Xhamia e Arastes

Xhamia e Arastes stands in Prizren as the surviving minaret of a former Ottoman mosque. Unplastered tuff-stone blocks rise above a square base, with their lime mortar clearly visible. A wooden door on the eastern side opens towards an internal wooden staircase.

Evrenos-zade Jakup Bey built the mosque between 1526 and 1538 for the traders and craftsmen of Arasta Market. The covered bazaar once connected the Sinan Pasha Mosque with the Mehmed Pasha Hamam, forming a busy centre of commerce and social life. Two floors held storage rooms and merchants’ offices below, while the prayer hall occupied the upper floor. A major restoration in 1911 followed local donations and two grants of 1,000 gold lira from Sultan Reşat. Mid-twentieth-century modernisation demolished the market, nearby houses, bridge and mosque, leaving only this tower.

A carved Star of David on the shaft is an Ottoman stoneworkers’ motif, not a religious symbol. Protected as a cultural monument of Kosovo, the wheelchair-accessible site preserves Prizren’s sixteenth-century urban history.