By Adriana Gașpar | Researcher at 'Vasile Pârvan' Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest, Romania

Description

The traces of the Ali Bey Mosque are located in the city of Timișoara in the western part of Romania. It was an important mosque in Timișoara fortress when it functioned as a province of the Ottoman Empire (1552–1716). At that time, the fortress represented a unit that was formed according to the topography of the area, composed of the castle or citadel, the fortified town, and two suburbs, called “Big Palanka" and “Small Palanka”. The Ali Bey Mosque was erected in the fortified city, very close to the main mosque called Suleyman Mosque, probably the first one built after 1552 when Timișoara was transformed into an Ottoman province. Although the documents do not yet provide certainty about the year of construction, it is possible that the Ali Bey Mosque was built and put into use after 1663-64, perhaps as early as 1665 when the vakıf or the charitable institution established by a certain Ali Pasha was functional. It is possible that the mosque was part of the complex of buildings of this institution and was named after its founder, Ali Bey. Until 1664, the mosque did not feature in the descriptions of the Ottoman historian, writer, and traveler Evliya Ҫelebi who visited Timișoara for the last time in 1664, nor in the sketches and spy reports of the Austrian Henrich Ottendorf who visited Timișoara in 1663, when he was part of the Austrian delegation led by Ambassador von Goes to the Pasha of Belgrade.

The first information about the construction of this mosque dates to around 1699 when the structure was marked on the city plan, drawn up by the architect Radogna Meimer. In the military conflict of 1716, the Habsburg troops defeated the Ottoman army, and the Habsburgs took over the administration of Timișoara. The plans of Timișoara fortress, made in 1716, indicate that the Ali Bey Mosque was near the Pasha's House and it was among the few buildings that survived the previously mentioned siege. With the end of Ottoman rule in the eyalet (administrative division of the Ottoman Empire) and the departure of the Ottoman population from Timișoara, many of the Muslim places of worship were demolished or repurposed. The building of the Ali Bey Mosque survived. In 1727, it still appears marked on a map from the Austrian period. The building was probably used as a warehouse, like other similar ones in Timișoara.

Significance

During the first years of Habsburg rule, the Ottoman fortress of Timișoara, fortified with palisades and a defensive ditch, was rebuilt from the ground up, according to the plans of a bastion fortification. The massive walls of the new construction would exceed the area occupied by the fortified city, which is why many of the buildings erected during the Ottoman administration were gradually demolished and entire areas were leveled. That is why no building in Timișoara dating to the 164-years of Ottoman Empire control has survived. Only archaeological investigations covering overlapping areas of the Ottoman city perimeter capture parts or foundations left in the free spaces between the buildings erected after 1716.

The foundations of Ali Bey Mosque were brought back to light in the archaeological campaign of 2014–15 when, on the occasion of the modernization works of the “Historical Center” of the city, several archaeological excavations were carried out. The mosque's location was known from the overlay of the historical plans over the current ones, later confirmed by the archaeological excavations. Two opposite corners were discovered that closed the plan of a rectangular building, with walls raised from rows of bricks and supported by a complex foundation. From the point of view of the construction technique, a trench was dug, as wide as the foundation of the building. Along its bottom, groups of split oak trunks were beaten to the ground level, over which was placed a reinforcement consisting of beams of wood, fixed with iron nails. To fix the arrangement, a mixture of lime mortar, broken brick and tiles were poured into the trench. The archaeological research only captured the empty spaces of rectangular sections, which remained visible in the mortar, resulting from the rotting of the wooden beams in the reinforcement, but also the iron nails with which they were fixed. Walls were built of brick courses and fixed with mortar and raised over this foundation. The upper part of which was heavily affected by modern works in the area.

After the data was gathered, it was revealed that the rectangular plan formed a construction measuring 12.5 x 11.50 m. In the vicinity of its eastern side, a wall 2.70 m long and 0.60 m thick was also discovered, which could have belonged to a room. Regarding the interior elements, the archaeological research has captured part of the brick pavement, but also a mihrab-oriented southeast, an important element in the interior structure of a mosque, indicating the direction to Mecca, the most important pilgrimage center of Muslims. Around Ali Bey Mosque, 55 graves were also discovered, some with gravestones.

The presence of artifacts in the context of Ali Bey Mosque indicates activity in this area starting from the second half of the 17th century, a fact that confirms the historical information. The evidence revealed a fragment of a Chinese white porcelain mug, stylized on the inside and outside with vegetal and floral decoration - in cobalt blue on a white base, along with a knife handle made of horn, but also three smoking pipes, two of which are made of kaolin paste and one of red clay. The presence of several stove tiles discovered inside the mosque room could indicate the existence of a heating stove.

Currently, the foundation walls of the Ali Bey Mosque are no longer visible in the open air. After the archaeological research, the entire structure was covered with sand and protected in situ, the outline of the discovered walls was marked on the pavement above with a different color.

The importance of the discovery of the walls of the Ali Bey Mosque is also of great interest to universal history because it refers to elements that were part of the religious life of one of the most important Ottoman provinces (Timișoara Eyalet), which for 164 years was in the contact zone with the Christian world.

The discovery of the Ali Bey mosque brings new perspectives on how religion was practised and reintegrated into the daily life of the community in the fortress of Timișoara throughout the 17th century. The exceptional archaeological data completes the still unknown historical information and represents a starting point through which we can understand better the role of places of worship in the process of Islamization of a Christian city.

Further Reading

Călători străini despre Ţările Române, vol. VI, partea a II- a, Evliya Çelebi, edited by Mustafa Ali Mehmet. Bucharest: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1976.

In the series Călători străini despre Ţările Române, in volume VI (pp. 498–500), there are extensive and valuable descriptions of the Romanian countries, Moldova, Wallachia and Transylvania, in the 17th century, as they were seen by the Turkish Muslim traveler Evliya Çelebi ( 1611–1684?).

Gașpar, Adriana. "Places of Worship from the Ottoman Period in Timișoara, Romania." In Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, edited by Elek Benkő, Dénes Gabler, vol. 74, issue 1 (2023): 149–74.

This paper deals with Muslim places of worship and their evolution during the Ottoman rule in Timișoara (1552–1716). The analysis was carried out on the basis of written historical documentation and archaeological results related to the religious structures such as mosques, other places of worship (mescid) and monastic centres of dervishes (tekke, zâviye and türbe).

Henrik, Ottendorf. De la Viena la Timişoara, 1663. Von Wien auff Temeswar, 1663. Becstol Temesvârig, 1663. Od Beca do Temisvara, 1663. Traslated in Romanian by Marlen Negrescu; in Hungarian by Hermann Egyed; and in Serbian by Liubomir Stepanov, Timișoara, 2006.

The work contains a description of the fortress of Timișoara by Henrik Ottondorf, written in the first six months of 1663. He was a member of the Austrian delegation to the Pasha of Belgrade in 1663, led by the ambassador Baron von Goes. In addition to his role as a mediator, Ottendorf also had to identify the most important Ottoman military objectives, in order to prepare an Austrian military campaign against the Ottomans.

Opriș, Mihai. Timișoara. Monografie urbanistică, vol. I, Timișoara, 2007.

The work represents a monograph of the city of Timișoara based on written documents that includes plans, execution projects regarding the field of urban planning and architecture.