Kruszyniany Mosque

Kruszyniany Mosque is a wooden mosque located in the village of Kruszyniany, in Podlaskie Voivodeship, Poland. The building is the oldest Lipka Tatar mosque in Poland, built on the plan of a rectangle, in specifications of 10 by 13 metres.[1]

Meczet w Kruszynianach
Kruszyniany Mosque
Religion
AffiliationIslam
RiteSunni
Statusactive mosque
Location
Location Kruszyniany, Poland
Architecture
Completed18th-century

History

The village of Kruszyniany was assigned by King John III Sobieski to the Tatars who had participated on the side of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the war against the Ottoman Empire. After the Lipka Tatar populace settled in the area, the Tatars built the mosque, which was first mentioned in a document dating back to 1717. The present mosque was most likely built in the second half of the eighteenth-century, or in the first half of the nineteenth-century (the exact date of construction of the building is unknown), on the site of the former mosque. In 1846, the building underwent renovation, information about which is found on a stone plaque, next to the women's entrance.[2]

After World War II, the area was settled by repatriates and Muslims from modern-day Belarus. In 2008, with funding provided by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the wooden building was fitted with a safety system.[3]

Kruszyniany village was designated one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii) on November 20, 2012. Its listing is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland.

In 2014, during a surge of Islamophobic attacks in Poland, the wall of the mosque was defaced with the drawing of a pig and the adjacent cemetery was vandalized with abusive graffiti.[4]

See also

References
  1. "Rejestr Zabytków" (PDF). NID. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  2. "Meczet w Kruszynianach". Kruszyniany. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  3. "Dz.U. 2012 poz. 1275". Sejm. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  4. Narkowicz, Kasia, and Konrad Pędziwiatr. "From unproblematic to contentious: mosques in Poland." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43.3 (2017): 441-457. quote: Yet perhaps the most devastating – not in scale but in symbolism – was the 2014 attack on the seventeenth-century Tatar mosque in Kruszyniany. A pig was drawn on the outside wall of the green wooden mosque and abusive graffiti was sprayed on the graves of the adjacent Muslim cemetery. The Tatars, having lived in Poland for several hundred years without experiencing hostility, were deeply affected by this unprecedented rise in Islamophobic attacks. This incident showed that, in the context of an unprecedented rise in Islamophobia, all Muslims are targeted through attacks on their places of worship, whether they have lived in Poland for centuries or just a few years.

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