Religious Architecture and Islamic CulturesMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture Instructor: Prof. Nasser Rabbat Description This course introduces the history of Islamic cultures through their most vibrant material signs: their religious architecture that spans fourteen centuries and threecontinents, Asia, Africa, and Europe. It reviews a number of representative architectural examples (mosques, madrasas, mausolea, etc.) from various periods and places and discusses their architectural, urban, and stylistic characteristics in conjunction with their historical, political, and intellectual environments. The course also analyzes the development of the sacred, commemorative, pious, and educational architecture in the Islamic
world in light of a changing Islam from a reform movement in 7th-century Arabia to a global power straddling three continents in the medieval period to a world religion professed by one-sixth of humanity in the present. Films and discussions are used to elucidate the artistic/cultural varieties and historical developments of this architectural vision within both the Islamic and the larger, universal, and cross-cultural contexts. Throughout the course, a number of critical issues will be considered: How do we define and/or qualify architecture? What is the relationship between architecture and culture? How do we study an architectural tradition that covers several regions and encompasses a variety of cultures and national and ethnic identities? And, what, if anything, is Islamic about this architecture, and how do we understand and describe vis-a-vis the global history of architecture? SyllabusPart 1: Beginnings Meeting
1: Religious architecture: Visual impressions and intellectual contours Meeting 2: Simple origins and influences of pre-Islamic traditions Reading:
Meeting 3: The Life and message of the Prophet. The Mosque of the Prophet in Madina and other early mosques Reading:
Meeting 4: Rituals of worship: The vocabulary of religious architecture Reading:
General Background Reading:
Part 2: Pax Islamica Meeting 5: The conquests and the adaptation of ancient motifs as assertive elements of a new faith. The First Islamic monument: the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Competing ideologies, myths, and world views. Reading:
Meeting 6: First Caliphal Expressions: Umayyad Mosques (715-50). Islamization of the empire and Arabization of the state. Reading:
Meeting 7: The Splendors of the Abbasids at Baghdad and Samarra. An Islamic architectural language: Monumentalizing the hypostyle type. Reading:
Meeting 8: Religious monuments of the West: Ifriqiya and Spain. Imperial versus provincial expressions of power. Reading:
Meeting 9: Fatimid Cairo: New traditions and old forms. Muqarnas: decorative purposes and symbolic meanings. Reading:
Meeting 10: Iran and Central Asia: Developments on the Eastern frontier. The survival and revival of pre-Islamic modes of construction and expression. The introduction of the mausoleum. Reading:
Part 3: Fragmentation and Images of Unity Meeting 11: The Achitecture of the Great Seljuqs: The Four-Iwan Plan: Fom palatial to religious. Reading:
Meeting 12: The architecture of the Sunni revival: Eastern influences and western traditions. The Introduction and spread of the Madrasa and the Khanqah Reading:
Bibliography Allan, James W. and K.A.C. Creswell. A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture. Cairo: American University Press, 1989. Armstrong,
Karen. Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. San Francisco, Calif: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Asher, Catherine. Architecture of Mughal India. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Bassiouni, M. Cherif. Introduction to Islam. Chicago, IL : Rand McNally & Co.: 1988. Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. Islamic Architecture of Cairo, An Introduction. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989. Blair, Sheila, and Jonathan Bloom. The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250-1800. New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, 1994. Bloom, Jonathan. The Minaret Symbol of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Burckhardt Titus. Sacred Art in East and West: Its Principles and Methods. London: Perennial Books, 1967. Dodds, Jerrilynn D (ed.). Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art . Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1992. Ettinghausen, Richard and Oleg Grabar.
The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650-1250. London and N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1987. Martin Frishman and Hasan-Uddin Khan (eds). The Aosque: History, Architectural Development and Regional Diversity. New York, 1994. Goodwin, Godfrey. A History of Ottoman Architecture. London:Thames and Hudson, 1971. Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2d. ed., 1987. Grabar, Oleg. The Great Mosque of Isfahan. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Golombek, Liza and Donald Wilber. The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Hoag, John D. Islamic Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 1994. Ibn Batuta. Travels, A.D. 1325-1354. Cambridge [Eng.], 1958. Ibn Khaldun. The Muqaddimah: An
Introduction to History. Princeton, N.J., 1967. Irwin, Robert. Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture and the Literary World. New York, 1997. Kuban, Dogan. Muslim Religious Architecture. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974. Michell, George ed. Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. Prochazka, A. B. Mosques. Zurich: Muslim Architecture Research Program, 1986. Rahman, Fazlur. Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Rogers, Michael. The Spread of Islam. New York: Elsevier-Phaidon, 1976. Soucek, Priscilla ed. Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World. Philadelphia, l988. Vogt, Ulya G. Mosquees: grand courants de l'architecture islamique. Paris: 1975. Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d Edition, article "Masdjid," 6: 644-706. | |