The Religious Architecture of Islam Edited by hasan-uddin khan & kathryn blair moore With contributions by F Volume II Africa, Europe, and the Americas glaire d. anderson nebahat avcio Ğ lu amira k. bennison jonathan m. bloom jelena bogdanovi Ć susana calvo hasan-uddinnnamdicapillaellehtammygaberomarkhalidikhan vladimir kuli Ć stephennie mulder cynthia robinson mariam rosser-owen juan carlos ruiz souza vera-simone schulz kristen streahle jessica renee streit lara carolinetohme“olivia” wolf
The Rural and Urban Mosques of Al-Andalus 70
Cynthia Robinson The Great Mosque of Tlemcen 132 Hasan-Uddin Khan The Mosque of Hassan II, Casablanca 140 Amira K. Bennison Madrasas in the Maghrib 148 Contents
Glaire D. Anderson Islamic Religious Spaces in Secular Monuments in the West Through the Caliphal Period 22 Susana Calvo Capilla
The Mosque of Cordoba 30 Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza The Mosque of Cordoba and Iberia’s Christians 42
Glaire D. Anderson Early Mosque Architecture in Al-Andalus and the Maghrib 10
AL-ANDALUS AND THE MAGHRIB AFRICA AND SICILY
Jessica Renee Streit Almohad Religious Spaces 50 Susana Calvo Capilla
The Taifa-period Mosques of Al-Andalus 64 Susana Calvo Capilla
Jonathan M. Bloom Fatimid Mosques 80 Kristen Streahle Religious Spaces in Islamic and Norman Sicily 94 Lara Tohme
The Ribats of North Africa 114 Mariam Rosser-Owen
The Almoravid Religious Spaces of Marrakesh and Fez 118
The Modern and Contemporary Mosque in Europe, Russia, and Turkey 252 Nebahat Avcıoğlu Britain’s First Mosque: Woking 274 Omar Khalidi North American Mosques 286 Tammy Gaber Canadian Mosques 300 Caroline “Olivia” Wolf Modern and Contemporary Mosques in Latin America 316 Caroline “Olivia” Wolf Argentina’s King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center 338 Glossary 348 Index 351 EUROPE THE AMERICAS
Amira K. Bennison Mosques and Society in the Maghrib 162
Stephennie Mulder Mamluk Religious Architecture 178 Nnamdi Elleh The Earth Mosques of West Africa 196 Vera-Simone Schulz Coral Stone Mosques in East Africa 212 Jelena Bogdanović Religious Landscape in the Balkans in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 230 Jelena Bogdanović and Vladimir Kulić The Šerefudin White Mosque 244 Nebahat Avcıoğlu
The Door of the Viziers, renovated by Muhammad I in the ninth century, is the oldest in the extant façade of the mosque.9 Its tripartite composition has Classical precedents and it was placed between two eighth-century buttresses in the prayer hall wall. This area of the mosque demonstrates many of the architectural elements that define Andalusian Umayyad buildings: stepped crenelations on the tops of the walls, rolled cantilevers supporting the eaves, decorative friezes of blind arches over the door, brick arches framed by an alfiz (decorative square frame), voussoired lintels, alternating voussoirs of stone and brick in the arches (bichromate white-red), and stone latticework in the openings. This first phase of construction concluded, according to the chroniclers, with Emir Hisham I, who built the minaret (sawma’a), the galleries (saqa’if) for women’s prayer, and a room for ablutions (mida’a) adjacent to the eastern façade
33the mosque of cordoba of the building, the remains of which were found below al-Mansur’s enlargement. Archaeologists have established the existence of porticos or galleries on the north, east, and west sides of the patio, probably intended for the women’s prayer gallery that was created by Abd al-Rahman II.10 With the minaret and the room for ablutions, the Emir Hisham I completed the Islamization of the urban landscape of Cordoba.
EXPANSIONS The first expansion of the prayer hall was undertaken by the Emir Abd al-Rahman II (822–52). The bulk of the work was done in 848, while the renovation works on the prayer hall continued even after the death of the Emir. His son, Muhammad I (852–86) repaired the aforementioned Door of the Viziers in 855–6, according to the inscription on the lintel, which also indicates that the new mosque
2 Great Mosque of Cordoba, eighth century.
Photo: Susana Calvo Capilla
34 calvo capilla century, and it appears that this first niche did not project from the outer wall. In the East, the Arabic sources speak of similar scallops in the descriptions of some of the first concave mihrabs in the mosques constructed by al-Walid (705–15).13 Furthermore, similar monolithic mihrabs have been preserved in Spain and in other regions, including that of the mosque of al-Hassaki in Bagdad, dated around was officially inaugurated at the same time. The expansion consisted of elongating the naves to the south by knocking down the qibla wall, leaving only a few rectangular pillars. The system of superimposed arches is identical to those of the first phase, still reusing Visigothic and Roman supports (Fig. 3). The four columns that supported the mihrab arch, later transferred to the tenth-century mihrab, were made specifically for the mosque and probably in the recently created sculpture workshops of the capital. According to all of the chronicles, the Emir Muhammad I built the first maqsura in al-Andalus. We know little about it except that it had three doors and that it was marked by two beautiful fluted spolia columns placed before the mihrab. His successor, the Emir Abd Allah (888–912), ordered the construction of the first sabat, a passage between the maqsura of the mosque and the Cordoban Alcazar, covering the street between the two with a series of arches (hanaya) like a bridge. In the interior of the prayer hall, by the Door of St. Michael, a screen (sitara) was placed to hide the corridor leading to the mihrab.11 Although the sources attribute its installation to pious motives, it was more likely put in place for security and symbolic reasons. Hence, in the course of the ninth century, the Emir Abd alRahman II and his successors did not merely adopt the most significant aspects of the Eastern royal ceremony, they also defined a series of privileged spaces in the interior of the Mosque of Cordoba. This building, situated next to the Alcazar or Dar al-Imara, was indeed part of the construction of an urban topography of power, a process that culminated in the tenth century. In these two phases of building of the mosque we can find the architectural precedents of some of the Caliphal expansion elements, such as the mihrab niche. The excavations undertaken by Félix Hernández recovered the foundations of the first qibla and some fragments, probably part of its decoration. These excavations also revealed the remains of a monolithic niche in stone that some authors have identified as the first mihrab 12 This niche is less than 1.2 meters wide and is slightly concave and finished with a scallop. The ornamental motifs indicate that it dates back to the eighth
Photo: Susana Calvo Capilla
3 Spolia columns placed in front of the mihrab, Great Mosque of Cordoba, ninth century.
100 streahle On account of multiple demolitions and renovations of the churches and mosque built at this site, it is difficult to speak of the material construction of the mosque or the shape of possible expansions.
The Aghlabids encountered a Byzantine cathedral in provincial Palermo. How many times might that structure have been enlarged or rebuilt under various regimes? Two zones of brick pavement, recently re-dated from the mid-tenth century onward, were uncovered in the diaconicon of the present-day cathedral and along the northern wall in the present-day Via dell’Incoronazione. Previously ascribed to the early Byzantine church, two considerations have encouraged archaeologists to propose a later date for the pavement: 1) the construction of the mortar, which is similar to that [It] is so large that when I counted the people when it was completely full, I found over seven thousand. There were more than thirty-six rows at prayer time, each row counting almost two hundred people. The mosques of the Old City, of al-Khalisa, and of the other quarters surrounding the city from beyond the wall number more than three hundred, most of them built with roofs, walls and gates. Those on the island most knowledgeable and best informed agree on this number.27
6 Map of Sicily, from the so-called Book of Curiosities , Ms. Arab. c. 90, fols. 32b-33a.
Photo: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Our understanding of the mosque’s foundation is unclear: sources tell us that the city’s Byzantine cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was converted into the congregational mosque.
155madrasas in the maghrib in the new Marinid royal city of Fez al-Jadid. Abu Sa‘id ‘Uthman II (r. 1310–31) also founded the Sahrij (Fig. 6) and its sister madrasa, the Saba‘in, in the vicinity of the al-Andalus mosque and the ‘Attarin in close proximity to the Qarawiyyin mosque, thus establishing a madrasa in each of three main subdivisions of Fez: Fez al-Jadid, al-Qarawiyyin, and al-Andalus. Abu’l-Hasan ‘Ali (r. 1331–51) founded the Misbahiyya, which was also close to the Qarawiyyin in Fez and began the process of endowing other towns such as Meknes, Ceuta, and Salé with colleges (Figs. 7–8). He also established the madrasa of al‘Ubbad outside Tlemcen (1347) and possibly the Bu ‘Inaniyya in Algiers, which took its name from what is now western Algeria through the Taza corridor to the plains of Morocco. In a manner becoming typical in the far western Maghrib, they endeavoured to present themselves as fighters for the faith (mujahidin), committed to war against the advancing Christian powers in Iberia and to the internal regeneration of religious life. They conquered Fez in 1248 only to face a more subtle battle against the Arab (or, more properly, Arabized) inhabitants’ disdain for Berber tribesmen, which sporadically erupted into open revolt, notably in 1250. The Marinids needed to find ways to co-opt but also control the population of their chosen capital. To minimize overt conflict with the inhabitants of Fez, in 1276 the Marinid sultan Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub (r. 1258–86) constructed a new royal city, Fez al-Jadid, northwest of the existing town, and set about founding madrasas in an effort to create an expanded cadre of Maliki personnel able and willing to serve the state as bureaucrats and jurists, as well as religious scholars.30 Although Golvin sees the madrasas as instrumental in educating propagandists to extirpate Almohadism, the Marinid resort to Malikism brought them into doctrinal harmony with the preferences of the existing scholarly class of Fez, most of whom had not accepted the main tenet of Almohadism, the belief that Ibn Tumart was the mahdi 31 Of more relevance was the role of the first madrasas in providing an institutional means to instruct Zanata Berber students from the countryside and thus creating a “Berber” Maliki ulama to counteract the existing “Arab” Maliki ulama of Fez, a homegrown scholarly cohort drawn from established urban families whose sons resided at home and studied in the Qarawiyyin or al-Andalus mosques.32 The madrasa was therefore inherently ambiguous: a contribution to the city that nonetheless reflected monarchical aspirations to control the religious sphere and hence partially to eclipse the existing religious establishment. The first Marinid madrasa was the Saffarin/ Ya‘qubiyya (1271), located near the Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez, which was followed in the early fourteenth century by the Dar al-Makhzan madrasa 6 Central courtyard, Sahrij Madrasa, Fez, 1321–3.
Photo: Amira K. Bennison
Photo: Amira K. Bennison 8 Stuccowork detail, Bu ‘Inaniyya Madrasa, Meknes, 1350.
156 bennison clients of the regime. Known as Madrasat Awlad al-Imam, it was constructed next to a mosque of the same name located near one of the city gates. A decade or two later, Abu Tashfin ‘Abd al-Rahman (r. 1318–37) constructed the Tashfiniyya opposite the great mosque. Later in the fourteenth century, Abu Hammu Musa II (r. 1359–89) constructed the Ya‘qubiyya Madrasa in a garden suburb as part of a complex including a mosque and a zawiya.34 This brief survey of the madrasas founded in the medieval Maghrib points first and foremost to the powerful role of the state in their foundation and their function as institutions designed to produce a cadre of loyal religious scholars. As the case of Marinid Fez shows, this could be, at least partially, at the expense of the established scholarly elite. The madrasas also assisted in the centralization of religious and political power in the new capitals of the Maghrib: Fez, Tlemcen, and Tunis. The way in which they did this had a considerable and positive social and economic impact on the urban environment. This gradually disarmed opponents of the regime and their foundations and created a his son, Abu ‘Inan Faris (r. 1348–58). Abu ‘Inan continued in his father’s footsteps, founding madrasas in Taza, Tangier, and Marrakesh as well as the splendid Bu ‘Inaniyya mosque-madrasa in Fez, midway between the Qarawiyyin and the Great Mosque of Fez al-Jadid (Figs. 9–10).33 Of all the medieval Maghribi regimes, it was thus the Marinids who deployed the madrasa most extensively. The inspiration for the madrasas of Tlemcen almost certainly came from nearby Marinid Fez, which exerted a powerful cultural influence on the former city. Abu Hammu Musa I (r. 1308–18) founded the first Zayyanid madrasa c. 1310 as a teaching place for two scholars who thus became 7 Marinid Madrasa, Salé, 1333.
Photo: Amira K. Bennison
202 elleh 10 Ismail Traore, Great Mosque of Djenné, Mali, reconstructed 1906. Photo: Aga Khan Trust for Culture 11 Plan of Mallam Mikhaila, Masallaci Juma’a in Zaria, Nigeria 1843. Drawing: After J. C. Moughtin
12 Plan of El Hadji Falké Barmou, Yaama Mosque, Tahoua, Niger, 1982. Aga Khan Trust for Culture
Drawing:
4 Nikolai Vasiliev, St. Petersburg Mosque, St. Petersburg, 1910–21. Photo: Nebahat Avcıoğlu
3 Maurice Tranchant de Lunel, Robert Fournez, Maurice Mantout, and Charles Heubès, Great Mosque of Paris, 1926. Photo: Nebahat Avcıoğlu
255the modern and contemprary mosque in europe Russians, as Robert Crews has argued, also “devised a policy of toleration to make faiths such as Islam the basic building blocks of empire” and accordingly patronised many mosques in the newly conquered Muslim territories.13 In France, because of the 1905 law separating church and state, culture became “part of official protectorate policy” rather than tolerance.14
Orientalism in architecture conjured up European discourses of power and knowledge as architects searched for Islamic authenticity in a non-Muslim context, and mined its essence, one that distinguished it from European forms. The St. Petersburg Mosque differed dramatically in size and style from the state-sponsored, unassuming provincial “model mosques,” which were simple structures with minarets, in decorative terms resembling contemporary church architecture.15 It was directly inspired by the Gür-i Mir Complex in Samarkand built by Timur (1400–4), a monarch who gave meaning to the phrase “architecture of power.” Nikolai Vasiliev, the winner of the architectural competition that attracted fortynine entries, must have been familiar with the Mosque Committee suggested that an “enquiry might be made from the Russian Embassy as to the exact area of the mosque at St. Petersburg” before embarking on a specific site in London.8 According to the Committee “[i]t is felt that London should not fall behind St. Petersburg, where a large mosque was opened two years ago by the Tsar himself. And there are only 15,000,000 Mahometans in Russia, against 100,000,000 in the British Empire.”9 These mosques also functioned as a constitutive part of imperial policy of tolerance and aimed at portraying “Islam as a democratic religion.”10 The first imam of the Shah Jahan Mosque (1889) in Woking, twenty-five miles southwest of London, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, belonged to a brand new Islamic movement known as the Ahmadiyya with headquartered in Lahore, which was considered heretical by Sunni orthodox.11 Their visibility in England grounded the British authority in its defense of religious freedom in India and beyond, and the movement came to distinguish itself by “leadership in intellectual modernism (liberalism) in Islam, especially of English-reading Islam.”12
Photo: Nebahat Avcıoğlu
20 Emre Arolat, Sancaklar Mosque, Büyükçekmece, Istanbul. Interior View of the qibla wall with the minbar. 2014.
n e B ahat av C ıoğlu , Associate Professor of Art and Architectural History at Hunter College, CU n Y , specializes in Islamic architecture and art with a particular emphasis on Ottoman/European cultural encounters. She is the author of Turquerie: Politics of Representation, 1737–1876. She has edited four books and written numerous articles. She is finishing a new book manuscript entitled “The Modern and Contemporary Mosque: A Cross-Cultural Analysis.”
271the modern and contemprary mosque in europe and aesthetic values of emancipation from the dogmas of secularism, economic, climatic, regional, and even gender restrictions. While modernism insisted on the universal and the secular with architects turning to purity of forms, it also looked back to the history of Islamic architecture and its essentializing iconography. Political transformations brought a mandate and a breakthrough in religious architecture, diversifying design, and symbolism. Postmodernism insisted on the inseparability of forms from lived experiences and drew our attention to issues of formal memory, multiculturalism, and the politics of images. These changes have altered architects’ relationship to places of worship; they no longer search for a secularist subtext, nor are they accused of being retrograde. Today, they focus on aesthetics as a polemical vehicle to question the radicalism of religion in contemporary life. Thus, once again we witness a premium artistic value put on designing and constructing religious monuments. Such an aesthetic regime, in a way, returns mosque architecture back to its heterogeneous origins.
344 wolf EDUCATIONAL AREAS AND CULTURAL CENTER
As with all Islamic centers in countries where Muslims are a minority, the Argentine complex carries a strong educational function, offering religious and Arabic-language education for youth, as well as cultural education programming for the broader public. This is facilitated by the mosque’s communication with the educational wing of the complex via its patio, which opens up into a larger central courtyard uniting the school’s facilities, including the cafeteria, boarding rooms, classroom areas, and sports fields. Texture plays a prominent role here, as walls featuring diamond-shaped impressions contrast with smooth surfaces and modernist mashrabiyya motifs shading the school’s classrooms (Fig. 6). The cafeteria’s huge paneled window offers a view of the large courtyard and towering minarets. Sections of the roof are adorned with Andalusian-inspired undulating terra cotta tiles. The complex’s interior reflects a shift in terms of decoration. Corridors connect interior zones in ivory tones, with decorative shadows cast by 6 Educational facilities from school courtyard, Islamic Cultural Center of King Fahd Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in the Argentine Republic.
Photo: Caroline “Olivia” Wolf, 2012
Photo: Caroline “Oliva” Wolf, 2012 7 Fenestrated pattern, Islamic Cultural Center of King Fahd Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in the Argentine Republic.
