interested parties on the premises or by accessing the
website of the Commission (http://www.aneks8komisija.com.ba)
.
IX

Pursuant to Art. V para 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, decisions of the Commission are final.

This Decision shall enter into force on the date of its adoption and shall be published
in the Official Gazette of BiH.

This Decision has been adopted by the following members of the Commission:
Zeynep Ahunbay, Amra Hadimuhamedovi, Dubravko Lovrenovi, Ljiljana evo and Tina
Wik.

No:02-60402/03-4 Chair of the Commission

7 October 2003
Sarajevo Amra Hadimuhamedovi

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 Elucidation

I INTRODUCTION

Pursuant to Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions

of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the
General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a National
Monument is an item of public property proclaimed by the Commission to Preserve National
Monuments to be a National Monument pursuant to Articles V and VI of Annex 8 of the
General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: Annex 8)
and property entered on the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and
Herzegovina (Official Gazette of BiH no. 33/02) until the Commission reaches a final
decision on its status.
At a session held on 14 July 2000 the Commission issued a Decision to add the
Azizija Mosque to the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
numbered as 155.
Pursuant to the provisions of the law, the Commission proceeded to carry out the
procedure for reaching a final decision to designate the Property as a National Monument,
pursuant to Article V of Annex 8 and Article 35 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission
to Preserve National Monuments.

II PROCEDURE PRIOR TO DECISION

In the procedure preceding the adoption of a final decision to proclaim the property a
national monument, the following documentation was inspected:

Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (copy of
cadastral plan and copy of land registry entry)
Current condition of the property
Data on the current condition and use of the property, including a description and
photographs, data of war damage, data on restoration or other works on the property if
any, etc.
Historical, architectural and other documentary material on the property, as set out in the
bibliography forming part of this Decision.

The findings based on the review of the above documentation and the condition of
the site are as follows:

1. Details of the property

Location
The Azizija mosque is situated some 14 km east of Brko, on the Brko Bijeljina
road, in the settlement of Brezovo Polje, in Savska street. It is on a site comprising c.p.
1322, land registry entry no. 328, in the sole ownership of the Islamic Community of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Brezovo Polje 84, Brko; c.m. Brezovo Polje, Brko District, Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Access to the harem is from the south, from Savska street. The northern border of
the harem is formed by the Sava river.
The main axis of the mosque lies north-west/south-east. The entrance is on the
north-west. The mihrab wall is to the south-west
In addition to the mosque, the cadastral plot in question also contains a burial ground
(to the south-east, east and north of the mosque), a house with accommodation for an imam
and jamaat offices, and an outbuilding alongside the house (west of the mosque)..

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 Historical data
Brezovo Polje in its present form developed rapidly as a settlement from 1862 on,
when 295 Muslim households of refugees from Serbia were settled there (116 from Uice,
148 from abac and 31 from Soko). The part of the settlement dating from that time, which
forms the greater part of present-day Brezovo Polje, is known as Novo (New) Brezovo Polje
(Imamovi, 1997, 330). Many refugees from Serbia stayed in Bosnia, most of them in the
region along the south bank of the Sava (Brko, Oraje, Bijeljina, Bosanski amac, Bosanski
Brod, Bosanska Kostajnica, etc.). Since this led to increased numbers of Muslims in these
towns, there was a growing need to build certain facilities, including religious buildings. This
is why it was only in the northern regions of Bosnia that the construction of religious buildings
reached a peak not in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but at a time when the
Ottoman Empire was in deep crisis. At a time when Bosnia and Herzegovina was facing
uprisings and insurrections and the struggle for autonomy, which significantly impoverished
the country, the construction of mosques, particularly monumental ones such as the Azizija in
Brezovo Polje, was distinctly unusual. The Azizija mosque is one of the largest buildings
dating from the declining years of Ottoman rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was erected in
1862 with funds from the imperial coffers. It took its name from the ruler of the day, Sultan
Abdul Aziz, the son of Murat V, who ruled from 1861 to 1876. During his reign, state funds
were used to build three mosques (the Azizija in Brezovo Polje, 1862; the Azizija in Oraje,
1863; and the Azizija in Bosanska Kostajnica, 1862), as well as to rebuild the arija mosque
in Zenica, originally erected during the reign of Sultan Ahmed. In some settlements the
refugees themselves, among whom were many very wealthy people, erected new mosques.
The construction of the Azizija mosque was the result of events in Serbia during the
reign of Milo and Mihajl Obrenovi (1858-1867), when the Serbian authorities were trying to
make the issue of the Muslim population in Serbia the focus of international interest.
An incident in Belgrade on 3 June 1862, when a fight broke out by the ukur fountain
in which a Serb youth was killed, was used as the pretext for anti-Turk demonstrations,
and the local Muslim inhabitants were forced to take cover in the fortress under the
protection of the Ottoman garrison. The town of Belgrade was then shelled from the fortress.
The entire incident was the immediate cause of an international conference in Kanlica (a
small town on the Asia Minor shore of the Bosphorus), at which it was decided, on 22
September 1862, that the Muslim population must leave Serbia. At the end of 1862 there
began organized departures of the Muslims from Uice and Soko for Bosnia, where the
Ottoman authorities built two new settlements for them on the Sava, Gornja (Upper) and
Donja (Lower) Azizija (named for Sultan Abdul Aziz), now known as Bosanski amac and
Oraje. Although Muslims had left Serbia and settled in Brezovo Polje in the previous year, it
was in 1862 that the new mosque, the largest in the entire region, was erected.

2. Description of the property

The Azizija mosque was of the centrally domed type of mosque with covered sofas
and stone minaret. It was perfectly symmetrical in form.
The mosque was a substantial building in the centre of a small settlement, a fairly
rare feature.
The Azizija mosque was the only mosque in BiH with very distinct features deriving
from the influence of the baroque on Ottoman architecture.
The mosque was entered through open sofas. At each of the four corners of the right
and left hand sofas was a group of three cylindrical columns with simple capitals. These
eight groups of three columns were linked by arches with a span of 2.5 m on the entrance
facade and of 1.5 m on the lateral facades. The sofas had a pent roof, originally clad with
quarry stone slabs.
The Azizija mosque measured 14.50 x 18.50 m with the sofas; the central area
measured 14.50 x 14.50 m. The walls were of solid stone, with a thickness of from 1.40 to
2.0 m, and were plastered.

4
 The interior of the mosque was basically circular in form, with four semi-circular
niches projecting towards the south, north, east and west. The diameter of the main area of
the mosque was 11.05 m and of the semicircular niches 1.25 m.
There was a dome over the central area, resting on an octagonal drum, with the
thrust transferred to structural arches via pendentives. There were eight windows in the
drum. The height of the building from the floor of the mosque to the top of the dome was
about 17 m.
The windows in the central section of the mosque were unusually high (1 m wide and
3 m high), set in a single row only, with three on the lateral and two each on the entrance and
mihrab walls.
The stone minaret was located to the right of the entrance to the mosque, alongside
the south-west wall. It was built of sandstone from one of the northern Bosnian quarries.
Following a petrographic analysis as part of the rehabilitation project, it will be possible to
determine its nature and origin. It was not plastered. The entrance to the mosque was from
the central prayer space of the mosque.
The base of the minaret was octagonal, and the barrel was sixteen-sided. The
minaret was 30 m high without the alem. The erefe (balcony, gallery) was at a height of
19.5 m. The balustrade of the octagonal erefe was made of wrought iron decorated with
geometric motifs. The height of the minaret to the base of the steeple was 24.60 m.
The portal of the mosque was simple, 1.62 m wide, terminating in a round arch.
The mihrab, which was in line with the portal, was set between structural pillars with
richly moulded capitals, thereby occupying an entire field of the arch widthwise. The mihrab
niche was surrounded by a double row of mouldings. The upper part of the surround was
decorated with a crown with stylized buds set in a single row. The interior surface of the
niche was divided into four parts by horizontal mouldings. The upper part of the mihrab niche
consisted of a semicircular arch.
The wooden mimber was highly ornate and its proportions were in harmony with the
space. The mimber consisted of an entrance section, steps and baldaquin.
To the left of the mihrab was a simply decorated urs.
The interior of the mosque was paved with regular dressed stone slabs, measuring
32 x 32 cm, set at an angle of 45 to the main axis of the mosque (portal mihrab). Details
of the stone paving and photographs are to be found in the documentation of Prof. Husref
Redi, but since no trace of the paving slabs has yet been found since the demolition of the
mosque, the type of stone cannot be stated, although it may be assumed, on the basis of
analogy, to have been the same type of sandstone as that used to build the minaret.
The wooden mahfil extended along the entire inner side of the north-east wall, with a
width of about 2.5 m. It was reached via the staircase to the minaret. The central part of the
mahfil (the place for the muezzin) was set above the entrance to the mosque and was four
steps higher than the left and right sections of the mahfil.
The Azizija mosque is the only mosque in BiH built in the baroque style. It features
not only the Turkish baroque (which lasted in the Ottoman empire from 1757 to 1808) but
also the belated influence of the baroque from Austria and Hungary. The influence of the
baroque on the construction of the Azizija mosque, and indeed the influence of the baroque
on the architecture of BiH as a whole, requires further analysis.

Harem of the mosque:

Alongside the Azizija mosque is a graveyard with a considerable number of nian
tombstones dating from various periods from the late nineteenth century on. One that stands
out in size and treatment is the tombstone of Mustaf-aga Hadegri, a refugee from abac,
dated 26 September 1902, surrounded with an iron railing. (Mujezinovi, 1998, p. 164)

3. Legal status to date

By Ruling of the National Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments and
Natural Rarities of NRBiH no: 725/54 the building was placed under the protection of the
state.

5
 The regional plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina to 2002 listed the Azizija mosque in
Brezovo Polje under serial no. 58 as a Category II building.
The Azizija mosque is listed under serial no. 155 on the Provisional List of National
Monuments of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments.

4. Research and conservation and restoratio works

During World War II the mosque was damaged by cannon fire, when half of the
minaret was knocked down and there was major damage to the portico and dome.
After World War II the building was placed under the protection of the state.
Repairs to the mosque lasted some ten years (1964-1974). The works were carried
out by local people following instructions from the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural,
Historical and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is no documentation on
the renovation of the building. It can be seen from written evidence in the possession of the
Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina that experts from the Institute supervised the renovation works on the mosques,
providing instructions and drawings. According to their reports, the renovation works were
carried out using original material, other than the minaret steps which were made of
concrete. In addition, a reinforced concrete ring was added , according to the person in
charge of restoration, so as to repair the portico, which was quite badly damaged. The stone
slabs in the porch were covered with concrete, all the interior decoration on the wall plaster,
which was presumably of rich baroque nature, was removed, and the restoration was carried
out fairly inexpertly.
The Azizija mosque was reopened on 8 September 1974, since when there have
been no further works on the building.

4. Current condition of the property

The Azizija mosque was dynamited and razed to the ground in summer 1992. Almost
all the fragments were removed from the site to an unknown destination.
Local people from Brezovo Polje have launched an initiative to rehabilitate the
building. The site has been cleared, the original foundations excavated, the material found
has been sorted on the site of the mosque, and the few fragments of the minaret that were
recovered have been recorded.
The mosque graveyard is damaged.

III CONCLUSION

Applying the Criteria for the adoption of a decision on proclaiming an item of property
a national monument (Official Gazette of BiH nos. 33/02 and 15/03), the Commission has
enacted the Decision cited above.
The Decision was based on the following criteria:
A. Time frame
B. Historical value
D. Clarity
D. iv. evidence of a particular type, style or regional manner
E. Symbolic value
E.ii. religious value
E.v. significance for the identity of a group of people
H. Rarity and representativity
H.i. unique or rare example of a certain type or style

The following documents form an integral part of this Decision:

- Copy of cadastral plan
- Copy of land register entry and proof of title;
- Photodocumentation;

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 - Drawings

Bibliography

During the procedure to designate the Azizija mosque in Brezovo Polje as a national
monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the following works were consulted:

Beirbegovi, Madida, Damije sa drvenom munarom u Bosni i Hercegovini (Mosques with

wooden minarets in BiH), Sarajevo Publishing, 1999, pp. 39,52,
Enciklopedija likovnih umjetnosti, (Encyclopaedia of the Fine Arts), publ. Lexicographic
Institute of FNRJ, Zagreb, 1962, vol. II, p. 159,
Imamovi, Mustafa, Historija Bonjaka, (History of the Bosniacs) publ. Preporod Bosniac
Cultural Society publishing co, Sarajevo, 1997, p. 330,
Journal of the Supreme Islamic Council in SFRJ, XXVI/1963, no.: 7-8, pp. 308-311, 1997.
Mujezinovi, Mehmed, Islamska epigrafika Bosne i Hercegovine, (Islamic Epigraphics of BiH)
Vol II, 3rd ed., Cultural Heritage Series, Sarajevo Publishing, 1998, p. 164,
Prelog, Miroslav, Povijest Bosne u doba Osmanlijske vlade, period 1739 1878 (History of
Bosnia under the Ottomans, 1739-1878), Vol. II, Foundation J. Studnike & Co, 1890,
p. 101.
Documentation of the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of BiH