We arrived in Trebinje , Bosnia around Maghrib time.Trebinje —- three hills.About 15 km from the border of Croatia.
I slept well , alhamdulillah, despite the cold room and heavy dinner. Dinner was pilav with grilled cod and trilece for dessert. By 4:30am I was up for Fajr and breakfast.
8:00 am : we were on our way to Dubrovnik, Croatia.
8:40 am : At the border. As Croatia is in EU, border control is a bit stiff. No coffee money in this part of the world.oopps! I was wrong.
The place was packed with tourists. This old quarter of the city was located by the sea and served the port nearby. The walls surround the the living quarters protect them from foreign intruders. The place is well preserved that every corner has a story to tell. In the past, a rector rules the place. A rector was choosen among the rich and influential families and rule for a month. They lived happily for centuries until Nepoleon came and conquered the place. This area is blessed with amazing landscape— miles and miles of coastal line by the Adriatic sea. Nowadays they built the highway along this coastal line and you can see the beautiful views of the bays, beaches, rock formations and the blue oceans of the Adriatic Sea as you drive out of Croatia. We were heading back to Bosnia Herzegovina to continue our tour of the Balkans.
This country is mainly Orthodox Christian so majority of the history is related to it. Apparently, OC is different from Roman Katholik etc. They celebrated christmas on the 7th of January.Sometimes I wonder what to look for or what to be inspired from this visit. All narrations would end up at the stairs of a church or the saint it is for. There was no a hint of anything Islamic here. I wonder why?
This is why……
The Treaty of Karlowitz, concluding the Great Turkish War of 1683–1697, in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Holy League at the Battle of Zenta,[1]was signed in Karlowitz, in the Military Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy (present-day Sremski Karlovci, Serbia), on 26 January 1699. Also known as “The Austrian treaty that saved Europe”, it marks the end of Ottoman control in much of Central Europe, with their first major territorial losses in Europe, beginning the reversal of four centuries of expansion (1299–1683). The treaty established the Habsburg monarchy as the dominant power of the region.[2]
When the Ottoman lost the battle, mosques were destroyed (from 250 to only 4 existed in modern day Croatia) and Muslims were displaced. And Croatia was handed back to the Christian Europe. That’s why ,just now , some people looked at us with cold shoulders and hostile looks. The hatred has not completely died with modern attitudes of tolerance and “lets the past be bygone”
3:17 pm : As we crossed border into Bosnia-Herzegovina again I felt lost and disappointed.
On the way back to Mostar we stopped at Blagaj where Tekija (Dervish House) is located. The place was so beautiful my heart just dropped and I was in another world. It was Maghrib time and it would be dark soon. We have to go now!
Sadly, as the sun was setting over the distance we continued our journey to Mostar where a scary episode of the past would unfold.
