ISLAMIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Background In the century after the death (AD 632) of the prophet Muhammad(PBUH), his Arab followers spread his teachings through Egypt and N Africa, as far west as Spain, and as far east as Sassanid Persia. Because of their rapid expansion and the paucity of the earlier artistic heritage of the Arabian Peninsula, the Muslims derived their unique style from synthesizing the arts of the Byzantines, the Copts, the Romans, and the Sassanids. The great strength of Islamic art as a whole lies in its ability to synthesize native design elements with imported ones .
ISLAMIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE
ARCHITECTURE
The few and relatively simple rituals of the Islamic faith gave rise to a unique religious architecture, comprising the mosque (masjid), a place of community gathering and prayer, and the madresah, or religious school. Important among the various characteristic forms of Islamic secular architecture are palaces, caravansaries, and cities, the elaborate planning of which shows concern for the all-important access to water and for provision of shelter from heat. A third type of building important in the Islamic world is the mausoleum, serving both as an actual tomb for a ruler or holy man and as a symbol of political power. All these structures, religious and secular, share many organic and decorative features.
Mosques.
Muslims call the direction in which they pray the qibla, and for his first two years at Medina, the Prophet prayed facing toward Jerusalem. He then received a revelation that the true qibla lay in Mecca, and this has been the qibla for prayer ever since, determining the orientation and spatial organization of all mosques throughout the world. The qibla is marked by a decorative mihrab, or niche, within the mosque.
Mihrab.
When the Muslims conquered Syria in 636, they took over for use as mosques many of the basilican churches that abounded there. These basilicas were long, triple-arched buildings with pitched roofs and with the altar at the eastern end (see BASILICA,). The new worshipers placed the mihrab on the southern wall and made new entrances in the northern wall. Thus, the congregation prayed across the aisles.
Courtyard.
When such an adapted basilica was combined with an enclosed courtyard having arcades at the side, it contained all the basic features of the Prophet’s house at Medina. The first Mosque of al-Aqsa at Jerusalem (before 670) was adapted in this way from the Royal Stoa of Herod, a ruined basilica. In later examples, more long aisles were added to the end of the courtyard—as in the great 8th- to 10th-century Mosque of Córdoba, Spain—and any resemblance to churches with their focus at the narrow end disappeared. Such additions were made in response to population growth, but the process of adding on is analogous to a feature characteristic of all Islamic art: the infinite repetition of patterns.
Minaret.
During the lifetime of the Prophet, the call to prayer at Medina was made from a rooftop, in imitation of the Jewish practice of blowing the shofar (ram’s horn) or the early Christian use of a clapper to summon worshipers. It seems likely that a Syrian tradition of marking the corners of a building by four short towers was the origin of the minaret—a tower at the corner of the mosque courtyard (or, as at Samarra, Iraq, freestanding)—from which, after Muhammad’s lifetime, the call to prayer was customarily sounded. The Umayyad Mosque, or Great Mosque, at Damascus (705–15), built around an earlier basilican church, is the best-preserved example of an early courtyard mosque with a minaret. A dome, of later construction, in the sanctuary, or prayer hall, marks the main one of the four mihrabs on the qibla wall.
Dome.
Domes, a great feature of all Islamic architecture, developed both from Sassanian and Early Christian architectural sources. The earliest surviving mosque is the Dome of the Rock (late 7th cent.) at Jerusalem, one of the great religious structures of the world; it marks the spot where, according to tradition, Muhammad ascended to heaven. This mosque has a dome set on a high drum and a centralized or annular (ringlike) plan with two ambulatories or corridors; the design is derived from Roman architecture, possibly in emulation of the 4th-century Church of the Holy Sepulcher, also in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock, therefore, does not conform to the basic mosque plan. Its dome is gilded, and all its other surfaces are covered inside and out by colorful tile mosaic.
Influences from Turkic peoples were increasingly felt as Islam spread and developed. Thus, the mausoleum built at the beginning of the 10th century for the ruler of Bukhara, in Central Asia (the place of origin of the Seljuk dynasty), was of great architectural significance. This square brick building had a dome resting on squinches (small arches that span the corners of the square) instead of on pendentives (spherical triangles, or rounded triangular sections of vaults) as used in the Byzantine world. Squinches ultimately were derived from Sassanian Iran; they are more easily built than pendentives, and the device thus led to the spread of domed mosques, mausoleums, and other types of buildings throughout the Islamic world.
Under the Ottomans, mosques were built reflecting the Byzantine heritage of Turkey. Thus, the magnificent Selimiye Mosque (1568–74) built by the great Turkish architect Sinan at Edirne, Turkey, has a colossal dome ringed with smaller ones and with half domes, the same arrangement as HAGIA SOPHIA, (q.v.) in İstanbul, Turkey—a Byzantine church later converted to a mosque. Although also similar to Hagia Sophia in breadth, the Edirne mosque has many windows, providing much more light. This form—which Sinan also employed in two famous İstanbul mosques—influenced the design of mosques throughout Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and North Africa.
Eyvan.
In the Abbasid mosques of Iraq, an eyvan, an open, vaulted, two-story passageway or hall, was introduced into each side of the arcades surrounding the mosque courtyard. The eyvan had its roots in the architecture of Sassanian Iran.
Pointed arch.
Although the horseshoe arch is more typical of Islamic architecture, especially earlier examples, the pointed arch was also known. Probably of Syrian origin, adapted by the Umayyads, it was also characteristic of Abbasid mosques, and from Iraq it was carried to Egypt in the 9th and 10th centuries. In later Egyptian mosques, built under the Mamelukes (from the 13th cent.), the pointed arches have a Gothic profile, showing the influence of European architectural motifs transported by the Crusaders.
Mimbar and maqqsura.
The first known use of a mimbar, or pulpit, was in the mosque of Medina; originally used as a seat, it soon became a true pulpit for preaching. Another structural detail typical of some but not all mosques is the maqqsura, a screen or enclosure placed around the mihrab to protect the leaders of the community during services; this structure was developed after three early caliphs were murdered.
Madresahs.
Under the Abbasids, in the middle period, a new kind of religious building, the madresah, or religious seminary, was introduced in eastern Iran. Its form, based on Sassanian architecture, was taken over into a new kind of mosque that soon spread to many countries. The madresah and madresah-mosque have eyvans on four sides (with a larger one in front of the qibla), connected by two-story arcades. In the madresah these arcades lead to dormitories; in the mosque they are simply niches. In some late madresahs the courtyard is covered by a dome. The 11th-century Friday Mosque (the generic term for a mosque accommodating large congregations of worshipers) at Esfahan, Iran, is an early, great example of a madresah-mosque. In this building, as in tombs of the period, the muqarna motif, the stalactitelike ornamentation of vaulted roofs, was developed; a typically Islamic style of decoration, it consists of a hone ycomb of niches with small projections, set into a vaulted roof or dome.
Later examples of madresah-mosques, both in Esfahan and both of the 17th century, are the Masjid-i-Shah with its high, pointed, tiled dome behind the main eyvan, and its interior surfaces and stalactites covered with tile; and the Masjid-i-Shaikh Lutfullah, with an even more extravagantly tiled dome.