Georgia's historic wooden mosques face neglect and disappearance

Bats dart overhead, rotting floorboards groan underfoot, a solitary string of prayer beads dangles by a boarded window. Yet amid the decay, the expert craftsmanship that went into Gulebi mosque is still evident in the faded reds and blues of its ornate interior and the intricate patterns carved into its minbar.

"It breaks my heart that even in my lifetime I might experience the vanishing of this mosque," says Lia Dekanadze, a young activist from Adjara, an autonomous republic in south-west Georgia, bordering Turkey.

She first came here five years ago, and even in that short time, she has noticed a distinct deterioration: the once-vibrant turquoise door dulled by the elements.

Gulebi is one of more than 50 historic wooden mosques dotting the hillsides of Upper Adjara.

Built between 1817 and 1926, some remain well-maintained and active places of worship to this day. But many others are in urgent need of repair or have been left abandoned, and activists say their neglect reflects a wider failure to value the culture and history of Muslims in Georgia.

In a predominantly Orthodox Christian country, Adjara is something of an outlier.

The Caucasus nation is the world’s second-oldest Christian state, after its neighbour Armenia.

The Orthodox Church has become a cornerstone of national identity, particularly in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today, some 82% of Georgians practise the faith.

However, in Adjara, Islam arrived four centuries ago with the Ottoman Empire, and to this day, around a third of the population is Muslim.

Over a cup of tea in his office in Khulo, a small town in mountainous Upper Adjara, local mufti Aslan Abashidze guides The New Arab through the contours of the region’s history.

"Although there was Ottoman influence at the time, people lived as families, and these places of worship, the mosques, were built with the resources of the local population," he says.

Crafted from timber plentiful in the forested highlands, they mirror the forms of the region’s traditional wooden houses, giving them a character uniquely rooted in Adjara.

Mosque construction stopped in the early Soviet period, and in the 1930s, religious sites closed as the state intensified its campaign against religion.

The minarets were even severed from many mosques.

"They repurposed them as shops or warehouses," Abashidze explains. "While the interior design might have been partially ruined, the physical structures themselves were preserved because of their utility."

A heritage under threat

When the Soviet era ended, life returned to some of the mosques.

Ghorjomi Mosque, for example, is the heart of the community in one of Khulo’s largest villages, its well-kept interior a kaleidoscope of colour.

But for many others, after surviving the purges of the Soviet era, neglect and a lack of resources are the modern threats.

"These mosques are literally disappearing very rapidly," says Giorgi Rizhvadze, a researcher from Khulo.

As wooden structures, the mosques are particularly vulnerable to the elements, and Adjara’s snowy winters and humid summers can take a heavy toll.

Many of the mosques also have ageing electrical systems, adding another risk.

Last year alone, two were destroyed by fire. The exact cause remains unclear, but electrical faults are suspected in at least one.

Renovations are expensive, often beyond the means of rural communities.

Villages also increasingly suffer from depopulation, with landslides and limited economic prospects forcing many to leave for Batumi, the regional capital.

As communities shrink, so too do local resources.

Authorities have pledged to rebuild Satiskhuri, one of the mosques that burnt down last year and renovations were recently finished on two others.

But Rizhvadze and Dekanadze have long been frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of progress.

During the pandemic, they created an NGO with a group of friends from the region to tackle issues facing rural communities.

Solidarity Community, as it was known, drew up maps of Islamic heritage sites, conducted a survey to assess their condition, and put pressure on the local government to implement necessary interventions.

"Before our campaign, there was not a lot written about it," says Rizhvadze, explaining that in the capital, Tbilisi, people often had little to no knowledge about the region’s unique architectural heritage.

The group also had a broader ambition: to change the way history is told in Georgia and whose narratives are included in its national story.

"Islam is portrayed as something very foreign," Dekanadze says, explaining that people often associate Islam with communities that came to Georgia from Azerbaijan or Chechnya, while Georgian Muslims in Adjara are frequently overlooked.

Even more harmfully, a small but vocal ultranationalist fringe promotes exclusionary narratives that question or outright deny the possibility of being both Muslim and Georgian.

And at a state level, although governments may acknowledge the religious pluralism guaranteed by Georgia’s constitution, their engagement with it remains shallow, according to Rizhvadze.

"I think in the end, it's a big issue of government policy towards minorities, especially Georgian Muslims, because they don't do anything in particular to promote the culture, to promote what Georgian Muslims did for Georgian history."

Muslims on the margins

Without positive, inclusive narratives, Muslims and the issues facing them in modern Georgia are often sidelined.

For everyone The New Arab spoke to, one example stood out. In Batumi, the regional capital of Adjara and Georgia’s second city, worshippers are often forced to pray in the street.

The city has just one mosque, and its capacity is insufficient for the city’s size, especially as it's a travel destination for travellers from Turkey and the Middle East.

Permission has been granted to build a new one, but bureaucracy has long stalled the start of construction.

Last year, Solidarity Community’s work championing religious pluralism was brought to an abrupt end. As Georgia sank into political chaos, they stopped operations.

Daily protests have been ongoing in Georgia for almost two years, ignited by the government’s announcement that it would pause EU integration talks.

The decision was a catalyst that mobilised hundreds of thousands, but dissent had already been brewing over the Foreign Agent law, which sought to restrict organisations receiving donations from abroad.

These laws, which the government claims are aimed at ensuring national sovereignty, but Amnesty International calls a "crackdown on civil society", have been tightened again and again, forcing many civil society groups out of action.

Unable to access foreign funding and unwilling to register as "foreign agents" and face the stigma and restrictions that come with it, Solidarity Community had to suspend its activities.

It was the only NGO dedicated to tackling the issues facing the highlands’ rural communities.

"When we advocated for them, the mosques entered into the public discourse, but now due to the ongoing very difficult social and political situation in the country, they’re not even a topic of debate," Dekanadze says as she walks down the long winding path leading from Gulebi Mosque.

"I’m really afraid that with time they’ll be forgotten."

Gulebi Mosque has long since fallen out of use, and nowadays, the village is predominantly Christian.

But Dekanadze insists that, regardless of modern use, these buildings should be treasured as an important part of the community's and the country's history.

"They fascinate me because I see this collective labour, and I also know these mosques were not only a place of worship, but also somewhere that the community would gather and make important decisions," Dekanadze says.

"It’s the indifference to these communal traditions that really breaks my heart and disappoints me, not as a Muslim, but as a human being who cares about cultural preservation."

The region may no longer suffer the active repression it once experienced, but neglect is also corrosive.

And now, against the backdrop of the current political turmoil, there are fewer resources and avenues for advocacy for both the practical preservation of these sites and the promotion of inclusive narratives that celebrate Muslim heritage and living culture in Georgia.

Poppy Askham is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi, regularly filming features for the Associated Press (AP). Her text and photo reporting has been published by outlets including New World Magazine, Index on Censorship and The Kyiv Independent