The Religious Architecture of Islam
Edited by hasan-uddin
khan & k athryn bl air moore With contributions by
abeer hussam eddin allaham nezar alsayyad imdat as sheila blair megan boomer k athryn blair moore farshid emami tammy gaber mattia guidetti akel ismail k ahera hasan-uddin khan melanie michailidis heba mostafa stephennie mulder
k amil khan mumtaz bernard o’k ane robert ousterhout oya pancaroğlu laura e. parodi alk a patel ali uzay peker d. fairchild ruggles matthew saba james steele nancy s. steinhardt imran bin tajudeen michael a. toler İpek türeli zeynep yürekli
F
Contents Hasan-Uddin Khan and Kathryn Blair Moore Introduction 7 BACKGROUND THEMES
Heba Mostafa Locating the Sacred in Early Islamic Architecture 12 Nezar AlSayyad and İpek Türeli The Mosque in the Urban Context 24 D. Fairchild Ruggles Gardens as Places of Piety and Faith 34 Imdat As Complex Patterns and Three-Dimensional Geometry in Islamic Religious Architecture 48 Matthew Saba and Michael A. Toler Archives and Archival Documents in the Study of Islamic Religious Architecture 62
WEST AND CENTRAL ASIA
Abeer Hussam Eddin Allahham The Holy Mosque of Mecca 84 Akel Ismail Kahera The Mosque of the Prophet at Medina 100 Kathryn Blair Moore The Dome of the Rock through the Centuries 108 Mattia Guidetti The Great Mosque of Damascus through the Medieval Period 124 Mattia Guidetti Early Islam and Byzantine Churches 138 Melanie Michailidis Early Mosques in Iran and Central Asia 148 Matthew Saba Funerary Architecture in Iraq under the Abbasids and their Successors, 750–1250 160 Megan Boomer and Robert Ousterhout Muslims, Byzantines, and Western Christians on the Haram al-Sharif 174 Stephennie Mulder Mosques under the Ayyubids 188 Stephennie Mulder Shrines in the Central Islamic Lands 196 Melanie Michailidis Shrines and Mausolea in Iran and Central Asia 214
Sheila Blair The Ilkhanids and their Successors 226 Bernard O’Kane Religious Architecture of Central Asia under the Timurids and their Successors 242 Farshid Emami Religious Architecture of Safavid Iran 256 Oya Pancaroğlu Islamic Architecture in Medieval Anatolia, 1150–1450 274 Zeynep Yürekli Three Sufi Shrines under the Ottomans 298 Ali Uzay Peker Seljuk and Ottoman Mosques 314 Imdat As Kocatepe: The Unbuilt State Mosque of Turkey 328 James Steele Regionalist Expressions of the Mosque in the Arabian Peninsula and Middle East 338 SOUTH AND EAST ASIA
Alka Patel The Sultanates in South Asia, 700–1690 356 Laura E. Parodi Mughal Religious Architecture 372 Kamil Khan Mumtaz Badshahi Masjid, Lahore 392 Kamil Khan Mumtaz The Architecture of Sufi Shrines in Pakistan 400 Imran bin Tajudeen Pre-Islamic and Vernacular Elements in the Southeast Asian Mosques of Nusantara 408 Nancy S. Steinhardt The Mosque in China 428 Hasan-Uddin Khan The Great Mosque of Xi’an (Qing Zhen Si) 446
AUSTRALIA
Tammy Gaber New Australian Mosques 456 Glossary 474 Index 477
understanding of humankind’s relationship to God; this is particularly important in the case of Islamic sacred space, which encoded a radically redefined cosmology that reconstituted God’s relationship to prophets and angels while stridently challenging pre-Islamic Arabian and monotheistic cosmologies even as it remained in conversation with them.12 This binding contract between humankind and God, known as the divine covenant (‘ahd, mīthāq) elaborated the rules of engagement of parameters of belief, permissible behavior, and expected
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conduct.13 In exchange for their adherence, Muslims are promised a favorable afterlife and a life free from worry and strife, if not misfortune per se.14 As the arena for the enactment of this contract, sacred space is inextricably entangled with the parameters and nuances of this covenant. Throughout the Quran the guardianship of sacred locales is predicated upon honoring the divine covenant, understood as a prerequisite for their guardianship.15 This is the case in the infamous masjid ad. -d. irār (the mosque of harm) which was
2 The Haram al-Sharif
in Jerusalem. Photo: Heba Mostafa
While historical texts tell us little about garden form, they do explain function, revealing that the preponderance of gardens were built for pleasure, relaxation, and display. With respect to built gardens with a discernibly religious meaning (as distinct from the spiritual or Islamic, which are terms that permeate Muslim life and therefore cannot be used as distinctive categories), there are relatively few examples. Thus, a complete history of gardens has many more palaces and residential gardens in its timeline than mosque or tomb gardens.5 MOSQUE COURTYARD GARDENS
The earliest gardens with a specifically religious function were those attached to mosques. However, the evidence regarding the form of these is sketchy at best. These early sites were built in areas with strong Byzantine cultural foundations, and indeed many of the early mosques were converted from churches or built on the site where previously there had been a church. The Great Mosque of Damascus, erected on the site of the Church of St. John, which itself stood over a Roman temple, used the foundations of that church for its own plan. Byzantine churches were sometimes set within gardens with trees, flowers, and fountains.6 (It should be noted, as so often with ByzantineMuslim relations, that it is not clear whether the penchant for garden settings emerged first in one context or the other.) If the mosque itself was strongly guided by the preceding church, other vestiges may have clung to the site as well, such as adjacent gardens, trees, and wells. With no liturgical or symbolic significance, there would have been no reason to remove them and every practical reason to keep them. Whether a mosque was gardened or not, it may have offered images of gardens and orchards that represented paradise to the viewer. Such pictorial programs are very much in evidence at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (690–2) and the Great Mosque of Damascus (begun 705 or 706 and finished in 715). The interior of the Dome of the Rock retains much of its extensive mosaic ornament, displaying sparkling images of trees
with generous canopies, some laden with dates, and pots from which scrolling vines emerge. While trees and vines had specific iconographic significance to Muslim viewers, a general interpretation reads both as referring to a paradisiac idea of vegetation and fecundity.7 At the Great Mosque of Damascus, mosaics wrap around the inner facade of the courtyard, the encircling arcades, and the interior of the prayer hall. Many of the mosaics represent abstract floral and geometrical ornament. However, there are also scenes of landscaped cities such as that on the façade of the central nave that leads from the courtyard to the mihrab (Fig. 3), and the image of the Kaaba over the mihrab itself. One panel in the arcades, known as the Barada panel, shows a river flowing through a city of tall buildings amidst trees with lush foliage.
3 Great Mosque
of Damascus, nave façade, finished 715. Photo: D.F. Ruggles
g a r de n s a s pl ac e s of pi e t y a n d fa i t h
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12 Tomb of Humayun,
New Delhi, 1565 or 1569. Photo: D.F. Ruggles
13 Tomb of I‘timad al-Daula,
Agra, finished 1628. Photo: D.F. Ruggles
g a r de n s a s pl ac e s of pi e t y a n d fa i t h
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is, namely a means of relating multiplicity to unity by means of mathematical forms which are seen, not as mental abstractions, but as reflections of the celestial archetypes within both the cosmos and the minds and souls of men.”21 However, these claims are difficult to verify since in their work they do not show how historically girih patterns relate to types of theological concepts that manifest themselves in material culture. The search for deeper meaning of girih patterns may be partly due to the threat of the disappearance of architectural heritage through the pervasiveness
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of the international style of the 1950–60s. The use of girih patterns, ornaments, or for that matter any type of decoration, was questioned with the advent of modernism in the early twentieth century. In “Ornament and Crime” (1909) Austrian architect Adolf Loos criticized the lavish decorations in buildings of the pre-modern Secession movement.22 Loos’s theory of ornament was complex and his arguments were based on sociological, economical, theoretical, psychological, and historical grounds. However, his main claim was based on psychoanalysis and the concept of urges or drives in
16 Zaha Hadid, Civil Courts
of Justice, Madrid, 2007, parametric façade detail. Photo: Zaha Hadid Architects
architectural projects, built and unbuilt, in Africa, the Levant, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Europe.76 In the last two decades, the amount of visual documentation related to Islamic religious architecture has grown enormously, with far too many initiatives to detail here, but several helpful lists of databases are available online.77 A project of particular note is the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, which has united over 500,000 photographic objects from professional studios, amateur photographers, and family collections in the Arab world and its global diaspora, offering an unrivaled glimpse into the history of photography in the region.78 These initiatives not only include the digitization of photographs, but encompass a range of analog resources, video, 3D scanning, and even virtual reality. Aside from these specialized collections, mass media archives can be a valuable source of material for the study of Islamic architecture. While one should consult the archives of global press agencies such as the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and
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Agence France Press (afp), those of regional and local media may be more useful, as they have a social and financial interest in celebrating local architecture. To return to the example of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, one can find coverage from cbs Boston or the New England Cable Network.79 Of course, complete broadcast archives are not possible, as live broadcasts were often not recorded at all. Moreover, in order to economize, less well funded outlets tended to reuse tapes, recording over video or audio used in earlier stories. That said, often recordings of broadcasts are in the possession of the subjects of reporting, or even in the collections of interested third parties. A recent article by Flora Losch surveys efforts to preserve recordings of public broadcasting using new technologies.80 DIGITIZ ATION AND ONLINE AGGREGATION OF ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
In recent decades, the task of researchers looking for
7 Activity in the courtyard
of the Kazimiyya shrine in Baghdad, taken in 1978. Photo: Kamil and Rifat Chadirji Photographic Archive, Aga Khan Documentation Center, mit Libraries (akdc@mit)
5 The old Holy Mosque, with al-Mataf area
marked out, showing the four maqamat and the building of Zamzam well, 1953. Photo: Creative Common License
In 684, after completed his reconstruction of the Holy Kaaba, Ibn al-Zubair decided to expand the Holy Mosque as its area was not sufficient for all worshippers. The mosque area was significantly expanded by some 92 percent, to be about 8,440 m2, from its eastern, southern, and northern sides, with some parts covered. In 694, al-Hajjaj, commanded by Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, repaired the Holy Mosque with no expansion. In 709, al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik expanded the eastern side of the mosque. He roofed the mosque with decorated teak wood and built a one-row arcade around al-Mataf, supported by marble columns brought from Egypt and al-Sham (Syria) with gold-coated capitals and arches covered in their upper parts with mosaic decorations, most likely similar to those found in other Umayyad architecture. The area of the Holy Mosque after this expansion was about 10,740 m2. In 754, the Holy Mosque was expanded from its northern and western sides by the Abbasid caliph, Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur. This expansion was similar in its architecture and decorations to that of al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik. The mosque was surrounded by a one-row arcade decorated with gold and mosaic, and Hijr Isma‘il and Zamzam well area were overlaid with marble. In 756, al-Mansur added the first minaret to the Holy Mosque in its northwest corner at Bab al-Umra (Umra Gate). It had a square
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shape base with a cylindrical body and a semisphere crown. The Mosque area after expansion was about 15,440 m2. The great expansion of the Abbasid caliph, al-Mahdi was executed in two stages: the first was in 776, when houses in the area were demolished and their area incorporated in the mosque. The second stage was accomplished in 780 when alMahdi ordered the engineers and skilled builders to make the mosque of a square shape so as to have the Holy Kaaba in its center. The Holy Mosque was expanded from its southern side. This expansion was the greatest up to that time where the increase in area was about sixty-seven percent and the total area of the mosque was about 25,750 square meters, with a capacity of about 40,270 worshippers. By the end of al-Mahdi expansion, al-Mataf was centered on the Kaaba and surrounded by three-row marble columns arcade decorated with teak wood, measuring 194 × 146 meters. The arcades consisted of 498 arches, supported by 484 marble columns 4.8 meters high, 321 of them with gold-coated capitals. Together with its old gates, the mosque had twenty four doors in all, five in al-Mas‘a side, seven in the southern side, six in the western side, and six in the northern side,8 some of which were decorated with teak wooden works (rawshan) and colored marble walls. Furthermore, the mosque had four minarets above its corners, one by al-Mansur, and
6 The Holy Mosque of Mecca,
the First Saudi Expansion, 1955–76. Photo: Creative Common License
11 Tomb of Imam al-Shafi‘i,
Cairo, Egypt, 1211. Photo: Author
commemorates a scholar and Sufi named Najm al-Din al-Khabushani as the instigator of the project, and contains a clear statement in support of the Ash‘ari theology embraced by the Shafi‘i school. In 1211, Saladin’s successor al-Malik al-Kamil ordered the expansion of the site, constructing a vast complex including a madrasa, kitchens, and an enlarged mausoleum (Fig. 11). With its towering dome over twenty-nine meters high, the shrine was the largest freestanding mausoleum in Egypt and one of the largest in the Islamic world, competing in visual prominence with such illustrious buildings as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Medieval visitors described the throngs of pilgrims, students, and scholars that visited the site, and who gave the complex the air of a city unto itself.74 The shrine complex played a significant role in the growth
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of the city of Cairo when its construction spurred the further development of the Qarafa al-Kubra cemetery below the Citadel.75 Sufi saints were known as walis “Friends (of God)” or as shaykhs (leaders) of the Sufi brotherhoods, and their burial places also attracted many visitors, particularly after the expansion of institutionalized, tariqa-based Sufism in the twelfth-fifteenth centuries.76 The spread of Sufism contributed to the development of new architectural types such as the ribat (lodge/hospice), khanqah (hostel) and zawiya (oratory) in cities like Cairo and Damascus. These were often built at the graves of beloved Sufi shaykhs, with a tomb chamber attached. In contrast to the somewhat more advanced state of knowledge on such shrines in Turkey and Iran, the subject of Sufi shrines in the central Islamic lands is yet in the early stages of investigation, and many important sites of ziyara have yet to be researched or published. But it is nonetheless apparent that such sites played a critical and growing role in the lives of pious Muslims from the medieval period onward.77 Pilgrimage guides like those written by Ibn al-Zayyat and alSakhawi in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries mention numerous zawiyas and ribats that attracted pilgrims.78 Indeed, by the early fourteenth century, a traveler like Ibn Battuta could journey for a quarter of a century and never pay for a night’s lodging, relying instead on the network of madrasas and shrine centers that grew up around the graves of Sufis and other holy figures. In Egypt, such sites have a long history. Although initially Sufi shaykhs lodged humbly in the “corners” (zawiyas) of mosques, it was not long before purpose-built khanqahs and formallyplanned zawiyas began to appear. In Cairo in the Mamluk period, the construction of khanqahs and zawiyas at the graves of Sufi saints proliferated, such that intense competition developed for land and resources. The desire of pious Muslims to be buried near saints in order to benefit from their baraka (blessing) led to abuses in some cases – as when a corrupt shrine overseer accepted payments for allowing the burial of impious people.79 Many shrines evolved over time into complexes with
7 Lahore Badshahi
Masjid. Photo: Laura E. Parodi 8 Maryam al-Zamani
mosque, Lahore. Photo: Laura E. Parodi
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16 Punchbowl mosque, view
from women’s prayer area. Photo: Tammy Gaber
17 Punchbowl mosque, view
of two balconies (dedicated to women’s prayer) from the main (men’s) space. Photo: Tammy Gaber
nature and the private dwelling [within it] and thus the private nature of the building.”42 The “armor” of this mosque is the restrained exterior, with minimal clues of signage and a high degree of craftsmanship. It clearly stands in the neighborhood, which has a high population of Muslims, as mosque but does not reveal what lies within. To reach this, the visitor/user proceeds through narrow spaces of a slight circumambulatory nature, to purify themselves, leave behind their shoes and step into a space populated heavenward of populated with half domes carved out from the pinholes of light coming through. The “adornment” of the light catches on the gold painted names of Allah and the deep red carpet (Figs. 11–15). CONCLUSION – ARMOR AND ADORNMENT?
The population of Muslims settled in Australia, from the nineteenth century to the present, has multiplied manifold and have contributed to the built environment in a number of ways including the construction of mosques.43 The earliest mosques
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