Poland’s oldest mosque renovated with public funds

Poland’s oldest mosque, a wooden building dating back to the 18th century and which is still used by the 600-year-old Tatar Muslim community, has been renovated with the help of public funds.

The mosque is located in the village of Kruszyniany in north-eastern Poland. It is part of an area straddling the borders with Lithuania and Belarus that has been home to the Lipka Tatars since the 14th century, making them one of Europe’s oldest continuously existing Muslim communities.

Records show a previous mosque at the same site in Kruszyniany as early as 1717. The exact age of the current building is unknown, but it was likely constructed in the second half of the 18th century.

The mosque – like another in the nearby village of Bohoniki – is built in a characteristic style reminiscent of local wooden churches. It was recognised as an official historic monument by Poland in 2012.

This year, the office of monument conservation in the Podlasie Province where the mosque is located awarded a grant of 80,000 zloty (€18,000) to renovate its interior, reports Onet.

Work, which has just been completed, included laying a new floor in the men’s prayer room, the reinforcement of the window lintel in the partition wall between the men’s and women’s prayer rooms, and additional support for the mezzanine floor.

Last year, another grant of 90,000 zloty from the same source was provided to renovate the fence of the mosque’s mizar (cemetery), notes Małgorzata Dajnowicz, the monument conservator for Podlasie.

“The building is a unique example of Islamic wooden sacred architecture in the country, and is functioning to this day,” Dajnowicz told Gazeta Wyborcza. 

The Tatar Cultural Society Foundation, which works to promote the community’s heritage, hailed the renovation work as an “extremely important” measure to “take care of a place that is important to our grandparents and parents, our children and grandchildren”.

According to Zabytek.pl – a website run by the National Heritage Board of Poland, a government agency – the mosque was likely originally constructed with funds provided by the Krzeczowskis, one of the wealthiest Tatar families in the region, who owned the villages of Kruszyniany, Górka and Łużany.

During the Second World War, the mosque was seized by the German occupiers and used as a field hospital, with valuable fixtures and fittings stolen. However, after the war, Polish Muslims again began to use the building.

In 2008, the mosque was fitted with a security system funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It also received a visit from Britain’s Prince Charles in 2010, when he was shown around by Mufti Tomasz Miśkiewicz. 

In 2014, the mosque was vandalised during Ramadan, with a pig graffitied on an outside wall and other abusive images sprayed on graves in the cemetery. The local monument conservator immediately stepped in to clean up the damage.

The Lipka Tatar community in Poland – which has historically served the country in various wars, including as part of King John III Sobieski’s army that defeated the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna – has declined in size over the centuries. Today it stands at between a few hundred and a couple of thousand, depending on different definitions and estimates.

The majority of Muslims in Poland – numbering between 20,000 and 25,000, according to estimates by the MZR (Muslim Religious Union in Poland) – are not of Lipka Tatar origin. Most are more recent arrivals, with Poland currently experiencing levels of immigration unprecedented in its history.

Earlier this year, the MZR launched a new Polish-language portal to provide online educational resources on Islam and to challenge common stereotypes about the community.

Anti-Muslim attitudes were stoked in particular during the 2015 refugee crisis, but have continued to be cultivated by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. In 2019, Jarosław Kaczyński, the chairman of PiS and Poland’s de facto leader, described Islam as a “cultural offensive” that “Europe must defend itself” from.

Main image credit: Mariusz Cieszewski/MFA (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

Juliette Bretan

Juliette Bretan is a freelance journalist covering Polish and Eastern European current affairs and culture. Her work has featured on the BBC World Service, and in CityMetric, The Independent, Ozy, New Eastern Europe and Culture.pl.