Bridges in Bosnia and Herzegovina from Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The bridge is primarily utilitarian construction to ensure continuity of communications at various obstacles, in an open natural environment as well as the physical structure that is designed and built by man.

The first appearance of the bridge is connected to the human need “to cross over to the other side” for existential reasons. As each time the given conditional natural features (geomorphology, water flows, water reservoirs …), on the route of his physical barriers that occur very often, diverted travel route and regulate people’s lives and their communities, from the individual man to the highest state level.

Bridge construction which solves the barrier, could be so important that the whole country opens huge economic opportunities that activates the natural resources to the extreme, to the people and the company involved in the regional and world civilization courses…

Because of its great importance, the bridge throughout human history has become the most representative picture of the man and his community. The number of bridges, their physical stability, potential engineering and architectural design, materialization (…), are the subject of ongoing research, which is, again and again, invent new dimensions beyond their pure utilitarianism.

This work is one of these attempts, where the bridge is treated in a very complex context: the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Ottoman rule. Selection of topic areas for the “bridge” is no accident: it should be noted that the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina “crossroads of the Worlds”, both in the natural and geographical (Figure 01) as well as socio-historical sense. In these conditions, the bridge (as a physical structure) and got another meaning: philosophical, religious, aesthetic, psychological… As such, the bridge has become a popular topic in the literature (as authorial literature and in folk traditions), painting, film…