Gradacac · BA

Reuf-Begova džamija

On Titova street in the small Bosnian town of Gradačac stands the Reuf-Begova Mosque (Reuf-begova džamija), also called the Hadži Reuf-beg or Nova “new” mosque. It is a working neighbourhood place of worship whose real treasure lies beside it: a walled harem of 19th-century Ottoman gravestones, officially declared a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the curious traveller it offers a quiet, authentic glimpse of Ottoman-era civic life rather than a polished tourist site. The mosque was raised around 1878–1893 on the foundations of an earlier mesdžid founded by Begefendija Gradaščević c. 1835, funded largely by hadži Reuf-beg Gradaščević, a scion of the beg family that once ruled Gradačac. When Reuf-beg died in 1893 he was buried in the very courtyard of the mosque that bears his name.