Islamic Architecture Book

[Lacy Tortelli]

Islamicarchitecture comprises the architectural styles of buildings associated with Islam. It encompasses both secular and religious styles from the early history of Islam to the present day. The Islamic world encompasses a wide geographic area historically ranging from western Africa and Europe to eastern Asia. Certain commonalities are shared by Islamic architectural styles across all these regions, but over time different regions developed their own styles according to local materials and techniques, local dynasties and patrons, different regional centers of artistic production, and sometimes different religious affiliations.[1][2]

Early Islamic architecture was influenced by Roman, Byzantine, Iranian, and Mesopotamian architecture and all other lands which the early Muslim conquests conquered in the seventh and eighth centuries.[3][4][5][6][7] Later it developed distinct characteristics in the form of buildings and in the decoration of surfaces with Islamic calligraphy, arabesques, and geometric motifs.[8] New architectural elements like minarets, muqarnas, and multifoil arches were invented. Common or important types of buildings in Islamic architecture include mosques, madrasas, tombs, palaces, hammams (public baths), Sufi hospices (e.g. khanqahs or zawiyas), fountains and sabils, commercial buildings (e.g. caravanserais and bazaars), and military fortifications.[2]

The Islamic era began with the formation of Islam under the leadership of Muhammad in early 7th-century Arabia. The first mosque was a structure built by Muhammad in Medina in 622, right after his Hijrah (migration) from Mecca, which corresponds to the site of the present-day Mosque of the Prophet (al-Masjid an-Nabawi).[10][9] It is usually described as his house, but may have been designed to serve as a community center from the beginning.[10] It consisted of a simple courtyard structure built in unbaked brick, with a rectangular, almost square, floor plan measuring about 53 by 56 meters.[10][11] A shaded portico supported by palm trunks stood on the north side of the courtyard, in the direction of prayer (the qibla), which was initially towards Jerusalem. When the qibla was changed to face towards Mecca in 624, a similar portico was added on the south side, facing towards that city.[10] Muhammad and his family lived in separate rooms attached to the mosque, and Muhammad himself was buried in one of these rooms upon his death in 632.[10] Over the rest of the 7th century and in the 8th century the mosque was repeatedly expanded to include a large flat-roofed prayer hall supported by columns (a hypostyle hall) with a central courtyard.[10] It became one of the main models for the early mosques built elsewhere.[10][11] Scholars generally agree that aside from Muhammad's mosque/house, the architecture of the Arabian Peninsula seems to have had only a limited role in the formulation of later Islamic architecture.[12][13][14][15]

When the early Arab-Muslim conquests spread out from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and advanced across the Middle East and North Africa, new garrison cities were established in the conquered territories, such as Fustat in Egypt and Kufa in present-day Iraq. The central congregational mosques of these cities were built in the hypostyle format.[10] In other cities, especially in Syria, new mosques were established by converting or occupying parts of existing churches in existing cities, as for example in Damascus and Hama.[10] These early mosques had no minaret, although small shelters may have been constructed on the roofs to protect the muezzin while issuing the call to prayer.[24]

The Umayyads were the first to add the mihrab to mosque design, a concave niche in the qibla wall of the mosque.[32] The first mihrab reportedly appeared at Muhammad's mosque in Medina when it was rebuilt by al-Walid I in 707. It seems to have represented the place where the Prophet stood when leading prayer.[32] This almost immediately became a standard feature of all mosques.[32] Several major early monuments of Islamic architecture built under the Umayyads include the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (built by Caliph Abd al-Malik) and the Great Mosque of Damascus (built by al-Walid I). The Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Al-Aqsa compound, also in Jerusalem, was also rebuilt by al-Walid I, replacing an earlier simple structure built around 670.[10] A number of palaces from this period have also partially survived or have been excavated in modern times.[27][29] The horseshoe arch appears for the first time in Umayyad architecture, later to evolve to its most advanced form in al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula).[33]

The Dome of the Rock has a centralized floor plan with an octagonal layout. This was most likely modeled on earlier Byzantine martyria in the region that had a similar form, such as the Church of the Kathisma.[34][35] Despite the religious and historical importance of the Dome of the Rock, its layout did not frequently serve as a model for major Islamic monuments after it.[27] In hypostyle mosques, the Umayyads introduced the tradition of making the "nave" or aisle in front of the mihrab wider than the others, dividing the prayer room along its central axis.[32] This innovation was probably inspired by the layout of existing Christian basilicas in the region.[32][36] Both the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Great Mosque of Damascus feature a hypostyle hall in this fashion, with a dome above the space in front of the mihrab, and both were influential in the design of later mosques elsewhere.[10] The Dome of the Rock and the Umayyad Mosque are also notable for their extensive program of mosaic decoration that drew on late Antique motifs and craftsmanship.[37][38][31][35] However, mosaic decoration eventually fell out of fashion in Islamic architecture.[27]

Features from the late Umayyad period, such as vaulting, carved stucco, and painted wall decoration, were continued and elaborated in the Abbasid period.[39] The four-centred arch, a more sophisticated form of the pointed arch, is first attested during the Abbasid period in monuments at Samarra, such as the Qasr al-Ashiq palace,[44][39] and became widely used in some regions at later periods.[45] Samarra also saw the appearance of new decorative styles, particularly in stucco and plasterwork, which rendered the earlier vegetal motifs of late antique traditions into more abstract and stylized forms, as exemplified by the so-called "beveled" style. These decorative techniques quickly spread to other regions where stucco decoration played a prominent role.[46]

Abbasid mosques all followed the courtyard plan with hypostyle halls. The earliest was the mosque that Caliph al-Mansur built in Baghdad (since destroyed). The Great Mosque of Samarra built by al-Mutawakkil measured 256 by 139 metres (840 by 456 ft), had a flat wooden roof supported by columns, and was decorated with marble panels and glass mosaics.[47] The prayer hall of the Abu Dulaf Mosque at Samarra had arcades on rectangular brick piers running at right angles to the qibla wall. Both of the Samarra mosques have spiral minarets, the only examples in Iraq.[47] A mosque at Balkh in what is now Afghanistan was about 20 by 20 metres (66 by 66 ft) square, with three rows of three square bays, supporting nine vaulted domes.[48]

While the origins of the minaret are uncertain, it is believed that the first true minarets appeared in this period.[49][24] Several of the Abbasid mosques built in the early ninth century had minaret towers which stood at the northern ends of the building, opposite the central mihrab. Among the most famous of these is the Malwiyya minaret, a stand-alone tower with a "spiral" form built for the Great Mosque of Samarra.[50]

After its initial apogee of power, the Abbasid Caliphate became partly fragmented into regional states in the 9th century which were formally obedient to the caliphs in Baghdad but were de facto independent.[54] The Aghlabids in Ifriqiya (roughly modern-day Tunisia) were notable patrons of architecture themselves, responsible for rebuilding both the Great Mosque of Kairouan (originally founded by Uqba ibn Nafi in 670) and the Zaytuna Mosque of Tunis in much of their current forms, as well as for building numerous other structures in the region.[55][56] In Egypt, Ahmad ibn Tulun established a short-lived dynasty, the Tulunids, and built himself a new capital (Al-Qata'i) and a new congregational mosque, known as the Ibn Tulun Mosque, which was completed in 879. It was strongly influenced by Abbasid architecture in Samarra and remains one of the most notable and best-preserved examples of 9th-century architecture from the Abbasid Caliphate.[57]

A hypostyle, i.e., an open hall supported by columns, is considered to be derived from architectural traditions of Achaemenid period Persian assembly halls (apadana). This type of building originated from the Roman-style basilica with an adjacent courtyard surrounded by colonnades, like Trajan's Forum in Rome. The Roman type of building has developed out of the Greek agora. In Islamic architecture, the hypostyle hall is the main feature of the hypostyle mosque. One of the earliest hypostyle mosques is the Tarikhaneh Mosque in Iran, dating back to the eighth century.[69]

Some scholars refer to the early hypostyle mosque with courtyard as the "Arab plan" or "Arab-type" mosque.[68][10] Such mosques were constructed mostly under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties; subsequently, however, the simplicity of this type of plan limited the opportunities for further development, and as a result, these mosques gradually fell out of popularity in some regions.[68]

In Islamic buildings, vaulting follows two distinct architectural styles: While Umayyad architecture in the west continues Syrian traditions of the sixth and seventh century, eastern Islamic architecture was mainly influenced by Sasanian styles and forms.

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