The türbe (tomb) of Sheikh Mustafa in Belgrade

The Türbe (tomb) of Sheikh Mustafa is one of the oldest Islamic sacred buildings remaining from the Ottoman period in Belgrade.

Located at the top of Filipa Višnjića Street, near the Student Park and the Faculty of Science, it has endured for centuries, defying the merciless ravages of time. This blog looks at the history of the Türbe of Sheikh Mustafa, an important site in the Islamic history of Belgrade.

Turbeh is a Turkish word for a tomb or mausoleum where notable and wealthy people are buried. Türbes are usually quadrangular in shape (and can also be hexagonal or octagonal), modelled after the shape of a tent from the pre-Islamic era. They can be open or closed, with a dome or four-sided roof, arches or windows.

Dating from the end of the 18th century, this türbe is hexagonal and built from stone. Its interior is decorated with inscriptions from the Quran, while in the middle of the room there is a covered sarcophagus marking the grave.

The Türbe of Sheikh Mustafa, is dedicated to Mustafa of Baghdad, the head of the Haji-Sheikh Muhamed’s Tekke (Zawiya or Khanqah, a building designed specifically for gatherings of a Sufi brotherhood), which was once located in that place. A lot is known about the Tekke's history, and a lot has been preserved. There is a preserved photograph of the Tekke, so it is known what it looked like. On the Austrian miliatry officer Brusch's plan of 1789, the tekke was drawn just opposite the early 17th-century Kizlar-Aga Mosque.

During the Serbian Uprising 1804-1813 the Tekke served for some time as the seat of the Executive Council, the highest authority in the newly established state. Also, Dositej Obradović, a Serbian writer, biographer, diarist, philosopher, pedagogue, educational reformer, linguist, polyglot and the first minister of education of Serbia died in it in 1811.

A tekke is a sacred Islamic building where Islamic mystics or Sufis (dervishes) gather. It also served as a place where religious ceremonies were performed. Usually, türbes were erected next to tekkes.

There was a lively Sufi activity in Belgrade’s past, evidenced by the information provided in the travelogue by a famous Turkish travel writer Evliya Çelebi. He wrote that, in the middle of the 16th century, there were 17 Sufi lodges (tekkes) in Belgrade. Moreover, in the period between 1521 and 1867, dervishes lived in Belgrade, gathered in tekkes and regularly performed one of the most important Sufi rituals called zikr or dhikr (basically the invocation of God’s name).

Dervishes also had their own street in Belgrade called Dervish Street which was located on Dorćol (the Turkish word for crossroad) and in which, according to Evliya Çelebi, one of the oldest Sufi buildings in Belgrade was located ‒ the Tekke of Mehmed Pasha Yahyali.

Out of all of those buildings and traces of Sufi activity in Belgrade, only the Türbe of Sheikh Mustafa was preserved as a reminder of long-gone times and represents one of the most distinguished elements of Muslim heritage in Belgrade.

In the inscription, carved in 1783 on the türbe by the scribe (in Turkish defterdar) Husni Yusuf, it is written that Sheikh Mustafa was a Sadi, which means he was a member of the Saʼdiyya tariqat or dervish order. Based on this, it can be assumed that the tekke, which was once located near the türbe, gathered members of this tariqa, which is considered a predominantly military tariqa, such as the famous Bektashis and Rifais.

Despite years of neglect and oblivion, the Türbe of Sheikh Mustafa, now shines in its full glory.

Thanks to the funding provided by the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Coordination in Belgrade (TIKA), on behalf of the Government of Turkey, the restoration of this building was completed in 2013. The restoration project was financed by the Ministry of Culture, and it was carried out by the City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments.

The building, however, remains closed (except during the Museums Day which is organised every May. Although its interior is mostly modest and simple, curious passers-by and tourists still have an opportunity to peek through the windows into the türbe, which is one which is one of the rare buildings of this kind in Belgrade.

In 2019, a group of dervishes (Islamic mystics) from Kosovo visited the capital of Serbia. Upon their arrival in Belgrade, they headed to the Türbe of Sheik Mustapha where they held a dervish ritual or zikr. For the first time in 236 years, they gathered to pay their respects to their spiritual leader.

With the restoration of the Türbe of Sheikh Mustafa, another building from Belgrade’s Islamic past will begin to live a new life. The city itself gets another restored cultural monument on the map of its important cultural and historical monuments to be proud of and thus confirm its epithet of being a 'city between East and West'.

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