Mostar has always been a prominent signpost of Islamic civilisation in the heart of Europe. While Istanbul transformed into an Islamic outpost, Mostar in Bosnia subsumed and blended the cultural influences from both the Christian Europe and Islamic Orient.  Mostar was to Bosnia what Salzburg was to Austria. The city carried the essence of a thousand years of civilisation that shaped the region, its history, culture, language and religion.
The communist rule for over half a century obscured the City’s Islamic past but did nothing to undermine it. But the collapse of Yugoslavia and the consequent civil war led to a determined onslaught on the cultural identity of Mostar.

So when a war raged in Bosnia, it came as a rude shock to the entire civilised world. Pogroms aimed at ethnic cleansing by Serbs claimed nearly 200,000 lives. City’s infrastructure was pounded to dust and majority of its inhabitants were compelled to flee.

Mostar attained its glorious peak during the Ottoman period. It became a centre of culture and education. It was rounded off as a completely urban entity about 1670 and did not change significantly until 1878, the year of Austro-Hungarian occupation. It took its name Mostar (bridge-keeper) from the bow-like bridge which was constructed across Neretva river in 1665. Once in place, the urban entity with 20 houses grew into a city. The city came to be studded with several structures of unprecedented beauty and strength. The Old Bridge (Stari Most), Karadjozbeg and Vucjakovic Mosques, hamams (public baths), mektebs (schools) and libraries formed the focal point. The City also became the seat of muftija (the supreme religious leader) from the mid-17th century. Several art and crafts took birth. 

As the Ottoman empire rolled back and finally collapsed, Bosnia and Herzegovina passed under the control of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and following First World War,  became part of the Federative Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Though there was pressure to bulldoze all religious identities under the integrated nationalist ethos in the initial days of Marshal Josep Broz Tito’s rule, the religious identities came to be recognised around 1963.  It was borne out of both a hard-headed pragmatism to retain the cultural diversity and expediency to project the accommodative spirit as a bait for other potential clients of Soviet Union. 

But with the fall of Soviet Union in the wake of collapse of communist ideology, the state of Yugoslavia lost the glue of the leftist ideology.  Social fragmentation set in. Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered the most terrible fate. The war over Bosnia and Herzegovina, a region of mixed demography, underwent cataclysmic times. Serbs with the covert military backup of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia first went on the rampage. Later, Croat army turned against Bosniak Muslims. During the second war and ethnic cleansing, ‘Stari Most’, the historic bridge over river Neretva which dissects the city of Mostar collapsed due to targeted bombing by Croats on November 9, 1993. 
This came as a defining moment in the history of the region. The scenic pedestrian bridge had spanned cultural differences between the Croat-dominated West and the Muslim-dominated East. Moreover the pedestrian bridge was the achievement of an extraordinarily creative era of Islamic culture. It was constructed to outlast people and grasp eternity.

Amir Pasic, a Bosnian architect and a visiting fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was immensely agonised by the genocide and systematic destruction of signposts of Islamic culture. He mobilised people all over Europe and America to fund the project to rebuild Mostar. But the project began with the reconstruction of the bridge as it was symbolic of the unity among the Bosnian people. He was helped by Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), Istanbul and Agha Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). His dream was realised when he could see the new bridge constructed in 2004. 

The saga of the destruction and reconstruction of Mostar is also captured in the aesthetically illustrated book ‘Celebrating Mostar: Architectural History of the City 1452-2004’ of Amir Pasic. It chronicles the development and expansion of Mostar since the First World War. 

Pasic is still at work. He has recently unveiled a proposal for futuristic Unity Square project which, as envisioned by him, would symbolically celebrate a successful development of Mostar by 2012.  The square would bring together edifices symbolising the dominant architectural influences that have a role in the plural identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A pedestrian bridge could scarcely be the idea behind a grand reconstruction project. But the author Amir Pasic undertook the work clearly inspired by destruction of a bridge.

The rebuilding of Mostar continues, and Pasic is involved with several ongoing projects. The west side of the river is largely Croatian and the east side is predominantly Muslim, with a Serbian minority.  The school system remains segregated, and the Croat and Muslim communities keep to their respective sides of the river. Pasic hopes the restoration of Mostar will continue to attract tourists and money, and that economic development will eventually help the city to heal the social cleavage.