Built in the late sixteenth century, the mosque complex included a madrasa (medrese), a Quranic school, a dar al-hadith, a bathhouse, a fountain, clocktower, three tombs and a cemetery. A caravanserai (kervansaray) and a market (bedesten or bezistan) were also built at the same time to bring income to support the mosque and its institutions. These were all constructed as part of Sokollu Ferhad Pasha’s waqf, or religious foundation, in Sarajevo. He also commissioned an aqueduct, a bridge and a palace in the city. An inscription over the main entrance of the mosque dated construction to 1579 (987 A.H.), which corresponds to Ferhad Pasha’s rule as the district governor (sancakbey) of Bosnia before he became the provincial governor (beylerbeyi). By the time of its demolition in 1993, the complex included only the mosque, the three tombs, the fountain, the clock tower, the cemetery and a house for the imam.
The Ferhad Pasha Mosque featured an elaborate multi-domed roof system over a brightly lit central prayer hall, flanked by vaulted galleries to the east and west and with a semi-domed qibla iwan projecting to the south. Fenestration on the mosque included two tiers of windows on the main structure, with fourteen windows on the large central dome and four on the semi-dome of the qibla iwan. A third tier of three windows sat above the portico and above the qibla iwan. Inside, the windows had coloured glass in plaster frames, some decorated with gold. Spanning 6.58 meters in diameter, the inner surface of the central dome was decorated with Quranic inscriptions of the Sura Al-Fatiha and painted arabesques. The qibla dome had Quranic inscriptions and paintings as well, with the names of God decorating the pendentives. The minbar was made entirely of marble and the painted mihrab niche had seven tiers of muqarnas at its crown.

A three-bay portico preceded the sanctuary, covered by three small domes carried on four marble columns and arches. The centre dome over the entrance was slightly elevated. The two central columns featured muqarnas capitals while the outer two had diamond-cut capitals. Adjoining the mosque at its northwest corner, the octagonal shaft of the minaret rose into a single muqarnas balcony and a conical cap. Inscriptive plaques decorated each face of the minaret base. The three domed tombs at the mosque complex were each octagonal in plan. These tombs housed the graves of Ferhad Pasha and his sons, his extended family, and two of his close assistants.

The Ferhad Pasha Mosque Complex in Banja-Luka was blown up during Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war from 1992 to 1995, on May 7, 1993 in the early morning hours. After destroying the buildings on the site, Serbian nationalists bulldozed and removed the debris of the destruction.  However, in 2001, a building permit was granted to the Islamic Community of Banja Luka to reconstruct the mosque. The Sarajevo School of Architecture’s Design and Research Centre had prepared preliminary studies but work was delayed by the complexities involved in rebuilding it authentically. In June 2007, repairs were completed on the foundations that survived the destruction, and reconstruction of the masonry and the rest of the building was completed over the next nine years, with the mosque reopening on 7 May 2016.