Livno // In Search of Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter
Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter’s Mosque, Livno // © Ajdin Kamber // Shutterstock.com
There isn’t much information about Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter floating around the web. In fact, there only seems to be one paragraph, as almost every entry dedicated to this mosque comes with the same brackets informing me that the mosque in question is the one pictured on the left. I’m yet to find the original home of the text as none of these current entries come with a picture of the mosque on the left. Information providers of Livno, do better.
Who was Hajji Ahmed? Well, he was a minter of ducats, obviously, but that is just about as surface level as this gets. A search for 16th-century Ottoman figures of the same name brings up a cartographer, albeit a cartographer who copied a famous map and referred to himself as ‘poor, wretched and downtrodden’ and that creating the map would lead to his being released from Ottoman captivity. History ain’t fun kids, history ain’t fun.
I wasn’t walking up towards Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter’s mosque for answers to questions of biography. Any information gleaned would have been a bonus. No, I was walking up the hill to look at a gorgeous piece of 16th-century architecture, a beautiful image that I was to earn through heavy breathing and yet more self-promises to get in shape, promises that would be broken by the time I returned to a cafe. The life and times of Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter were a happy aside.
Besides, the mosque is colloquially known as the Glavica Mosque, which basically means head, referencing its location on a hill overlooking Livno. Or the stumpy dome, although using that term always brings back memories of that first scene in Thomas the Tank Engine. Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter has nothing to do with Thomas the Tank Engine.
The walk up was pleasant, quiet, quietly pleasant. Barking dogs could be heard off in the distance, a sound that fills me with a certain amount of trepidation in this part of the world. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t do well with angry dogs. Or happy dogs, for that matter. Still, the stroll from the centre of modern Livno into its former heart was thankfully free of pups, allowing me to focus on the increasing gradient and my rapid breathing. I passed the occasional early riser and exchanged cheerful greetings of ‘dobro jutro’, although my laboured panting gave me away as a tourist at best, a laggard at worst. I am both of those things.
© John Bills
Still, onwards and upwards, passing the Croatian consulate, the Serbian church, the occasional shop, houses, the norm. Livno’s Old Town isn’t a ‘Stari Grad’ in the modern tourist attraction sense of the word. This is simply the old part of town. I wondered aloud why people insisted on building towns on hills back in the day, before remembering that it allowed them to see marauders approaching. That was important, obviously, far more important than my lack of cardio.
Mimar Sinan’s creation deserves such a location too. Overlooking the town, the Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter Mosque is one of the prettiest in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Livno’s Old Town isn’t a lot to write home about, but that has more to do with Stari Grad preconception than anything else. There are attractions everywhere here, you just need to look for them, or be aware of them beforehand.
The four remaining mosques are the main event. There might be more, I’m not sure, but my weary eyes spotted four minarets guiding eyes towards the reason for all of this. The Zavra Mosque is the least heralded of the four, its initial construction shrouded in mystery, but a note about a 19th-century renovation gives a clue. Its main point of difference? A wooden minaret, proud and defiant.
Then there is the Lala Pasha Mosque, known colloquially as the Beglučka Mosque. This beauty was erected in 1577, its dome attracting doe-eyes and committed hearts alike. The mosque is a little removed from the rest, largely due to the ragged nature of the street network here, but that shouldn’t diminish its importance. Still, local influence has declined, and the mosque stands as much for posterity as anything else.
I’m burying the lede, obviously. Whatever happened to the search for Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter? A man who minted so many Ducats that he was able to finance a mosque designed and built by the most famous of the Ottoman architects, Mimar Sinan himself? The Grand Architect, no less! I was nearby, so I took the plunge and wandered into the grounds of the Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter’s Mosque.
© John Bills
Yeah, it lives up to the billing. The setting is charm in existence, the blue clock face legitimately managing to bring life out of the standard beige stone of the clock tower and the mosque. Was it the clock face that made this place sparkle? Without meaning to reduce beauty to the hypnotic magnetism of colour, yeah, yeah it was. It was halfway between blue and teal, the proverbial sore thumb if the thumb in question lived in some sort of evolutionary nirvana. A note to architects of the present and the future; stark colours. Stand out.
The short, stumpy dome (six short wheels, short stumpy funnel, short stumpy boiler…) added its charm, understated where many mosques tend to over-egg the pudding. The minaret did its job in pointing to the sky, but it didn’t protrude into the geography of the heavens, sticking close to the ground, close to those who need it. There are few contests in the world as eye-rollingly pathetic as the ‘tallest’ anything.
The beauty of the mosque had very little to do with the mosque itself, a beautiful building but by no means the focus. In this case, the setting and surroundings brought everything together, the green hills and dramatic hilltop buildings giving context to a centuries-old place of worship, as a modern town went about its business in clear view down below. You don’t get that without the walk, without the heavy breathing, without the cursing and without the panting. Further proof, if proof were needed, that if you can walk to something beautiful, you should walk to the beautiful thing.
© John Bills
There was one more mosque to check out in the old part of town, the Bali-aga Ljubančić Mosque, another beauty with a dramatic view of the hills behind it. I didn’t enter the grounds, choosing to consider the mosque from beyond the walls. In the distance, I heard the early morning yawn of a dog but consoled myself in the knowledge that the poor pup would be a little sleepy, and I could make my escape without incident.
The 16th century Bali-aga Ljubančić Mosque was a different type of beauty, again accentuated by its surroundings but standing proud in a way that cannot be manufactured, only developed. Sufficiently satisfied with my morning’s wanderings, I headed back towards Livno, only for my soul to escape from my body when a giant dog stuck its head over a wall and growled in my direction. I say dog, it may have been a bear, I’m not sure. Either way, I was grateful that there was a wall between us, even if the dog seemed to have its paws on top of the wall and could therefore theoretically drag itself over towards its plump Welsh breakfast. Dogs are the worst. I still don’t really know who Hajji Ahmed the Ducat Minter is.
