Alifakovac ( cyrl, Алифаковац) is a
neighbourhood in
Babića bašća local community,
municipality of
Stari Grad, Sarajevo
Stari Grad ( sr-cyrl, Стари Град , ; lit. "Old Town") is a municipality of the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the oldest and most historically significant part of Sarajevo. At its heart is the Baščaršija, the old tow ...
. As one of the oldest urban settlements in
Sarajevo, it is situated on the spine of the northern end of the slope
Trebević, on the lowest
hill in the row at the last
meander of
Miljacka, before it pours out of its narrow
canyon
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...
. An abandoned village by the road was found in the 15th century by the
Ottomans
The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922).
Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...
when they conquered
Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and He ...
. It is believed that there was a smaller
necropolis
A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead".
The term usually im ...
of
stećci, which with the arrival of Ottomans became again an active
cemetery. Today it is one of the biggest and most beautiful
cemeteries
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...
in Sarajevo.
History
Alifakovac is as old as the modern city of
Sarajevo, as it got its name after Ali-Fakih, a
lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
and one of the witnesses of
Isa-bey's endowment of the city in 1462 which set the foundation for the city. Even in those times, the
road was very frequent, which can be seen in the cemetery as aside of local peoples, it is the final place of many
travellers and
emigrants who died in Sarajevo, but also of
officers,
ulama and ordinary citizens. Jakub-paša decided to build a
mosque near the cemetery in 1491, after which completion the streets Veliki (big) Alifakovac, Mali (small) Alifakovac, Megara, Magoda and Carina were established, giving birth to the neighbourhood. In the mid-16th century, at the bottom of Alifakovac,
Gazi Husrev-beg's quartermaster Mustafa Vekil-Harač, built a mosque which would be soon known as the Pilgrim mosque as most pilgrims started their journey to
Hajj
The Hajj (; ar, حَجّ '; sometimes also spelled Hadj, Hadji or Haj in English) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried ...
from that place and around the same time, some
mayor of Sarajevo connected the old
Tsargrad road with
Baščaršija square with a stone bridge which is nowadays known as
Šeher-Ćehajina ćuprija, with which construction the modern
landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
of Alifakovac was almost finalized.
The last touch on the urban landscape was given with the
Inat kuća
Inat, INAT, or iNat may refer to:
* iNaturalist, a biology-oriented citizen science project
* INAT, an Indian admissions test for doctoral students in astronomy and astrophysics (see List of admission tests to colleges and universities#India
* ...
, which found itself a place on the south bank of the river with the construction of
City hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...
just across the river, when the owner of the house requested for the house to be transported, stone by stone, on the other side of the river, where it stands even today.
Alifakovac is an example of
construction based on humanity and mutual respect. The neighbours were not allowed to build houses the way to block the view and the sunlight for the neighbour, which allowed the
roofs to elude below each other in rows and thus draw up one of the most beautiful monuments of old Sarajevo.
Cemetery Alifakovac
References
External links
Establishment and history of Alifakovac
{{Coord, 43.857523, N, 18.437183, E, type:city, display=title
Geography of Sarajevo
Populated places in Stari Grad, Sarajevo