Kruszyniany Mosque

In 1679 Jan III Sobieski settled Tatar cavalry who had served in the Polish-Lithuanian army in villages along what is now the eastern border, granting them land in place of unpaid wages, and their descendants have been here since. Kruszyniany has the older of the two surviving wooden mosques in Poland: a green-painted timber building of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century that looks from outside like a village church with two small towers, and inside is divided by a partition into men's and women's halls, with prayer rugs, Ottoman-influenced calligraphic panels called muhirs, and a mihrab. Behind it in a small wood is the mizar, the Muslim cemetery, with stones in Cyrillic, Polish and Arabic. The village has a Tatar house serving Tatar food. Bohoniki, thirty kilometres north, has the second mosque and a second cemetery; the pair are the core of a very small living community.

History

King John III Sobieski gave the village to Tatars who had fought for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Ottoman Empire, and the mosque they built is first mentioned in a document of 1717. The present building most likely dates from the second half of the eighteenth century or the first half of the nineteenth, and Kruszyniany was named one of Poland's Historic Monuments on 20 November 2012 (Wikipedia, Kruszyniany Mosque).

What's there

• A wooden mosque - green-painted timber, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.
• A partitioned interior - men's and women's halls, with muhir calligraphy and a mihrab.
• The mizar - a Muslim cemetery in the wood behind, with stones in three scripts.
• A living community - Tatar descendants of Sobieski's cavalry settlers.

When to go

May to September. Two hours.

Practical notes

It is a working place of worship - shoes off, heads covered for women, and visits are around prayer times. Access usually depends on a local keyholder. The village is remote with almost no public transport.

Nearby

Bohoniki, with the second mosque, is about thirty kilometres north.

Key facts