by Prof. Muhamed Mufaku. Translation Petrit Latifi.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of imprisonment.
Rrystem Shporta with his son-in-law Osman Drini. Photo taken from Koha.
The year 1924 was significant for two cities with tradition, Prizren and Skopje, the first and second centers of the Vilayet of Kosovo, which were targets for urban and demographic changes by the new Serbian government that declared them two centers of medieval Serbia, which was now called “Southern Serbia”.
In this spirit, the Serbian government attacked and demolished the symbols of local culture in the name of new urban plans, which prompted Albanians to make political and legal resistance to protect their buildings. Thus, the year 1924 marked the demolition of the Burmalia Mosque, or “Beauty of Skopje”, on the banks of the Vardar River in order to build the “Officers’ House” in its place so that the appearance of Skopje could be changed as soon as possible.
30 mosques were converted into military barracks in 1914
As for Prizren, which suffered greatly during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and World War I (1914-1918), the Albanian population was greatly challenged in those years, experiencing the fate of cultural monuments very badly. Thus, Noel Malcolm in his book “Kosovo, a Short History” cites a report by the Austrian consul from January 1914 that shows that out of 32 mosques in the city, 30 were converted into military barracks, ammunition depots and stables. Understandably, this occupation and mistreatment of the mosques of Prizren deeply affected the feelings of the Albanian population.
Serbs destroyed Albanian monuments in Prizren
On the other hand, in the name of the new urbanization of the city, which began in 1913, many traditional houses and cultural monuments in the city were now endangered. Thus, the Serbian government hastily destroyed the Mahmut Pasha Rrotla complex with all the guest houses, the mosque and the madrasa, as well as many other monuments including the High School and the Normal School that were in the courtyard of the Sinan Pasha Mosque.
The Battle in Defense of the Sinan Pasha Mosque
The Sinan Pasha Mosque (built in 1615) was the pearl of Prizren and a very symbolic monument for the local population, so it became a target of the Serbian government, because with the destruction of these symbols of the city, the spirit of the population was broken and they were pushed to move to Turkey.
However, the resistance against the demolition of the mosque turned into a legal battle after the Serbian Orthodox Church demanded the demolition of the Sinan Pasha Mosque and the return of the land to the Church, allegedly because this mosque was built with the stones of the Holy Archangel Monastery near Prizren.
This legal battle continued until the end of 1940, when the District Court in Prizren announced the final decision to demolish the mosque since it was considered the property of the Serbian Church. However, the procedure was delayed a little until April 1941 when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was shattered and Prizren was revived within ethnic Albania 1941-1944 and, thus, the Sinan Pasha Mosque was saved.
In fact, I have published something about this battle around the Sinan Pasha Mosque, which thanks to Hasan Kalesh was debunked in 1972 the Serbian legend about the destruction of the monastery to build the mosque, in this m; before. But now it is time to introduce the figure of the mufti of Prizren, Rrystem Shporta, who led the demonstrations to protect the Sinan Pasha Mosque and was imprisoned for many years in prisons in Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia.
Rrystem Shporta (1864-1937) – A Life in Prison
Rrystem Shporta (1864-1937) can be considered one of the most prominent figures of Prizren during the Serbian and Yugoslav rule 1918-1941, both as a patriot and as a man of culture who knew several languages and left a rich library that included several of his works. As such, he deserves to have his 160th birthday commemorated this year by the Kosovo Archives, which owns several of his original works.
Indeed, data on this figure were scarce until 2010, when Resul Rexhepi and Sadik Mehmeti published their book “H. Rrystem ef. Shporta: Jeta dhe vepra (1864-1937)”. But it can be said that even this book was not investigated and presented sufficiently for Rrystem Shporta to be included in the patriotic and cultural elite in Kosovo during the 10-30s of the 20th century.
Rrystem Shporta was born in Prizren to a family originally from the Kukes district, which had a well-known inn in Qafë Pazar, so much so that that street was called “Rruga e Shportajeve”. In Prizren, he received his first lessons from the teacher Abdulhalimi Efendi, who was exiled by the Ottoman administration, and he would complete his studies at the Mehmet Pasha Madrasah in Prizren in 1896.
That same year, he went on pilgrimage and returned with a rich library in Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages, which would later be enriched by showing his cultural level with the works he wrote either in freedom or in prison.
He would later start working at the Mehmet Pasha Madrasah as a lecturer in Arabic grammar. Among his students was the poet Vejsel Xhelaludin Guta (1905-1986), who preserved the tradition of Albanian poetry in the Arabic alphabet in Kosovo until the second half of the 20th century. In 1917 he was appointed mufti of Prizren, a position he held intermittently until his arrest in 1924. After his arrest, one of his former students (Nysret Galibi) became the mufti of Prizren.
Rrystem Shporta became the mufti at the time when Prizren was under Bulgarian occupation, which is remembered by the people as the “famine years” when people died of hunger, and in 1918 the Serbian occupation returned under the cover of the Kingdom of SHS.
The new government immediately showed its teeth in the name of modernizing the city by preparing an urbanization plan for Prizren that would change its appearance. For this purpose, the government engaged two Serbian architects, the military architect, Lieutenant Momir Kuronović and the architect Dušan S. Milosavljević, who drafted the new urban plan for Prizren by the beginning of 1924.
Meanwhile, before the plan was approved, the engineer from Belgrade Ivan Vangelov was also activated to demolish the Sinan Pasha Mosque. The action to destroy the mosque began with the demolition of the mosque’s porches in the presence of engineer Vangelov, which led to a street protest led by mufti Rrystem Shporta. As a result of the chaos in the street in front of the mosque, engineer Vangelov was killed.
As a result, the Serbian authorities arrested mufti Rrystem on charges that he paid for the murder of engineer Vangelov, for which on July 25, 1924, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison and confiscation of property, which was felt badly by the people since that day was the end of Ramadan and the night of Eid al-Fitr. However, this street protest in front of the mosque was worth it, because the demolition of the mosque was stopped and the conflict has now passed to court.
Mufti Rrystem’s sentence was severe, because he lived in various prisons, but he was never broken. Thus, he was first sent to the Prizren prison, where he remained for 1,368 days according to his own words, and then to the Skopje prison, where he spent 277 days, and from there to the Niš prison, where he stayed for 893 days.
Finally, he spent most of his time in the Zenica prison in Bosnia, where he remained until the end of March 1935, and returned exhausted to Prizren on April 1, 1935. Understandably, after that life in prison, Mufti Rrystem did not last long and died on October 5, 1937.
The steadfastness of Mufti Rrystem was not only in public life, but also in these prisons, taking care to maintain his dignity and continue with various writings. His first work, “Treatise on Patience,” was in the Prizren prison, where he spent 1,368 days, as he noted at the end of the treatise, showing great patience in confronting the authorities that imprisoned him.
However, he was treated and respected only during those years in prison in Zenica. Thus, he continued his profession as a teacher there, but now giving religious lessons to Muslims in prison. With his work, as well as his acquaintance with the imam of the Sejman mosque, Osman Shestiqi, he became a well-known name in Bosnia.
On the day of his release, he was met at the prison gate by a group led by Imam Osman, from where he went to Sarajevo and was met there by well-known figures of the Islamic Community. Apparently, he left a good impression among them, so much so that upon his death, an obituary was published in Sarajevo by Mehmet Hanxhiqi, one of the most famous Bosnian figures of that time, in which it is stated: “With his death, Prizren and its surroundings have suffered an irreparable loss.”
Respect for Mufti Rrystem Shporta, on the 100th anniversary of his imprisonment or on the 160th anniversary of his birth, would be an opportunity to highlight the contribution of the authors of the monograph “Rrystem Shporta: life and works” and to think about an exhibition of his works and his personal library with valuable manuscripts, as well as reprinting the monograph with its update based on documents and the press of the time regarding the resistance of Albanians against Serbian rule in order to preserve the old Prizren that we have now.
Reference
Balkan Academia 