The Atik Mosque, Gjilan's oldest

If you want the one mosque in Gjilan worth seeking out, this is it. It isn’t the biggest or the showiest from the street, but it’s the building that explains the town, because it’s older than Gjilan as the history books usually tell it.

Older than the town

Kosovo’s Ministry of Culture heritage register (DTK) lists the Atik, also known as the Madrasa Mosque, as a 17th-century Ottoman building. Its entry says the work was completed in 1606, though other writings give 1609, and that it was the first mosque built in town.

That’s where it gets interesting. The same entry notes that Gjilan is usually said to have been founded as a town around 1750, and that the name Gilan crops up as a village as early as 1423. A mosque like this, the official text argues, wouldn’t be built somewhere insignificant, so it points to an older urban core than the standard account suggests. That’s the author’s reading, and I pass it on as such.

What to look for

From outside the mosque is plain. There’s the prayer hall and, set against the south wall, a minaret on a base of bare dressed stone with a rendered round shaft, a balcony carved with geometric patterns and a conical cap. The original porch went in 1993, when an annexe was built on the west side; that annexe is now the way in.

The good stuff is inside. The record describes a ring of eight bays in the dome, each with a window that’s square inside and round-arched outside, painted with plant motifs in a Turkish or Persian manner. The mihrab carries brown floral painting and the minbar is carved wood with geometric designs. When the paintings were restored, local artists Demir Behluli and Zeqirja Rexhepi added touches from Albanian tradition, such as rosettes on the side walls.

The walls mix stone, brick, horizontal and vertical timber ties and lime mortar, and the Ministry of Culture paid to renew the roof in 2012 and 2013. To compare it with other Ottoman mosques across Kosovo, see mosques in Kosovo.

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Visiting

There are no visiting hours, admission charges or dress rules published by an official source. Prayers are still held here, so I’d turn up outside prayer times, with shoulders and knees covered, and do as I’m asked at the door. If it’s shut, the exterior and minaret are easy to see from the street.

OpenStreetMap places the Atik less than a kilometre north of the clock tower. The tower is the photo on this page because I couldn’t find a good freely licensed picture of the mosque itself.

Right next door

Directly opposite, according to the heritage register, is Mustafa Pasha’s former residence, built in 1887, later a school and then a music school, and the town’s ethnological museum since 18 May 2021. Put the two together and that’s your morning sorted. I cover other museums in museums in Kosovo, and if you’re staying in the east, the Gjilan region offers short trips to Draganac and the Pogragjë fort.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Atik Mosque, Gjilan on GetYourGuide.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Gjilan for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.