Seasons

• AIAC_5604 - Mosque of Tabak - 2019
  During the works within the project "Requalification of the Urban Area near the town Centre of Vlora", in the square in front of the building of the Municipality of Vlora, opposite the "Ish-Hetuesia" building, in March 2019 the ruins of the Islamic cult building, known to locals as the Mosque of Tabakut, have surfaced. It is first mentioned in 1676 by the Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi, as the mosque of the Tabak’s neighborhood, along with the other mosques of Vlora, and is one of the seven mosques of Vlora that are mentioned from the time of Çelebi until the middle of the nineteenth century, by the Austrian consul Johan Georg Von Hahn. It is also known from a rich photographic documentation from the 1930-40s and 1950s. From what can be seen from the photographic material, it is classified as a wooden roofed mosque. It has had a high minaret with a thin silhouette in the western part and a porch with monumental façade with arches over stone columns. The interior space of the porch was divided into two parts by another row of arches over the columns. In the absence of previous studies on this important Islamic cult building, in the framework of the project works, we were given the possibility to conduct a rescue excavation in order to document its ruins and obtain data on various elements of its architecture, as well as to clarify its construction period. Archaeological excavations have documented the base of the minaret built of reused antique blocks of unknown origin, the entire western wall built with the clausonage technique, as well as part of the north and south walls of the prayer hall. It was also possible to document a small part of the floor of the prayer hall, which was paved with hexagonal bricks over a layer of compacted clay. A rich ceramic material of the sisteenth-eighteenth century was found in the foundations of the western wall. It was also possible to identify the mosque cemetery in its western part, where a tomb of the seventeenth – eighteenth century was also excavated. The plan, the technique of building the walls, the floor elements of the prayer hall, as well as the pottery, date this mosque around the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. It is very likely that the Mosque of Tabakut is the mosque that was built by the vizier Ilias Pasha in the years 1528-1529, in the town of Vlora.

Media

Media

• Ҫipa-Meshini-Porja, 2020
  K. ҪIPA, M. MESHINI, A. PORJA., (2020) Raport mbi zbulimin e rrënojave të Xhamisë së Tabakut në qytetin e Vlorës/ Report on the discovery of the ruins of the Tabak Mosque in the city of Vlora, Candavia 8, p. 401-412.