One object, several definitions. The Albanian "church-mosque" dispute

Abstract

In the city of Shkodra, the ceremonial use of the so-called kishë-xhami, the “church-mosque” in the Rozafa castle, has been a thorn in the eye between the Catholic Church and the Muslim Community. Apparently the last chapter in the dispute began around 2005 when the Catholic Church in Shkodra organised a mass in the ruins on Saint Stephen’s Day on 26 December. This provoked some representatives of the Muslim Community. At the same time, individuals described as “Wahhabis”, referring to bearded Muslim men with short trousers whom many associate with “Arab” and “foreign” versions of Islam, have been observed performing dawa in the ruins. So, we are faced with at least two different religious claims to the object, one Catholic and one Muslim. In addition, there is a third position: the Albanian state, represented by the State commission for cults, which currently lists it as one of the 201 most important national “cultural monuments/religious objects” and dubs it “Faltorja (kishë-xhami)”, i.e. a “sanctuary” or “prayer chapel”, as well as a “church” and/or “mosque”. With this label, the official definition is at the same time religious, non-religious, Muslim and Christian. The Muslim Community calls it the Sultan Fatihu Mosque, and the Catholic Church, St. Stephen’s Church. In order to emphasise the fact that it is disputed, and that I do not take a stand, I will in the following refer to it by its nickname, the “church-mosque”. The history of the disputed ruins inside the Rozafa fortress in many ways Albania’s religious history in a nutshell, with a pagan-Christian-Islamic-Communist-atheist past which has gone through several stages of sacralisation, secularisation, and resacralisation. The final version of this research has been published in Annurio - Albanian Yearbook of Historical and Anthropological Studies © 2013