The People of Rujnica: Heirs to a Culture of Memory
The old mosque in Rujnica stands as testimony to a community’s awareness of the importance of preserving and inheriting a culture of memory tied to its homeland. Neglect of a culture of memory erases the history of a community
Ramadan is a month of fasting, giving, and renewing faith in the community, but it is also a month of living according to the well-known divine command siru fi al-ard (“travel through the land”). Whether we read media headlines or leaf through magazines, the dominant image throughout Ramadan is one of constant mutual visiting. This divine injunction is especially evident in Bosnia during this month, and it also has its own local particularity. Within our tradition, this Qur’anic phrase led exegetes, in the context of paths of knowledge, to identify one branch of learning known as al-ilm al-hadsi. This is a path that today we recognize in direct observation, brief notes, travel writing, and various journalistic genres. Simply put, it is a path of knowledge whose process requires direct, living, and active contact with people when it comes to social understanding.
In this Ramadan spirit of local Bosnian mutual visiting, the road led us toward Zavidovići, to the village of Rujnica. Our villages are often geographical spaces which, like towns, can be rich with stories, and this village is one such place. It is a village that has much to tell, provided one listens carefully. It is recognizable for its old mosque, which was declared a national monument in 2010. Sixteen years have passed since the mosque in Rujnica was proclaimed a national monument, and in the meantime it has been completely restored. It now stands right next to the new mosque, and according to local residents, prayers or weddings are held there on special occasions. It has been written about and filmed, so information about this mosque—which represents the very identity of the village of Rujnica—is widely available to the public.
This was originally a wooden mosque, and it belongs to the Bosnian geographical space which, due to its forest wealth, is recognizable as a zone of wooden houses in which wooden sacred buildings, mosques and churches, also appear. Bosnian communities have always been adorned with mosques and mesjids, but when Friday came and it was time for Jumu’ah, the inhabitants of villages or quarters where there were only mesjids had to make their way to the mosque. It was the mosque that required the gathering of the community, and as such it was the center around which a more urbanized space was formed. It drew people in, and people went toward it. Although the village stretches considerably in length along the course of the Rujnica River, its center is around the mosque.
Yet because a mosque, by its nature, becomes the center around which a rural or urban quarter moves and is organized, and toward which people go, the old mosque in Rujnica offers a complete reversal in the very relationship to the mosque’s space. The people of this village did not first build a mosque and then direct their daily life toward it—they literally brought it and replanted it. This is the special value of the old mosque in Rujnica. It is testimony to boundaries and belonging, and to how the mental boundaries of a community can be just as significant and important as physical ones, which may change under various factors. People make hijra, leaving the physical space to which they belong, but what usually defines them is their mental bond with the abandoned place. The village of Rujnica and its old mosque thus tell a story of the migration of people and the change of physical space without disturbing mental boundaries.
The Relocation of a Mosque
The story of this old mosque begins as far back as 1903. At that time, in the village of Kurtići, located at the foot of Mount Ozren, a mosque was built and remained in use until the end of the First World War. According to local accounts, passed down from their ancestors, that mosque was dismantled and transported by ox-drawn carts to Rujnica, today a village in the municipality of Zavidovići.
This is a mosque that belongs to the architecture of Bosnian mosques with a hipped roof and a wooden minaret. The relocated mosque served its purpose until 1934, when a new one made of solid material was built on the same site. In the summer of 1936, it was formally opened for prayer. The focus of the story is precisely that relocated wooden mosque from the village of Kurtići, which testifies that physical changes in the boundaries of place and space do not necessarily disturb the mental boundaries of a community. By these boundaries, I mean the very idea of what and to whom a community belongs, and what its values are.
I had a pleasant conversation in this regard with the current imam of the new mosque, Ef. Anis Bandić, as well as Hajji Ađul Frkatović and Šefik Turković, who served as president of the construction committee during the mosque’s restoration. This mosque was brought and “assembled here,” as the late Omer Hodžić used to say, according to the villagers.
The story of the “assembled” old Rujnica mosque was told to me by Hajji Ađul. According to what his father and the older members of the congregation recounted, above Gornja Bočinja there was the village of Kurtići. From there came the Mujanović and Hodžić families, who, after this local migration, continued their lives in Rujnica. There was no mosque in the village, but there was a need for one. The Mujanović family “proposed that the existing wooden mosque in the village of Kurtići be dismantled and transported by ox carts to Rujnica.” The proposal was accepted, and organizing the whole process required a substantial collective effort.
“They went to fetch the mosque, and the means of transport were ox carts. Twenty-five pairs of oxen were organized so that the mosque could be successfully relocated. The wooden mosque in Kurtići was thus dismantled and moved to Rujnica,” the Hajji recounts. By custom, when people in practice travel together across the land, they often do so for special occasions, so one might hear that people “went to such-and-such a wedding.” But in Rujnica, you hear that the people gathered, organized themselves, and went to fetch a mosque. It is said that after they successfully transported that small wooden mosque by ox cart, they assembled it within two to three months, according to Hajji Ađul’s retelling of the stories of the older villagers.
And the mosque built on the same site where that small wooden one once stood was completed within a year, which testifies to the villagers’ organization and determination. The old Rujnica mosque with its wooden minaret is living evidence of how a small community can maintain strong ties with certain aspects of its heritage that it considers an integral part of itself.
What is especially striking on this journey is the realization that the Mujanović and Hodžić families extended the very concept of migration to the mosque itself. Cases and testimonies are rare in which a small community, during migration, decides to dismantle a sacred building and completely transfer it to a new place. I know stories of people carrying some vital parts of a building, or constructing similar ones in the new place as in the homeland they left behind, but this is a story of migrants who, piece by piece, carried an entire mosque with them in order to preserve an authentic collective memory. The old Rujnica mosque reminds us that a community may be relocated and may change the physical boundaries of the space it inhabits, but that does not mean the disappearance of its culture and identity.
Mental Boundaries
As we moved through the mosque courtyard and toward the exit, the conversation with the Hajji and the imam increasingly turned toward the importance of the mosque’s symbolism and everything that makes it so significant. As the inscription in the courtyard says: “The believers of Rujnica have for hundreds of years preserved the light of Allah’s faith / they brought the mosque from a nearby village: in Rujnica it now shines broad and white.”
The relocation of the mosque by ox cart testifies to people’s relationship with the place and environment in which they live. The old Rujnica mosque is distinguished by several features to which its congregation and residents give particular meaning. People become attached to the cultural geography of a place and develop a special feeling for what they recognize as their own. On the basis of building emotional ties between people and place, the identity of that place is formed—an identity that comes from the beliefs and meanings the residents assign to it.
The story of the Rujnica mosque does not end with the mosque’s relocation. Inside it there is a calligraphic levha, somewhat damaged by moisture, divided into four squares, each containing an inscription. The levha dates from 1923/24 and is also under protection. Although it is visibly worn by time, and the inscription in the upper right corner is visible only in traces, it is nevertheless a very tangible witness to the passage of time.
In the upper left corner it is written: “O Sovereign of the Kingdom, protect me from misfortunes that cast me into oblivion; You are the First and the Eternal, the All.” In the original, the word mehalik is used, and its root is the same as in the well-known word helać (ruin, destruction). This is in fact a supplication asking for God’s help so that we may not meet a bad end that would lead us into ruin, disappearance, and oblivion. In truth, this part of the levha in the Rujnica mosque encapsulates its entire symbolism. From its relocation to its restoration, it was never allowed to fall into oblivion—and with it, a large part of the cultural identity of the village of Rujnica.
The former residents of Kurtići thus made their new place of living, Rujnica, safer and more familiar to themselves by relocating the small wooden mosque. That the mental boundaries of a community are not always as secure as physical ones is also evidenced by the controversy among residents over whether the mosque, declared a national monument, should be restored or not. Unlike the families who transferred and reassembled the mosque, there was no local consensus regarding its restoration. The Hajji says that he and an elderly muteveli managed to sway the residents in favor of restoration because, in his words, “there were also voices saying it would be better to demolish the old mosque.”
There were constant negotiations and discussions with the residents about the importance of restoring the mosque. Hajji Ađul says that despite the fact that our people do not have a firmly established awareness or will to preserve cultural heritage, they nevertheless succeeded in restoring the old mosque, thereby showing that with determination and perseverance, cultural identity can be preserved. “Everything is in our heads,” the hajj pilgrim emphasizes—in allowing no physical obstacle to become a mental one as well.
Inheriting a Culture of Memory
The Hajji also laments that our culture of memory was often not written down, but only passed on orally. “This is where we Muslims are weak, because we don’t write down exactly what happened and how. Surely before this mosque that is now here there was a smaller wooden one that was transferred, but we have no records of that—only what others passed down. My father and uncle told me how it was brought by the Bosna River and our own Rujnica.”
Collective memory, both written and oral, plays an important role in the life of a community. It is a blessing to know when and how something significant happened, and to have an awareness of what is important for preserving the collective memory of a place. There is often no consensus within one and the same community on this point, as the case of the old Rujnica mosque demonstrates.
Every urban or rural space has its mental and physical boundaries. Often, especially in Bosnia, due to a series of wars during the last century, physical changes in a community’s boundaries also carried with them a mental redrawing of the map of a place. The visible history of a place would change through the renaming of streets and places, thereby erasing earlier collective memory. With this in mind, Hajji Ađul is himself a witness to how key moments of negotiation determine whether something remains part of collective memory or slips into oblivion.
It is not only the story of the migration of the old wooden mosque from Kurtići to Rujnica that is fascinating in itself, but also the people who spent an entire century with the awareness that they had to preserve it. They were not deterred even by the presence of the new mosque standing right next to it. That space, where two mosques stand side by side, is a very clear testimony to the existence of a community’s mental boundaries—boundaries that represent the flow of collective thought about itself and its surroundings.
The new mosque serves its purpose: prayers are held there, as well as maktab lessons. But the old Rujnica mosque serves as a valuable witness to past times and as a link to the homeland.
The Rujnica Mawlid
Just when I thought the story of the Rujnica mosque had come to an end, I learned still more details. During the mosque’s restoration, it was concluded that two large linden trees had to be removed. According to the testimony of the congregation, these trees had cast broad shade over the courtyard of the old mosque. That shade was especially important during the summer, on the first weekend of the eighth month of the year. It is then that the traditional Rujnica mawlid is held, and summer was chosen because many residents of Rujnica live abroad. Most of them, they say, are in Luxembourg, and summer is an opportunity for them to visit their native village.
The lindens were removed, but the memory of them and the sense of loss remain alive. They are simply further proof of how deeply a person can be connected to the place and environment in which they live. I noticed numbers written in chalk on stones on one side of the mosque. I asked about them, and Šefik Turković told me: “The stone had cracked on the right side. The foundation had been undermined, so we reinforced and concreted it again.”
Care was taken to return each stone to its original place, so they marked every stone with chalk, and by the numbers they knew exactly where each one belonged. The lindens and those stones show just how emotionally attached the people of Rujnica are to their old mosque. It is also a link with the diaspora. Every summer, during the traditional mawlid, this living connection with the homeland is revived. All the people of Rujnica who live abroad, although they have changed their physical boundaries, through their annual return for this mawlid do not allow the light of their mental boundaries to fade.
As the Hajji says of the old mosque: “It was a mosque in this municipality where all the people would gather, including those from nearby places. A traditional mawlid was organized. I remember as a child, the graveyard in front of the mosque would be full whenever this mawlid was held.”
And this summer too, the courtyard of the old Rujnica mosque awaits its people—to gather there and continue nurturing their beautiful tradition.
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