he ceremony held for the launching of the project hosted Stari Grad Mayor Ibrahim Hacibayric and TIKA's Bosnia and Herzegovina Coordinator Zulfu Oruc and many other officials.
Speaking at the ceremony, Hacibayric said that Islamic lodge built by Ottomans were demolished and then a coffee house was built in the place of dervish lodge.
Hacibayric added that he found the financial aid of Konya's Selcuklu Municipality very meaningful and added, "Mathnawi tradition came over here from Konya and it contributed a lot to Muslims here. It has such importance for us to have an Islamic dervish lodge in Sarajevo. We will continue maintaining the Mathnawi-reading tradition in Sarajevo."
TIKA coordinator Oruc added that the project will cost approximately 500,000 Euros and said that they are planning to complete the project next year in April.
The Mathnawi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi, written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature. Comprising six books of poems that amount to more than 50,000 lines, it pursues its way through 424 stories that illustrate man's predicament in his search for God.
Reporting by Kemal Zorlak
