Islamic Art and Architecture

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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.

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1

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.

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2

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.

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3

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 Sāmarrā’, 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.

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4

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 century) 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 Sepulchre, 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 Cami Mosque (1569-1574) 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 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.

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