Ески джамия във Враца и нейната стенописна украса
Eski Mosque in Vratsa and Its Frescoes

Summary/Abstract: One of the seven former mosques in Vratsa has been preserved till the present day but now with quite transformed architectural site. This is Eski Mosque, situated in the South-Western part of the city and close to the river Leva. The most important feature distinguishing this mosque today is that it has lost its specific quality of a cult building. The mosque, preserved to the present day, has been repaired many times but most of them connected with reshaping of the cult building since the repair work had aimed not at its improvement but on the contrary – at reshaping it and changing the function of the cult building into a secular one. The mosque has almost a quadrant plan. Its hall space is 120,76 quadric meters since its longitudinal axis is 11,13 meters long, while the cross axis is 10,85 m. The height of the hall at the zenith of the dome is 11, 67 m. The only artifact preserved up to the present day is its fresco decorations. These are exceptionally impressive fresco panels, medallions and separate ornaments with specific artistic quality that made them accepted as a monument of art of local significance, proclaimed as such in 1972 in Darzhaven Vestnik, issue № 94. The interior frescos of the Eski Mosque in Vratsa have no analogue in the decoration of the Ottoman-Turkish monuments of architecture, which have been preserved in Bulgaria up to the present. An inscription of orange painting color at the North-Eastern wall makes it clear that the original frescos of the mosque were made in 1201 according to Hijra (the beginning of the Islamic calendar – trans. note), i.e., in 1786–1787 A.D. (illustration 4). The inscriptions made with black paint at the same place suggest that during the same year the mosque had also been repaired. If this had been the first repair of the mosque, which seems most probable, it could be accepted that it had been build some 50 years earlier, i.e. in 1786–1787. It follows that Eski Mosque in Vratsa was build in the first half of the 18th century. This on its part means that this mosque had not been in existence during the time when Evliya Celebi visited the town, i.e., in the middle of 17th century, but sure it was one of the seven mosques in Vratsa before the Liberation from Ottoman Yoke. The specific painting of most of the plant ornaments and the specific combination of the graphic means of expression observed in the composition and the medallions on the dome are evidence for them being painted in the spirit of the Ottoman-Turkish traditions of decoration. These and other specific features of the frescos are quite enough to allow us to conclude with quite a certainty that the decorator of the mosque was a Muslim from Turkish origin.

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