Bohoniki Mosque

In the Podlaskie village of Bohoniki stands one of the oldest active mosques in Poland — a wooden mosque built most probably in 1873, in a village inhabited since the 17th century by descendants of Tatar settlers. Next to it lies the mizar, the Muslim cemetery, one of the most remarkable landscapes of the Podlasie region.

A date hidden in the door frame

The year of construction remained uncertain for a long time. Only a major renovation in 2005 revealed the date 1873, written on the frame of the entrance door. The present mosque replaced an earlier, burned-down Tatar prayer house. The timber building has log construction, a footprint of 11.49 x 8.03 m and a cubic capacity of 460 m3, and its four-sided tent roof has been covered with shingles since the 2005 renovation - before that, galvanized sheet metal for decades.

The mizar in the eastern part of the village

The cemetery probably dates from the 18th century, and possibly even the 17th. The whole mosque complex was entered in the register of monuments in 1966, and in 2012 the President of Poland declared it a Historic Monument.

A living history

During the Second World War the mosque was vandalised and used as a field hospital; the building was damaged by a shell explosion. The community nevertheless returned to the mosque - in the 1990s the imam was Stefan Mustafa Jasinski, who died in 2015 as the oldest Muslim clergyman in Poland. Friday prayers are held here once a month, so this remains a living place of worship, not a museum.

Practical tips

Visit the mosque and the mizar quietly and with respect for the place of prayer. Bohoniki lies in Podlasie, near the border with Belarus; after your visit, take a moment to walk among the gravestones, where plaques with Arabic inscriptions sit alongside Polish surnames.