I Don't Really Have a Sweet Tooth, but.....

.... I Used to Like Desserts

Time was we would go out and eat a three-course meal, today it is usually main course only (though in the Time of Covid we have not been out since we took up that nice Rishi Sunak’s invitation ‘to eat out to help out’). Part of the problem is the increasing size of pub main courses, but most of it is our increasing age – we just can’t eat like we use to.

So, this post is a celebration of all things sweet. It is not quite a fond farewell, we are still in 'one dessert, two spoons' territory, and of course there are many occasions where the casual purchase of something small and sweet is deemed appropriate.

My dessert at Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, Padstow (2007)

So where to start?

Portugal, Obviously

Why obviously? Because we have spent a week or two in the Algarve every October this century, and would be there right now if our flight had not been cancelled by the Curse of Covid.

The Algarve to us means, first and foremost, sea-food, fresh from the briny and expertly cooked, but a meal should not stop there.

Dessert menus generally involve a large glossy folded card produced by a manufacturer of synthetic desserts and ice creams. Stuck somewhere on the card there will be a small, sometimes hand-written, list of desserts for grown-ups, many of which will have been made in-house. Ever present is pudim flan, a rich eggy caramel custard, which is perfect when you have too little room for anything heavier. Sometimes it is just perfect.

Lynne and a pudim flan, Martin's Grill, Carvoeiro

Many residents of the dessert menu are equally at home with a morning coffee - another of the pleasures of Portugal and the reason why each trip is traditionally followed by a diet.

Coffee and Cakes, Ferragudo (2012)

An assortment of bolos (cakes) and tartes (translation unnecessary) are made from local produce including (but not limited to) almonds, figs, carobs, oranges and apples. The cakes will always be made with one egg more than would be normal elsewhere and are universally wonderful.

Different cakes (and cups) but at the same place in 2011

Apple Cakes

Portuguese apple cake is moist, flavourful and lovely. Elsewhere apple can be a little dull, though Lynne’s Dorset apple cake is always a delight and a French apple tart can be a thing of beauty. So is Moldovan apple cake – who knew there was such a thing? We made it our lunch in the ambitiously named Eco-resort, actually a clutch of traditional painted houses, in the village of Butuceni. Butuceni sees few visitors – it deserves more (click here to find out why).

Lynne and a Moldovan apple cake, Butuceni Eco-Resort

Pasteis de Nata

Our favourite and most frequent accompaniment to morning coffee is the pastel de nata (literally, if misleadingly, ‘cream pastry’)

Cafe con leite and a pastel de nata

Baked fresh every day – the supermarket version is cheap but a shadow of the real thing - the pastry is crisp and flaky, the filling rich with vanilla and egg. It can be enjoyed anywhere, but I know of nowhere better  than the Pastelaria Fabrica Velha in Carvoeiro, one of our favourite Algarve coffee spots.

I will also briefly mention Lord Stow’s Garden Café in the former Portuguese colony of Macau, just across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong. (Click here for our visit and ‘Lord Stow’s’ unusual back story.)

Lord Stow's Garden Café, Coloane, Macau

Lord Stow’s egg tarts are based on the pastel de nata; the pastry is first class, but they look a little too tidy and the oversweet filling lacks the subtlety of the real thing. Expanding from the Garden Café, Lord Stow bakery franchises can now be found in several east Asian luxury hotels.

Lord Stow's egg tarts, Coloane, Macau

SE Asia (and Mexico)

Vietnam

Having reached Macau we shall stay in Asia. There are many sweet foods in China, but there are no desserts because there are no courses. Dishes are ordered, arrive when they are ready and are shared by everybody.

The same is not true in Vietnam which has its own distinctive style. Finishing a meal with soup seems odd to us, but why not? In Hanoi (click here) our first dinner ended with che bo bo, a soup (though che means ‘tea’) described on the menu as a sweet southern dessert consommé.

Lynne and Nhu (representative of Haivenu Travel) at the Ly Club, Hanoi - we had not quite reached the dessert soup yet

At the other end of the country, Ngon is a Saigon institution. The huge restaurant is housed in a colonial mansion where tables fill the entrance hall, atrium, courtyard and every ground floor room. It was packed with office workers, students and suburban ladies on shopping expeditions; everybody, it seemed, headed for Ngon at lunch time.

Fortunately, we had a booking and a waiter led us confidently through the throng to the only spare seats in the building (for the full story click here). Sweetness is all-pervasive, so making good desserts is easy, but sublime desserts are rare. At Ngon, my glutinous rice balls swimming in a ginger and coconut milk sauce presented a combination of flavours and textures that hit that mark. I had difficulty grasping the idea that, for the locals, such delights are ordinary everyday food.

In the former imperial city of Hue, in Vietnam's narrow waist, we were treated to an 8-course imperial banquet. The food was all right, no more, but the presentation of each course was memorable. The dessert of sweetened red bean paste formed into fruits was one of the most inventive, though of course the fruits all tasted the same, regardless of colour or shape.

Fruits made from Bean Paste, Placid Garden Manor Restaurant, Hue

Malaysia

Malaysia is a great place to eat, but desserts are not a high priority. Cendol is a sort of national dessert available everywhere from 4-star hotels to street food stalls; the price varies, but the quality is much the same. It consists of shaved ice with coconut milk, green coloured rice noodles, a few red beans and a lot of unrefined palm sugar – simple, but pleasing.

Lynne eats cendol at a street food stall, Penang

Durian is popular from southern China southwards. The big, green spiky fruit smells like a chemical toilet left out in the sun, but if you can ignore that, and it is not easy, they taste wonderful (allegedly) – as the locals say ‘smells like Hell, tastes like Heaven.’

Green durian and red dragon fruit, Banh Thanh Market, Ho Chi Minh City

Malaysia is peak durian territory. There are shops entirely devoted to durian and the pastries and confections made from it. One-bite durian puffs are an easy way to approach the challenge, but the ‘one-bite’ is important. Attempting two bites deposits a surprisingly large slick of durian slurry over an extensive area (as well I know). The smell is repressed by the cooking and the flavour is actually quite pleasant.

The one-bite durian puff, Malacca

Emboldened, we tried a durian ice-cream on a stick in Kuala Lumpur, and actually enjoyed it.

Durian ice-cream. Are we beginning to develop a taste? Central Market, Kuala Lumpur

Ice Cream

So, having reached ice cream, here is a brief rant.

Ice-cream parlours figured large in my youth, or at least Borza’s on the prom in Porthcawl did. I know others remember Borza’s fondly as the last time I mentioned them complete strangers contacted me asking for further information. Unfortunately, all I know is that the Borza’s moved on, those that didn’t can be found in Porthcawl cemetery, just across the path from my grandparents.

In the late 1950s Borza’s did few flavours, but they did the most exquisite creamy-textured vanilla - a vanilla nut sundae was a once-a-holiday treat (well it cost 1/9d!*). For Borza’s, vanilla was not a synonym for ‘plain’ it meant ice cream flavoured, quite strongly, with actual vanilla. To get an ice cream that good today you have to visit a high-end restaurant where they make it in-house. (Click here for the Walnut Tree in Abergavenny).

Since then ice cream has diversified into a host of mostly synthetic flavours and lost its texture. Some American makers have gone so far astray that ice cream has become merely a filler of the interstices in pots of crumbled brownies, cookie dough or honeycomb.

Ice Cream in Mexico

Rant over, now please join me in a leap across the Pacific from Malaysia to Mexico.

To complete a street food lunch in Puebla, 100 km south of Mexico City, we ventured into an ice cream shop. We had rarely seen such a vast array of flavours.

Ice-cream choices, Puebla

But it was not the number that amazed us, it was the flavours themselves. With our rudimentary grasp of Spanish we could see the usual suspects, strawberry, chocolate, rum and raisin, even vanilla tucked in the end. But what about vino tinto? As an ice cream? And queso (cheese) or queso con zarzamora (cheese with blackberries) or chicle (bubblegum)? Our local guide helped with the translations, but even he could not render maracuyá or guanabana into English, so that was what we chose.

Eating ice-cream in Puebla

We enjoyed both. Maracuyá was familiar though we could not quite place it, guanabana remained a mystery. We googled them later; maracuyá is passion fruit, so we should have recognised it, and guanabana is soursop. No? Nor me. It is, apparently, a spikey, vaguely pear-shaped fruit that grows on an evergreen tree throughout the tropical Americas. Its flavour, according to Wikipedia is a combination of strawberry and apple with a sour citrus note. It makes a decent enough ice cream.

Now, back to Asia

India

Mava

Mava or khoya is made throughout the sub-continent by stirring gently boiling milk until its consistency approaches a soft dough. It can be sold like that…

The Bhirandiyara Mava Center, Gujarat

… and the result is surprisingly sweet.

Lynne eating Mava, Bhirandiyara

Gulab Jamun

But it is also the basis of several sweets and desserts, my favourite being Gulab Jamun. Mava is rolled into balls, which are deep fried in ghee at low temperature until they are golden brown, then soaked in a light syrup, sometimes flavoured with cardamom, rose water or saffron. I have eaten many, but never photographed them, so I have borrowed this one from Wikipedia. In my experience they are rarely as elegantly presented as this.

Gulab Jamun with Saffron
Photo by Prakrutim, reproduced under CC Share-Alike 4. 0

Nimish

Nimish, a speciality of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, is another dairy based dessert. Double cream, icing sugar, rosewater and saffron are stirred together and topped with pistachios and silver leaf. The silver leaf has no gastronomic purpose, but the cuisine of Lucknow is the cuisine of Nawabs, so everything must look opulent.

Nimish at Lucknow market

Served here in an eco-friendly bowl of pressed leaves, it was sweet and lovely and slipped down very easily.

Nimish, Lucknow market

Turkey

Another westward skip brings us to Turkey. South-East Asia and India possess two of the world’s great cuisines and although few would say the same about Turkey, the country has, by my count, made three major culinary contributions; one is the donner kebab, the other two I like very much.

Turkish Delight

Turkish Delight, lokum in Turkish, really is a delight and Istanbul has whole shops dedicated to it.

A whole shop full of Turkish Delight, Istiklal Cadessi, Istanbul

The concept is simple, a gel of sweetened starch is cut into cubes and dusted with icing sugar. The ‘delight’ comes from the inclusions (dates, pistachio, hazelnuts, walnuts) and flavourings (rosewater, bergamot, orange, lemon). Other inclusions and flavourings are possible. It is not covered in chocolate like Fry’s Turkish Delight, which is a very poor approximation to the real thing inside.

Baklava

Baklava may have been developed in the imperial kitchens of Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace. Layers of filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and bound with syrup or honey make a rich dessert entirely suitable for an emperor – and pretty much anyone else. It has always been a favourite of mine, but in the only photograph I have of baklava, it is already half-eaten (I wonder why?).

Light lunch with ample sugar - Baklava, Turkish Delight and sweet Turkish coffee, Istanbul

United Kingdom and Ireland

Leaping athletically across the rest of Europe, we arrive home.

Posh Desserts

Sugar is such a dominant flavour that desserts can be a problem for high-end restaurants where subtle flavours are important. One solution is to create a variety of textures, as in this dessert from the Michelin starred Loam in Galway. Called 'Strawberry, Juniper' it involved strawberry ice cream, shards of juniper meringue, sweet pickled cherry, lovage sponge, coconut butter, white chocolate mousse, white chocolate bonbon, hazelnut crumb and a hint of smoked hay. All the elements, some very small, made their contribution providing a variety of textures and flavours beneath the dominant sweetness.

Strawberry, Juniper - Loam, Galway

Another is to go architectural as in this henge of fruit and meringue from the then Michelin starred Box Tree in Ilkley.

Dessert, The Box Tree, Ilkley

Despite my garish lighting effect (it is as good as I can get it) this mille-feuille of raspberries with lemon curd and elderflower was very pretty.

There are fewer problems lower down the pecking order. While banoffee pie and tiramisu have become ubiquitous, there has also been a renaissance of the traditional British pud.

Bakewell Pudding

Nothing sounds and feels quite as traditional as a Bakewell pudding (and I mean ‘pudding’ not ‘tart’, but that story is complicated - click here for Bakewell and Haddon Hall). A two-person pudding in the ‘Old Bakewell Pudding Shop’ eaten at 11am (and not quite finished) kept us going until dinner at 8.

A Bakewell pudding for two, served with cream and custard(!)

The jammy, almondy, marzipany flavour of the not quite egg-custard was toe-curlingly lovely, at first, but it was so sweet that even this wonderful flavour became cloying surprisingly quickly.

Sticky Toffee Pudding (STP)

And finally a mention for Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding. Sadly, the only photo I have is of the factory in Flookburgh, 2½ miles from Cartmel, where STP has been made since demand outgrew the resources of Cartmel village shop. It seems wrong that a factory-made pudding that can be microwaved in minutes should be so good, but it is.

Cartmel sticky Toffee Pudding factory, Flookburgh

And finally, finally

That would be a dull picture to end on, so here is my dessert at the Makphet Restaurant in Vientiane, (the capital of Laos, as I am sure you know). Makphet exists to take children off the streets and train them for careers in the hospitality industry, so a worthy charity as well as a fine restaurant.

Top dessert, Makphet, Vientiane

Coconut ice-cream, fresh, sweet pineapple, cane syrup and a dusting of chilli powder. All my favourite flavours on one plate (although if they could have stuck in some ginger….)

*For the benefit for youngsters under 60, that is Old Money; one shilling and nine (old) pence – the equivalent of 8½p. That was expensive, in the 1950s when you could go round the world for half a crown and still have change for a fish supper.

Praying Facing South: The Variety of Mosques Part 1

This post and its companions (Praying Facing East and Praying Facing West) have been developed from the November 2011 post ‘Three Favourite Mosques’. Although the world has many fine mosques we have yet to visit, we have now seen more than enough to make ‘Three Favourites’ a very limited ambition – indeed the 'favourites' now fill three post.

Islam is the world’s second largest religion with 1.9 billion adherents. It is the majority religion in 49 countries, centred on the middle east but with a vast geographical spread. In 2005 we visited The Great Mosque in Xi’an in China. Some distance away an English-speaking person with an overloud voice (his nationality was immediately obvious) was giving his Chinese guide the benefit of his knowledge of Islam. ‘They have to pray facing East,’ he announced.

This map comes from Wikipedia. It is the work of Tracey M Hunter, the figures are from Pew Research Centre
It is reproduced unchanged under Creative Commons Attribution- share Alike

Muslims, of course, pray facing Mecca, the city, now in Saudi Arabia, that was home to the Prophet Muhammed. To make sense of my collection of mosques I have split it into three, depending of the (rough) direction of Mecca. The mosques I have selected are old or beautiful or quirky or have an interesting history, or any combination of those four.

I should point out I am not a believer, in Islam or any other religion, but I do like religious buildings.

For ease of access and because I have occasionally broken my own rules, countries are allocated as follows

Facing East	Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Libya, Portugal	Arab Countries (with one obvious exception!)
Facing South	Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina	Countries wholly or partly in Europe
Facing West	Iran, India, China, Malaysia	An ethnic mixed bag

9 of the 18 are Muslim Majority countries, the other have or had an indigenous Muslim population.

Turkey

The Islamic world expanded dramatically in the century after the prophet’s death (632CE), much of the expansion coming at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. It was not until 1095 that expansion further into what is now Turkey prompted the Byzantine Emperor to ask the Pope for assistance. He sent the First Crusade, which rather by-passed Constantinople on its way to Jerusalem.

The extent of the Umayyid Caliphate in 750
The work of Gabagool and borrowed from Wikipedia under Creative Commons licence

The Byzantine Empire endured death by a thousand cuts, its suffering finally ending in 1453 when the Ottomans took Constantinople. As Istanbul is the only part of Turkey we have visited, this is where my mosques must be.

Istanbul has many to chose from. There was a mosque just up the road from our hotel in the narrow streets of the old Sultanahmet district. It was small, but the dawn call to prayer was so loud I thought the muezzin was sitting on the end of our bed. That said, Istanbul has 2⅓ of the world’s finest mosques.

Süleymaniye Mosque

If not perhaps Istanbul’s best-known mosque, the silhouette of the Süleymaniye Mosque across the Golden Horn is one of the city’s signature views.

The Süleymaniye Mosque and the Golden Horn, Istanbul

Commissioned by the Ottoman Emperor Süleyman the Magnificent, the mosque was designed by imperial architect Mimar Sinan and built between 1550 and 1557.

The photograph was taken from the top of the Galata Tower, see Istanbul (4) Taksim Square and the Galata Tower (2014)

The Blue Mosque

Built between 1609 and 1616 for Sultan Ahmet I, the Blue Mosque was the last great mosque of the Ottoman classical period. Despite its graceful cascade of domes and semi-domes, it was not without its critics. Such size and splendour, they said, was inappropriate when the Persian war was going badly and Anatolia was in a state of anarchy, and if that was not enough, having six minarets, like the Great Mosque of Mecca, was sacreligious.

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Despite the crowds we found the interior retained an air of calm serenity. The blue tiles that gave the mosque its name dominated, but there were pinks and greens too, and over 250 windows giving a feeling of space and light.

Inside the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

The huge dome is beautiful, but the chunky ‘elephant leg’ pillars required to support it look out of proportion.

The dome of the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Haghia Sophia

Earlier I referred to 2⅓ mosques, Haghia Sophia is the ⅓. Door-to-door it is 300m from the Blue Mosque and the photos of each were taken from the same spot. Completed in 536, the church of Haghia Sophia was built for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. It is perhaps the greatest architectural achievement of the Byzantine Empire and the Blue Mosque, built over a thousand years later, appears to owe something to its venerable neighbour.

Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

With the arrival of the Ottomans, Haghia Sophia became a mosque. The four minarets, rockets on ugly concrete pedestals, are regrettable, but inside the changes were sympathetic. I called it ⅓ a mosque, as it has been a church, a mosque and now a secular museum. Today the Islamic minbar and calligraphy….

Minbar and Islamic calligraphy, Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

…sit easily beside the earlier Byzantine mosaics.

Virgin and Child with the Emperor John II and his wife Irene, Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

[Update: As of 2020 Hagia Sophia is a mosque again. The Turkish government say all the Byzantine mosaics will be respected and treasured. Even so, it is a provocative move, it is not as though Istanbul is short of mosques. I believe the building would be best cared for by those for whom its history and beauty were primary concerns. But my opinion counts for....]

See Istanbul (1) The Blue Mosque, Haghia Sophia and the Bosphorus (2011)

The remainder of this post is in two sections linked by Istanbul the capital of the Ottoman Empire that took Islam into Europe, and along with Persia (now Iran) into the Caucasus.

Mosques in the Caucusus

Featured mosques in the first section are in Baku, Tbilisi, and Yerevan the capitals of the south Caucasus republics,
and in Șamaxi 120km west of Baku (so pretty well on the red ring)

Azerbaijan

Whether the three former soviet republics south of the Caucasus are European states is debatable. Armenia and Georgia think they are, and they do feel European, FIFA thinks all three are but Azerbaijan, the only majority Muslim state among them - and in many ways a detached corner of Asian Turkey - is more ambivalent.

Over 90% of Azeris identify as Muslims, but for many that identification is more cultural and ethnic than religious; after decades of state atheism as part of the USSR, they are not that bothered.

The Muhammed or Siniggala Mosque, Baku

The Siniggala Mosque claims to be the oldest in Baku, dating from the 11th century, though it appears to be a more recent building constructed on ancient foundations. Siniggala (damaged tower) refers to the, now repaired minaret. Stubby but still imposing in the densely packed low-rise Old City, it survives from the original mosque. During the Russo-Persian War (1722-3) a squadron of Russian warships demanded Baku’s surrender. Refusal was followed by a bombardment and the minaret was hit. The sudden storm that then blew the ships out of range was clearly a divine intervention, so the minaret was left untouched for many years.

The Muhammad (or Broken Tower) Mosque, Baku

see Baku (2); The Qobustan Petroglyphs and the Old City (2014)

Friday Mosque, Şamaxı

Şamaxı is a small town 120km west of Baku. The Friday Mosque is sometimes called the second-oldest mosque in the trans-Caucasus but it looks surprisingly new.

Şamaxı Friday Mosque

The first mosque on this site was built in the 8th century, but seismic activity and marauding Georgians and Armenians have seen off a few versions of the building. An early 20th century reconstruction designed by Józef Plośko, a St Petersburg trained Polish architect (and not the only Christian to design a mosque in these posts) forms the basis of the current building, though the major 2011 restoration encouraged Lonely Planet to call it a ’21st century masterpiece.’

Mihrab, Şamaxı Friday Mosque

See Baku to Şǝki(2014)

Armenia

Blue Mosque, Yerevan

Armenia claims to have been the first country to make Christianity its state religion when St. Gregory the Illuminator converted King Tiridates III in 301. However, Armenia is a small country and has spent much of its history wedged between the Ottoman, Russian and Persian empires, so foreign rulers came and went. The Blue Mosque was built in 1765–1766 by Hussein Ali Khan when Yerevan was the capital of his Persian Khanate. It was secularised in 1920 by the communist regime, but was re-opened in 1996 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Armenia has a Muslim population of under 1,000, mainly of Iranian descent, and this is the country’s only mosque.

The Blue Mosque, Yerevan - very Iranian in style

It sits unobtrusively in a dip beside the central Mashtots Avenue, so even the minaret hardly breaks the skyline. It is not generally open, but we asked the nice man in the Iranian tourist office near the entrance and he gave us the key. That was in 2003, I suspect they may be more security conscious now.

Blue Mosque minaret, Yerevan

Georgia

Georgia is another small Christian country that received unwanted attention from surrounding empires. Tbilisi was (off and on) the capital of an Iranian vassal monarchy from the 16th until the 18th century when the Georgians sought Russian support to free themselves. Like others who sought such help, they soon found themselves annexed by Tsarist Russia.

Jumah Mosque, Tbilisi

As part of the Soviet Union, Tbilisi retained a Shia and a Sunni mosque until 1951 when the Sunni mosque was demolished to make way for a bridge. The surviving Shi-ite Jumah Mosque took in the homeless Sunnis and has become the only mosque in the world where Shia and Sunni Muslims worship side by side.

Jumah Mosque, Tbilisi

Tbilisi sits in a gorge, and the mosque is in a side-gorge above the thermal spring. Among the spas are the Orbeliani baths, which look more like a Persian mosque than the mosque itself. Pushkin described this as the ‘most luxurious place on earth’.

Orbeliani Baths, Tbilisi

See Tbilisi (2014)

Mosques in the Balkans

Islam expanded in this area under the Ottoman empire which entered Europe in 1453 and finally retreated to the bottom right hand corner in 1918. Featured Mosques are in the ringed cities except in North Macedonia, where Glumovo is very near Skopje and Prilep is south of the 'E'

Bulgaria

Eastern Orthodox Christianity has always been the dominant religion in Bulgaria but active membership has fallen steadily in recent years. About 8% of the population identify as Muslims, a small number for a country that was part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years and has a border with Turkey.

Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia

Sofia has one active mosque, but it is a big one. Unsurprisingly Turkish in style the Banya Bashi Mosque dates from 1566 and, like Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque, was designed by Mimar Sinan. Clearly Sofia was an important city.

The Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia

Banya Bashi is built beside and partly over Sofia’s thermal spring. The name means ‘Big Bath’ and you can collect the warm mineral water in the square outside.

The hot springs outside the Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia

See Sofia and the Master of Boyana (2007)

Albania

Converting to Islam under the Ottoman Empire conferred distinct advantages, and some 70% of Albanians were Muslims by the time the empire folded in 1918. For 45 year after World War 2, a nominally communist dictatorship imposed militant atheism. Freedom of religion arrived in the 1990s and was met with displays of mass apathy. Although 57% identified as Muslim in the 2011 census, a 2008 study in Tirana found that 67% of declared Muslims and 55% of Christians were completely non-observant.

Many churches and mosques were destroyed under state atheism – the current freedom has seen no great rebuilding.

The Et’hem Bey Mosque, Tirana

Et'hem Bey Mosque, Tirana

One mosque, though does have particular significance. The early 19th century Et’hem Bey Mosque sits in a corner of Tirana’s central Skanderbeg Square. Scheduled for demolition in the 1960s, it somehow never happened. In 1991 the mosque reopened without the authority’s permission. When 10,000 attended Friday prayers on the 18th of January 1991 and the police did nothing, it was a signal that the old regime had capitulated.

Et'hem Bey has the slimmest of pencil slim minarets,  typical of Balkan mosques.

See Tirana (2019)

North Macedonia

Like their close cousins the Bulgarians, ethnic Macedonians are almost entirely Eastern Orthodox Christians (though whether practising or not is another matter), but they only comprise 64% of the population. Around 30% are Muslims including the vast majority of the substantial ethnic Albanian community. Ironically the best-known Macedonian Albanian (though she was born in the days of the Ottoman Empire) was the Roman Catholic Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Skopje has a few grand mosques, as befits a capital, several understated churches from Ottoman times, and a big modern cathedral, but I will start with a village mosque.

Glumovo Mosque, Near Skopje

Glumovo (it’s better than it sounds) is only 10km outside Skopje. For a village of 1,683 (2002 census) it has a huge mosque, but as 1,646 of those people are Albanians and most of the rest are Muslim Bozniaks, perhaps it needs it.

Glumovo Mosque

Pencil slim minarets are a feature of mosques in the Balkans, and Glumovo has two of the finest.

See The Matka Canyon and Stobi (2015)

Čarši Mosque, Prilep

Although Prilep, 100km south of Skopje, is North Macedonia’s 4th largest city, it has only 70,000 inhabitants. Unlike Glumovo its Muslim population is relatively small.

Macedonia achieved independence in 1991 without firing a shot, but in 2001 the Kosovo conflict spilt over into northern Macedonia with elements of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) trying to inspire ethnic Albanian Macedonians to fight for a 'greater Albania'. For six months until a UN brokered settlement there was considerable fighting along the Kosovan border. On the 7th of August 2001 ten Macedonian soldiers, all from Prilep, were killed in a KLA ambush on the Skopje-Tetovo road. Protests on the 8th turned into riots and Prilep’s 15th century mosque was burned down. None of Prilep's Albanian population were implicated in the atrocity which happened 80km away.

Prilep's burned out mosque

In 2015 the failure of local and national authorities to sanction the rebuilding remained a bone of contention. It seems it still is.

See Prilep and Bitola (2015)

Bosnia and Herzegovina

If Prilep gives a taste of the destruction of the Balkans war, Bosnia provides a surfeit. In 2012 the buildings of Sarajevo were still pock-marked by bullets, but the worst destruction we saw was in Mostar. Nationalism waved its magic wand and families who had been neighbours, and even friends, for generations suddenly turned to killing each other. I find it difficult to understand; there is nothing special about the people of Mostar, so perhaps it could happen anywhere

Before the war the city’s population was, roughly 20% Serb (Eastern Orthodox Christians), 40% Bosniak (Muslims) and 40% Croat (Roman Catholic Christians).

The initial Serb siege destroyed the Catholic Cathedral, the Franciscan monastery, the bishop’s palace and library, and 14 mosques. After they were repulsed the Croats showed the same Christian spirit by destroying the orthodox cathedral, three churches and a monastery – and all but one of the 13 surviving Ottoman era mosques. Eventually in 1993 in an act of symbolic vandalism they destroyed Mostar’s emblematic bridge.

Mostar Bridge, Built 1557-66 by the Ottomans, destroyed 1993, rebuilt 2001-3 by Turkish craftsmen 

The Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

The Karađozbeg Mosque is not the largest or finest, but it has been serving its community on the left bank of the Neretva, the Muslim quarter of Mostar, since 1577. The war left it with a gaping hole in the dome and the stump of a minaret. It is now fully restored and open to worshippers and anyone else who wishes to pop in.

Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

See Mostar (2012)

The expanding Ottoman Empire swallowed Bosnia in 1460. Sarajevo was founded the following year as the administrative capital for the new Ottoman province and duly acquired an array of mosques to suit its status.

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo, built 1561
Unlike churches mosques only occassionally have an associated graveyard 

In 1991 Sarajevo became the capital of the freshly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and was promptly surrounded by Serb forces trying to carve out a new Republika Srpska. The Siege of Sarajevo, April 1992 to December 1995, was the longest siege of the 20th century. 14,000 died, 5,500 of them civilians, 1,500 of those children.

Situated in a narrow valley closed at one end, Sarajevo was perfectly designed for a siege. Many of the Muslim dead are buried in the Martyr’s Cemetery which flows down the head of the valley. One evening we walked up to the Ottoman Yellow Bastion above the cemetery from where we could see the city laid out before us.

I could not count the mosques at the time, but I have found 18 minarets in the photograph (ringed in red). The Serbian Orthodox and Catholic Cathedrals (yellow) also stand out as does the bilious yellow cube of the Holiday Inn (blue) overlooking the notorious ‘Sniper’s Alley. As dusk fell the call from mosques started, not all together, but first one, than another, then a third. The sound swelled as more and more joined in, then gradually started to ebb until eventually there was one lone voice. It was a magnificent sound.

The Mosques and Cathedral of Sarajevo (and the Martyr's Cemetary) 2012

A friend who visited in the 1970s described Sarajevo as a perfect multi-cultural city, with people of different traditions living and working together harmoniously. Then it all went wrong, and now it is being put back together. Humans are good at restoring things, be they bridges or communities; it's a pity they have to destroy them first.

See Sarajevo (1) The Old Town, The New Town and Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

and Sarajevo (2) The Siege 1992-1995