Part Three

THE ARCHITECTURE OF ISLAM

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

The Architecture of Islam

Chapter 15

BACKGROUND
Islam and its Predecessors
This part is concerned with an architectural continuity that ran parallel with the history of western architecture from the second century BC. The eastern movement of Greek and then Roman classical architecture merged with locally generated styles Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanian, and peripheral eastern variants of localised Hellenistic styles to provide the basis for a thousand years of architectural creativity extending across Asia and Africa and spreading into Europe. No architectural style, other than Muslim, is designated by concordance with a religion. This is for the special reason that Islam has created a coherence of lifestyle over wide geographical areas. This focuses on the requirements of the religion, the behaviour that derives from it and a living language, Arabic, which is understood throughout the Muslim world. The consequence is a centrality created by, among other things, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in the Hejaz in western Saudi Arabia. Within Islam, however, the variation in styles is distinctive: so much so that to many Muslim scholars the common pattern is blurred to the extent that they deny that there is any such thing as Islamic architecture. These varied styles have evolved around tribal or dynastic foci by which they are known. Muslim architecture may be seen as the one great product of two streams of development, one in the Mediterranean and the other in south central Asia. The coalescence took place over a period from about 300 BC to 800 AD with a melding of influences spread over a very much longer period. Initially there were two very different traditions. In the Mediterranean, Greek architecture rose in Periclean Athens to a level of extraordinary perfection, to be echoed and repeated in the west down the ages. In the east the Achamaenid traditions culminating in the great royal palace at Persepolis demonstrate a powerful and separate evolutionary pattern of trabeated building. Their intermingling began with the injection into the east of Greek culture carried in the wake of the thrusts of Alexander, a Macedonian prince who by 332 BC had overcome the rulers of this wide region, founding separate cities in the Greek administrative mould wherever he passed. His loosely arranged empire fell to his generals, collectively known as the Seleucids and Ptolemies, who controlled or ruled an area approximating to that now known as the Middle East. The fusion of Greek culture was as inevitable as it was deliberate but the sheer weight of local populations determined the ultimate subfusion and integration of the cities of Seleucid and Ptolemaic foundation in the burgeoning of later empires. Among their greatest cities were Alexandria on the western edge of the Nile Delta and Seleucia on the Tigris, close to modern Baghdad; of these and many others not a trace of the original buildings remains as a standing structure. The most impressive architectural monument of this injection of classical design into the East is the palatial core of a desert city at Hatra, now in Iraq (see Chapter 16), but the passing and the influence of these extreme eastward penetrations of Greek culture are still to be found in inscriptions, and works of art, such as the classically modelled statues of the Buddhist kingdoms at Gandhara in northern India. The incursions of the Seleucids halted an evolution of native styles for some hundreds of years and it is not until the time of Christ that strong local traditions re-emerged on and about the Iranian plateau. There the Parthian dynasty focused a nationalism which allowed the East again to confront the West militarily with thrust and counterthrust across Asia Minor succeeded by Roman incursions into Mesopotamia and Persia. Some lasting works were built by Roman prisoners who brought their skills of masonry and engineering to the bridges and perhaps to the early domes of their Parthian captors. These long conflicts left a trail of detritus across the region in terms of peoples and influences. Captive Romans were set to work in Persia Persian forts were thrown up in Egypt. Byzantine architects built towns on the Euphrates and bridges on the Orontes. Trade routes traversed the regions carrying men with skills between opposing Empires and an important channel of influence arose in a new and pervasive religion Christianity. Initially the Apostles proselytised most successfully south and eastwards. Until the fourth
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(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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BACKGROUND

The Islamic World

century their incursions into the Roman heartland were resisted. They were seen as a threat to established power. The extent to which the eastward traffic carried with it the classical style well established in Palestine has yet to be fully evaluated but in the design of churches it is to be seen clearly in the movement of the religion southwards and in the early churches of the monotheistic versions of the faith in the Nile valley where the Copts, inheritors of the religion of the Pharoahs, found no difficulty in absorbing the concepts of the afterlife and the faith of

the one God. The early churches stylistically took over the forms of Greek and Roman temples or basilicas and a gentle tide of influence moved eastwards with the adherents of the religion. Contemporary Parthian royal building has survived sufficiently to be reconstructable. The great royal palaces of Sarvistan and Firuzabad demonstrate an architectural evolution which was to provide a basis for much that followed in the architecture of Islam in particular the dome and iwan. The resolution of a square sub-structure to a ring by squinches is

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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563

apparent by the third century AD and the evolution of the iwan an open-fronted barrel vault had by then also reached monumental proportions. Both had a determinant effect upon plan forms. The predominant eastern dynasty until the coming of Islam arose in Fars southern Persia ruling from the fourth until the seventh centuries when an enfeebled king, Yazdegerd II, fled before the invading Muslims and was slain by one of his followers. The Sassanian dynasty built its winter capital, Ctesiphon, within a mile of the flourishing Seleucid city, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, on the opposite bank of the river. Few Sassanian buildings have survived in recognisable state although a number of their palatial complexes are sufficiently complete to allow adequate reconstruction and at Ctesiphon itself there survives the iwan and one wing of the greatest royal palace of all, known from its traditional attribution to Chosroes II as the Tak-i-Chisra. It was under this ruler that the Persian empire expanded finally, and to its greatest extent in antiquity. Pressures from the west restrained the Byzantine emperors such as Justinian I on their eastern frontiers, with the result that Chosroes and his successors were able to establish and maintain their hold on territories as far west as Syria, Palestine and Lower Egypt. These areas had long been Roman provinces and architecturally were replete with a distinctive classical style. Moreover, the fabric of Christianity lay across the region and although fire worship was the religion of the royal families of the Sassanian era eastern Christianity was widespread and influential in both Orthodox and Nestorian forms. In its eastern and southern provinces the Byzantine Empire produced local patterns of architecture in which the occasional work of architects from the Metropolis stands out distinctly. Destruction in these lands of the eastern Byzantine Empire has been so continuous that their architectural significance in the early Christian era is shrouded. War, pillage and the agricultural changes that followed misgovernment and exploitation have left much of these lands desolate and their buildings robbed. In northern Syria the great ruin fields of the Dead Cities testify to once-rich populations with a highly developed architectural style and the story is repeated throughout the Mediterranean littoral into Sinai and Egypt. In Cairo, at a few desert sites and in ruined Coptic towns in the Nile valley some understanding of these rich and extensive cultures can be gained but where the great cities survive, Alexandria being an extreme case, the basilicas, the baths, the library, the port have all been so completely effaced that they are only to be understood from inference and literary record. These eastern marchlands of the Roman Empire had an architectural heritage which was intrinsically GraecoRoman in background but distinctively local in its interpretation and since very little of the work was associated with major dynastic achievements much of

it has escaped historical attention. The church, however, was a major influence in these pre-Muslim centuries, modelling and remodelling forms of Roman temples and meeting halls and adapting to new rituals structural forms and designs which had served purposes as diverse as fire temples and the rites of Isis. These eastern frontier lands in the first centuries of our era were architecturally inventive and beneath the broad mantles of Persian and Roman suzereignty contained many local groupings, vassal states or provinces where architecture evolved distinctively. In north-east Asia Minor Georgia and Armenia gave rise to developing forms of centralised church building echoed on the Euphrates in that earliest of Christian states, the Kingdom of Edessa (present-day Urfa). Likewise, the early church flourished in northern Mesopotamia. On the steppe lands on both sides of the Arabian desert Christian Arabs, the Lakhimids, and Ghassanids continued the Roman traditions that had left forts and towns scattered across the region. The deserted city of Resafa in northern Syria is one of the better-known surviving examples. Towards the coast a rich architectural heritage was developed in northern Syria focusing on Antioch and Damascus, leaving a legacy today in scores of ruined and deserted townships. Here in the region between Aleppo and the coast and in southern Syria near Bosra in the Hauran there emerged an inventive, tradition of sophisticated and magnificently executed stone buildings indicative of high levels of social organisation where great domed churches, such as Kalat Semaan, immense basilicas and fine houses were wrapped in wreathing string courses and adorned with sumptuous carving in a manner unparalleled elsewhere. This group of cities, known as the Decapolis, of which Jerash is the most prominent survivor, adhered to the classical tradition on a monumental scale but in powerfully and distinctively remodelled forms. These influences are to be traced southwards through the Nabatean kingdoms where the baroque exuberance of Petra still carries its astonishing message of classical design in cliffs carved from red and yellow sandstone, and down to cities such as Sanaa where the Syrian tradition of domed churches faced in mosaic was to be found in the long-destroyed cathedral church. The Monophysite doctrine was strong across this region and nowhere more than in the Nile valley where the Copts had readily taken to Christianity following the arrival of the Apostle Mark. The ancient churches here are of the basilican form with a wide transverse space before the triple-apsed east end and some of the very early churches in Egypt may be the earliest of all survivors of Christian building. It was in Egypt also that the monastic traditions began in the fourth and fifth centuries, being carried westwards through the Roman Empire after its formal acceptance of Christianity. Under Diocletian imperial

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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BACKGROUND

authority had persecuted the native churches so ferociously that the reign of that emperor is still used by the Copts to mark the beginning of their era. By the sixth century Byzantine churches were being introduced at the exhortation of the Emperor Justinian while his Empress Theodora supported the Monophysite cause and the Coptic Church. Where they survive, as in ancient Cairo (Deir Bablun) they are architecturally a different breed. The native church can still be found here and in the monasteries, now deserted, of the Upper Nile or those still extant on the Red Sea and in the Wadi Natrun. From this southern part of the region to northern Mesopotamia and even to Central Asia the eastern form of church with triple isolated sanctuaries facing a broad transverse nave can be found coupled sometimes with a basilican form. At the beginning of the seventh century the Persian emperors controlled the land from the Caucasus to the Nile Delta and they were restored again to the Byzantine Empire by the heroic exploits of Heraclius who defeated the Sassanian armies in their heartland at Ctesiphon and recovered Jerusalem in 628. His tremendous exertions in the military and political fields were simultaneously and more lastingly paralleled by the Prophet Mohammed, pursuing his theological enquiries with Christian monks as he traversed the caravan routes from Mecca into Palestine and then in his later years receiving revelations and leading the first adherents of the new monotheism. Heraclius, enthroned in Constantinople, failed to recognise the significance of these events and made no effort to check or respond to this new expression of the worship of the one God. Islam means literally submission, and Muslims are those who submit to the expression of the will of God by the Prophet Mohammed. Emnities have clouded the inherent relationship between Christianity, and its predecessor Judaism, with Islam. The fact of the emergence of Islam from Christian theology has important parallels with the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and it is intrinsic to Islam that the peoples adhering to these earlier religions were treated with sympathy and given protection as being peoples of the book. The architectural consequence of this keystone of Muslim philosophy was the natural acceptance of buildings appropriate to the circumstances of the new religion. Although from a twentieth-century viewpoint the emergence of Islam seems revolutionary it was in fact an evolution in theological, philosophical and architectural terms. In his maturity Mohammed received revelations which Muslims accept as the Word of God. These were revolutionary in terms of Mohammeds status as a member of one of the leading cities of Mecca in the Hejaz the western region of Arabia where idolatry was the literal stock-in-trade of the city which depended even then on pilgrim traffic. Hence the Muslim retreat to Yathrib the Hegira and the beginning of the Muslim era.

Mesopotamia and Persia

Both brick and rubble masonry were the prime building elements in the Seleucid East, Parthia and the Sassanian Empires. These materials are generally not used for roofing and it must be recognised that much roof construction was of timber, probably laid as pole joisting with brushwood and palm frond covering finished with mud. In more monumental buildings vaulting and arching were used and dome construction is apparent for the first time in the Orient. Fired brick therefore came to be used in the vaults, squinches, arches and domes and some distinctive techniques of construction were evolved. To take advantage of the effects of quick setting of gypsum mortars (the set of plaster of Paris) flat fired bricks were laid radially as voussoirs but with their long axis on the line of the arch being formed. The effect was to give a large area of adhesion so that the voussoir would stay fixed in position without the support of centring within minutes of its application. In such vaults and occasionally in arches the initial courses would be corbelled in for up to one fifth of the height to be succeeded by arches of ring-arch construction. Over openings such as windows and doors a flat light timber lintel would be set at the springing line and on top of it temporary centring would be formed in mud brick, perhaps to the full width of the lintel, forming a wider arch than the opening below and producing on removal of the mud brick the distinctively Parthian and Sassanian keyhole arch. Arch forms in this period varied from the predominant half-round to the vertical semi-ellipse and broken segments giving arches with quite sharply pointed profiles. The barrel vault was the predominant structural device throughout the region and this is true also of Upper Egypt. To avoid the use of timber centring arches were built inclined against an end wall, the work on the lower voussoirs of the advancing vault being several rings ahead of the completion of the upper segments. In this period the squinch (arch or small vault across a corner) first makes its appearance. Larger domes rose over the great halls of palaces in Parthian and Sassanian Iran. Here also appeared the talar and iwan open-fronted spaces serving ceremonial and living functions. The emergence of these spaces can be traced archaeologically as sheltered recesses fronting unroofed areas in homes and ceremonial buildings. They came to form an important part of the architectural vocabulary in the Middle East, appearing as rationalised cave-like openings, arched or supported by columns, sometimes being a high or large central unit flanked by two similar smaller openings and also appearing as two or four opposed openings facing each other. A large vocabulary of decorative elements is associated with this period. Facades were regularly enlivened with blind arcading, frequently carried on

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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565

coupled colonettes or sometimes even triple colonettes. Applied stucco decoration was widely used for dados, friezes, linings and framings to openings, roundels in spandrels, string courses and crestings. The Classical orders were entirely absent except where Greek influence persisted in and after the Seleucid period. Distinctive crenellations were adopted, each being stepped three or four times giving a sawtoothed profile and crenellations of this style became used as a frieze. Stucco was regularly incised and modelled with patterning and was enriched with paint. Large clay sculptures were created in addition to the stone carvings. Strong pigments were regularly used to heighten patterns and sculptures. In urban planning there was a marked contrast between the formal concepts introduced by the Greeks where reticulate straight-line layout contrasts with the native form of city development which is entirely organic and tends to produce a near-circular perimeter as at Takht-i-Suleiman.

featuring prominently. Although nothing is left of coastal Egypt in this period much Coptic church building survives in the Upper Nile and at the head of the Delta. Churches supply our principal evidence for a basilican form terminating in a broad cross-choir fronted by three haikals (chapels). The aisles and nave are divided by colonnades of Corinthian columns carrying a massive timber entablature while the roofs are invariably of timber. Sites identified and excavated have tended to be those which ceased to be cities. Where they continued in use, such as at Alexandria in Egypt, evidence of this early period lies deeply buried or destroyed in redevelopment. The transition from Seleucid to Parthian rule came with the ascendancy of the native population over the incursive Greeks. Henceforward Rome, and thenceforward Byzantium, was to be the natural enemy.

History of Islam Syria and Egypt

Classical influences pervaded the Mediterranean coastline reaching inland to Western Asia Minor, to the Syrian steppes inhabited by the Ghassinid Arabs, to the Nabataean Arab Kingdoms and into the Nile Valley beyond the Delta. Traditions of finely worked trabeated masonry predominated in monumental building and the Corinthian Order was predominant, giving rise to variations such as wind-blown acanthus and basket capitals. Architecturally this was an inventive land sufficiently beyond the Pale to develop its own idiosyncratic versions of Classical orders and their handling. From Jerusalem to Diyarbakir, in the Decapolis and around Antioch the extant remains of monumental buildings in finely worked masonry carry complex and elaborate ornament of powerful and fluid design matched nowhere else. Elaborate string courses wreath around windows ropelike and in the finest work heavy torus moulds are deeply undercut with fretted detail. Much of the architecture was entirely lithic with door leaves and window shutters in stone and floors and roofs formed with long stone planks. Timber was extensively employed and surviving masonry clearly indicates the seating for large timber domes. In contrast to lands further east arching was almost invariably round although with occasional slight accentuation to a central point. Plate tracery in stone was in regular use and vaults were buttressed by contraforts. Occasionally these were detached as primitive flying buttresses. Burned brick was rarely used, and where it is found the origins may be traced to metropolitan influences. Further south, Nabataean building developed with an exuberance that can only be called baroque, broken pediments and stylised urns on steeples At the end of the sixth century, when the prophet Mohammed was a young man (his date of birth is not known), Sassanid Persia stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and from the Aral Sea to the Indian Ocean. In the first twenty years of the seventh century the last great monarch, Chosroes II, moved to revenge the death of his one-time ally Maurice, the Byzantine Emperor, at the hands of a usurper. He overran Syria, took Jerusalem in 615, and in the next few years invaded Egypt. His armies even approached Constantinople itself. This Persian threat to the heart of the Byzantine empire coincided almost precisely (in 616) with the final overthrow of the Romans in Spain by the Visigoths. Byzantium was rescued by Heraclius, who as soldieremperor made incursions deep into the Sassanian empire, sacking Ctesiphon in 628 to rescue the True Cross, with which he returned in triumph to Jerusalem. Two other factors complicate the background of Islam at the beginning one religious, the other secular. Although for a time officially tolerated Orthodox Christianity was largely eschewed in Zoroastrian Persia whereas Manichaeism (which united Jewish and Christian beliefs, with Persian mysticism) and Nestorian Christianity were both accepted, the latter because it had been banned by Rome. Incursions from eastern and central Asia continued as successive tribes were displaced in the westward movements that had begun over a thousand years earlier. They reduced the settled oasis cities Samarkand, Bokhara, Merv and Khiva and moved westwards, allying themselves expediently with the great powers. In the first quarter of the seventh century the Huns were succeeded first by the Avars and then by Turkic tribes (Khazars, and others) whose provinces ran from the Pamirs to the Oxus.

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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BACKGROUND

In Arabia the provinces of Rome had indeterminate boundaries eastward. The struggles in Palestine by which the Jews had been subjugated or expelled were not reflected in the marchlands of the Empire, where Nabataean and other groupings were peripheral to the dictats of the Caesars. Along the trade routes of Romanised Arabia culture and architectural styles reached beyond the writ of Roman and Byzantine law although the cultural influences extended further. The Prophet Mohammed, to whom Islam owes its existence, was born into an important family (the Kureish) in the mountain city of Mecca in western Arabia in the late sixth century. He travelled as a merchant into the Arabian provinces of the Roman empire, then vibrant with Christianity. He is believed to have debated intensively with philosophers and clerics, contrasting the long religious traditions and multiplicity of forms of worship in the area with theorising upon monotheism under Christian leadership. In his maturity Mohammed received revelations which, to Muslims, represent the Word of God. The threat this posed to established religious practices in Mecca caused the Prophet, with a small band of his followers, to be driven from the city in 622. He took refuge in Yathrib, a town to the north, which thereafter became the City of the Prophet or, simply al-Medina The City. The flight from Mecca the Hegira marks the beginning of the Muslim era. The faithful became a coherent body and adopted the practice of praying towards Jerusalem, but on reconciliation with Mecca turned towards that city in their prostrations. The Prophet remained in Medina until his death in 632, establishing the framework of the religion and the beginnings of a military organisation charged with spreading the Faith. The explosive expansion of Islam carried the faith north-east into Mesopotamia, west into Egypt and beyond and into the fertile lands of the Mediterranean littoral (present-day Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria). One prime objective was the defeat and conversion of the Byzantine emperor. In Constantinople the Emperor, Heraclius, was astonishingly supine in the face of a threat he underestimated. The Arab armies aimed first at Jerusalem, then at Damascus and finally, but unsuccessfully, at Constantinople. Their northward advance was deflected eastwards as it entered the southern foothills of the mountains of Asia Minor and then it petered out. The parallel attack carried another Muslim army north-eastwards into the Tigris and Euphrates basin, the heartland of the Sassanian empire. Defeated in the first encounter at Qadisiyeh the Sassanians crumbled finally at Nihavand in 641, but in the west Jerusalem gave way only after long resistance. The Byzantine empire established an erratic frontier with Islam in the mountains of Asia Minor, and despite an audacious direct seaborne attempt on Constantinople the Arabs were held at bay.

Blocked by Byzantium in the north-west and stretched perilously far in the north-east, the Arabs opened new fields of conquest by turning westwards along the coast of Africa. In 640 they conquered Egypt, and within 30 years had gained control of the whole of the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. By 711 they were established in southern Spain, and 50 years later had conquered almost all the peninsula, striking deep into southern France before being halted in 732 by a major defeat at Poitiers at the hands of Charles Martell, hence called the Saviour of Europe. Poitiers marked the limit of Arab expansion into western Europe. Settled in Palestine, the Umayyad Caliphate was, to a considerable degree, Hellenised, by contrast with the overtly Persian influence on their forces penetrating the Iranian plateau into Central Asia and beyond even into China. Rivalry developed into a rift under the banner of the Abbasids. The first century of Islam is imbued with Byzantine overtones, and its architecture owes much to the vigorous Hellenism of Syria, Palestine and Lower Egypt. In 750 the Abbasids swept this influence aside. They eliminated almost the whole of the Umayyad clan and for two centuries or more Palestine became a cultural vacuum. Syrian administrators and courtiers made their way westwards to the new Umayyad capital at Cordoba to perpetuate in Spain (where they posed no threat to Abbasid power) the values and characteristics brought from Syria. The Caliphate itself was moved first to a briefly inhabited site in northern Mesopotamia and then in 762 to the City of Peace (now Kadhimain near Baghdad) and then in 832 to Samarra. There for sixty years, the Abbasids ruled as autocrats. They were immensely powerful and, in volume, their material achievements far outstripped those of their Umayyad predecessors. They returned to Baghdad towards the end of the ninth century to rule a diminishing Empire. While retaining pre-eminence as leaders of the Faithful the Abbasid Caliphs were never again to rule on their earlier scale and the government of the region from Afghanistan to Syria lay with the interrelated Seljuk and Zengid dynasties whose architectural achievements were both diverse and inventive. As the Abbasid Caliphs became weaker their authority was usurped in central Asia, Afghanistan and in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, where the Tulunid and Fatimid dynasties were dominant. By the twelfth century much of Palestine had become the focus of incursion from the west. The Crusades brought to Asia Minor, Palestine and, in the thirteenth century, to Egypt new and more fearsome antagonists than the armies of Byzantium. Latin kingdoms were established in Syria, Palestine and on the upper Euphrates, but the Asian provinces of Byzantium fell piecemeal to Turkish invaders, who reached the Meditarranean on the Ionian coast. Far to the east the Ghorids, a Muslim dynasty of Turkish

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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origin, established Islam in northern India at the beginning of the eleventh century. Meanwhile the Muslim kingdoms in Spain were pressed increasingly hard by Christian forces from the north and the Crusaders footholds in the Holy Land became more and more precarious although the Christian kingdoms of Edessa, Outremer and Jerusalem survived into the thirteenth century. In 1291 Acre (Akka) fell and the power of the Frankish knights was broken (see also Chapter 13). In Egypt the Tulunids were succeeded eventually in the eleventh century by the the Fatimids, whose Mamluks (slaves from Asia Minor and Russia) in turn succeeded them. The Mamluks ejected the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Subsequently they met and successfully resisted the Mongol challenge in Syria to consolidate what was to be a long-sustained political dominance. Ultimately they were defeated by the Ottomans in 1517. Henceforth Egypt was to lie within Turkish sovereignty. From the Scythian incursions of the middle centuries of the first millennium BC (Scyths overran the post-Seleucid Bactrian kingdoms as late as 141 BC) through invasions by the Hsing-Nu (Huns) and the Juan-Juan (Avars) to the later movements of Turkish tribes from Mongolia, the corridor across southern central Asia had continued to attract the eastern barbarian peoples to the settled oasis towns of central Asia and then across northern Persia into Asia Minor. This flow became a raging torrent in the early thirteenth century under Genghis Khan and his successors. His grandson, Hulagu, swept from central Asia into Persia, Syria and Asia Minor, and with terrifying rapacity flooded westwards into Europe itself. In 1258 Baghdad was sacked by Mongol armies whose declared aim was the utter destruction of everything and everyone daring to resist them. A century later under Timur (Tamurlane, a khan of combined TurkishMongol origin) there ensued a further period of destruction. Timur made Samarkand his capital in 1370, invaded Persia ten years later and was in Asia Minor inside a decade. He took Sultaniyeh, captured Baghdad in 1393, and Damascus a few years later. Timur was never defeated in battle and at the turn of the century ruled from central Asia to the Nile, and from northern India virtually to the Bosphorus, having reduced Delhi in 1399. He embraced Islam, and proclaimed the faith across his territories. Under his rule Samarkand became the focus of architectural development and its influences spread widely across the lands in Timurid rule. His defeat of the rapidly rising Ottomans in 1400 gave a brief respite to the Byzantine emperors before their eclipse half a century later. Timur himself commissioned buildings across the Levant and from the Aral Sea to Delhi. Unfortunately the Timurid architecture of the region in Herat, Merv, Tashkent, Bokhara and, above all, Samarkand survives only in badly shattered form

but its influence is to be seen in Moghul India and Safavid Persia. The Timurids were active patrons who gathered together the inventive skills of Seljuk architects. Some of their own work survives, despite losses in the cities of Afghanistan and Turkestan. In this period, the Timurids created and perfected the formal paradise garden which later became so essential a feature of Persian and Indian architecture, and developed the art and techniques of tilework and three-dimensional surface decoration. Mongol dynasties in Persia and northern India also began to create where once they had destroyed. The creative energies of the Timurids persisted through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries producing in their capital, Samarkand, an architecture of power and influence. But as Timurid rule in central Asia diminished minor dynasties were established around cities such as Merv, Kiva, Kokand and Bokhara. In Afghanistan and northern India a series of independent princedoms emerged, their capitals being at Jodhpur, Ahmadabad, Gaur, Gulbarga, Golkonda and Bijapur. On the south-west fringe of Europe the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453, and had mastered the whole of western Islam within a hundred years. They extended their power from the gates of Vienna to the Barbary Coast, from Egypt and the Hejaz to the Crimea, while in the east they reached out into Mesopotamia and to Baghdad by the early sixteenth century. Their distinctive style with steepled minarets, leaded domes and clear ashlar walling is to be found in Egypt, the Balkans, Turkey and Syria. Overwhelmingly, Thrace, Istanbul and western Asia Minor are its homeland, where the requirements of the greatest of the Ottoman Sultans and their viziers produced architecture of impeccable quality. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the great period of imperial achievement. In addition to the Ottomans, two great dynasties arose to dominate their minor neighbours. In Persia the Safavids united the country and extended their rule across the highlands to reach intermittently into southern Russia. By the end of the sixteenth century the Moghul empire covered much of northern and north-western India. Their courts were at Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Lahore. Here Islamic forms were developed using red sandstone, trimmed and embellished with carved marble. As wealth and confidence increased, sandstone was replaced by marble. The finer stone was used in ever more elaborately carved forms, such as pierced screens and lightly framed structures. Inlay techniques were used in which semi-precious and even precious stones were embedded in marble in an extension of the pietra dura technique. These three great powers of later Islam Ottoman, Safavid and Moghul rose and flourished in parallel, and each faded gently into insignificance. The history of the westernmost sultanates of Islam in the

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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Mahgreb is less dramatic but runs a similar course. The relative stability of each of the local powers was reflected in the considerable architectural achievements of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco in the face of European expansion and colonialism. In microcosm the city of Fez, which continued an astonishingly even tenor of creative architecture, exemplifies the persistence of the mature Muslim style into modern times. Although there has been a tendency in Islamic architecture to make use of the resources of the locality, a series of common characteristics evolved which called for similar craft skills without regard to location. Nevertheless a great variety of local and regional influences, including climate, produced significant effects upon building form and construction. Some areas produced styles entirely specific to small regions such as the mountainous terrain of the Yemen, the oasis towns of the Nejd (northern Saudi Arabia) and further-flung Muslim communities in the Himalayas, Indonesia, north central China, East Africa down to Zanzibar and West Africa below the deserts down to Timbuctoo. In modern (but necessarily approximate) terms, the following countries have been governed by Muslim rulers and substantially populated by Muslim peoples. European Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, southern Yugoslavia: fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Sicily: eighth to eleventh centuries Southern and central Spain: eighth to sixteenth centuries Cyprus: sixteenth to twentieth centuries North Africa: fifteenth century onwards Turkey in Asia: eleventh and twelfth centuries onwards Syria, Palestine, the Gulf States, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and south-central Russia: eighth century onwards Northern India: twelfth century onwards East Africa: fourteenth century onwards Indonesia: seventeenth century onwards. Other important Muslim communities were established in isolation outside these areas in places such as Zanzibar, Madagascar and western China, and twentieth-century mobility has brought Islam to outposts throughout the world, with architectural consequences in places as far apart as Sydney and South Shields. Islamic building types developed originally in the hot dry climate of the Middle East, where the impact of solar radiation produced the need for shaded courtyards and cool spaces darkened against the sun by day; and for heavy construction to retain and reradiate heat internally by night. As Islam spread across the world it embraced an ever-increasing variety of climates, but the forms evolved for the hot,

arid areas of the Middle East and western Asia were retained; in some cases (for example, the monsoon areas of India) concessions were made to encourage the better flow of air so essential to comfort in humid conditions. Nevertheless many of the traditional forms to be found in temperate climates are more related to ritual than to function. Combinations of Islamic features with the local vernacular were inevitable. As might be expected, therefore, in places such as the islands of Indonesia or the jungles of central Africa, variants have arisen which run counter to otherwise fair generalisations.

Philosophy and Lifestyle

Islam is the third great monotheistic religion to have sprung from the Semitic peoples. By its adherents it is regarded as the natural successor to Judaism and Christianity and, like them, it looks back to the Prophets and Patriarchs which it shares with the preceding faiths. Its foundation was, in essence, an attempt to purify the established pattern of worship, rejecting paganism and providing a fundamental base for monotheism free from idolatry. Islam is the description for the religion itself, Muslim is the word for one who professes the Faith which took its authority from revelations vouchsafed to the Prophet Mohammed in the years 610622, during which times its articles were codified and its essential characteristics established. The precepts governing the lives of Muslims imply requirements for buildings peculiar to believers. The annual pilgrimage, or Haj, brings the faithful from all parts of the Muslim world to Mecca. This imparted a degree of unity which justifies a separate category for Islamic architecture to encompass a group of styles spread widely across Asia and Africa in many different climates and kingdoms, and in time over more than a millennium. It includes all those buildings previously termed Saracenic, Moorish and Mohammedan. Muslim thought is codified in three works. Of these, the Koran is regarded as a revelation through the medium of the Prophet Mohammed; the Hadith is a collection of his sayings or injunctions, and is of lesser weight; while the Law is extracted from the Prophets instruction, from tradition and example. On these basic compilations rests the whole philosophical structure of the Islamic world. The faith produced in successive generations of its followers a way of life and a set of attitudes which had great influence on their architecture. These may be summarised as an acceptance of the dominance of Islam and the immutability of its revelations and an abhorrence of image-worship. The effects of these beliefs on Islamic architecture can be seen in the following characteristics: there is no essential differentiation in

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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techniques between buildings with a directly religious connotation and other buildings; important architectural endeavour is normally expended on buildings having a direct social or community purpose, including that of worship; decorations tend towards the abstract, using geometric, calligraphic and plant motifs, with a preference for a uniform field of decoration rather than a focal element; decorated surfaces are controlled by framing and an inherent conservatism discourages innovations and favours established forms. The Islamic system of thought was partly produced by the use of Arabic as a common language and as the only language of the Koran. This cultural concentricity did much to unify the philosophies of the Islamic peoples, to govern their way of life, and to unify their architecture. The synthesis of the styles of many conquered peoples under the impact of one philosophy and one religion in the many different circumstances of the first four centuries of Islam was a cultural achievement of which only one facet is an architecture fundamentally centred upon worship. At its heart is the mosque, an inward-looking building whose prime purpose is contemplation and prayer. Its prayer space is removed from the immediate impact of worldly affairs, although it is not designed to be emotionally uplifting nor to produce a sense of exultation. There is no positive object of adoration. It is entirely a place of congregation for the faithful and for appropriate communal activities. Although it is not set apart, it does become an exemplar, embodying architectural styles and fashions which, even though they may have evolved elsewhere, are codified and stabilised in the mosque and its associated monumental buildings. Above all things, the mosque is democratic. In the mosque all have equal rights, and the building may serve many functions other than prayer. It is still commonly used as a school, business transactions may be made there and treasures may be stored. Proclamations are made there and consultations held. Under the complex pressures of modern society, however, some of the historically important functions of the mosque have been transferred elsewhere. Although the mosque may retain its libraries these too have been superseded, and travellers reaching a town no longer go first to the mosque and its ancilliary buildings, where shelter and hospitality once were provided to the newly arrived traveller and to the poor. Nevertheless, although it is now less possible for the community to bathe, eat, sleep, debate and be schooled there, the mosque complex remains the focus of Muslim life something between a forum and a prayer-house. Historically the mosque was of such central importance to the life of the community that it became the dominant building, and this form is echoed in structures built for other purposes. It is always planned on an axis directed towards Mecca.

With the exception of the earliest instances, this axis was always terminated on the inner face of the mosque by the mihrab, usually a niche, where the leader of the congregation makes his prayers. This act, which involves prostration, must be observed from other parts of the prayer chamber, and lateral vision is therefore important. The congregation assembles in lines traversing the main axis and takes its cue from the leader or those in the centre of the line in a position to observe him. A multi-columned hall with transverse aisles makes an acceptable space. Ideally there should be no columns, hence the popularity of the dome. Since there is nothing sacrosanct about the mihrab, secondary mihrabs are often placed in other positions of convenience for the use of smaller congregations or individuals. The prayer space is furnished only with the mimber, from which formal pronouncements can be made, although a part of the prayer space may be railed-off or fitted with a balcony for special uses those of a dignitary or ruler, or of muezzins or women. There may also be a fixed reading desk or preaching stool. Apart from the buildings, with their numerous subtleties of form and their range of decorative techniques, Islamic culture produced many other requisite artefacts such as carpets and ceramics. It is held, however, that Islams greatest cultural medium is the spoken and written word, and although little survives from very early Islam, this is to be set beside the vast quantity of literature, much of it scientific, which has survived often unknown to Western scholars: indeed a proportion of the manuscripts remains unread. Arabic as the lingua franca has made possible the essential synthesis of Islamic cultural achievement. Through it Greek philosophy and science became available and to it Hellenistic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian and Hindu ideas brought further intellectual vigour, leading in mediaeval times to profound achievements in science, mathematics, history and geography. Arabic numeration provides a significant example of the inventive mode which had been systemised and applied in a practical context ideas derived from elsewhere in this case from India. Medicine, astronomy and commerce are among other areas which owe major debts to Muslim scholarship and enterprise.

Architectural Character
The countries into which Islam first expanded were already rich in building tradition, and the important techniques of exploitation of natural resources for building work and trade in building materials had long been established. Brick-making and walling in mud brick and pis were almost universal in the e

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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alluvial plains: in the stone-bearing areas the arts of selecting and quarrying stone were well established. Marble was generally available as an article of trade if not native to the locality. Lime and gypsum for mortars and plasters were usually readily procurable. A rich variety of building stones is found in areas reaching from Asia Minor and Egypt to northern India, and the techniques of working them and building in masonry had been highly developed before the advent of Islam. Cyclopean masonry had survived from antiquity, and Roman quarries such as those at Baalbek still yielded massive stones. The buildings in such areas commonly had suspended floors and roofs of stone planks, stone window shutters, stone leaves to doors and even interlocking stone rings used structurally to tie in the haunches of stone domes. Decorative marble slabs and grilles, plate tracery and mosaics were commonplace. Most masonry structures of importance were in arched, vaulted or domed forms (p. 570A), however, continuing the Roman and Byzantine building traditions. True voussoirs were used in the curved shapes, and interlocking voussoirs guarded against earthquakes. Glass manufacture was sufficiently advanced to provide window glass, and there was a long history of ceramic production. Cements, plasters and stucco were used for bas-relief carving, and the highly decorative muqarnas techniques employed in domes, vaults and arches (p. 570B). Coloured external surfaces were achieved first with mosaic but the developing skills of mediaeval potters solved the problems of producing brilliant colour in glazed earthenware, which was used first in small areas as inlay. In the earlier periods complex patterning was achieved by making or cutting to the necessary shapes tiles of a single colour. Timurid architects employed tiles fired at temperatures to suit each individual colour. In the fifteenth century a method of firing was developed which enabled tiles of regular size to be produced bearing the painted pattern. This change allowed much larger surfaces to be covered and the intricacies of pattern-making became the purview of the potter rather than the tile cutter and mosaicist. Lead-working, bronze-casting and the use of iron were well-established techniques. Domes, roofs and steeples were often weathered in lead and iron was widely used in tie-bars, grilles and cramps. The skills and techniques for wood-working and timber engineering were used from the earliest period for roof construction including early domes. Timber components such as doors, windows, fittings and furniture were built in interlocking geometric assemblies of rare timbers, mother-of-pearl, metals, ivory and various stones. At a simpler humbler level flat timber roofs were extremely common and timberframing was used extensively in walling and the construction of upper floors. Timber structures were inevitable in forested areas such as Indonesia and

Malaya but it also played an important structural role from the Balkans through Asia Minor, the Caucasus and the mountains of Iran, to the Himalayas and northern India. No history of Muslim building can overlook the extensive use of unbaked brick and other forms of earth construction. Lime and gypsum were sometimes used to stabilise earth-bricks. Fired-brick was sometimes used in conjunction with earths to achieve ribbed and groined domes and vaulting. By far the greatest volume of building in Islamic lands has been achieved with earth walling. Taken as a whole, the architecture of Islam must be seen primarily as a matter of arcuated masonry construction in which its artisans achieved the highest levels of finish and invention. The prevalence of earthquakes across much of the centre of the Muslim world gave particular importance to the inventive skills of masons and resulted in the employment of specialised structural techniques. It remains only to add that the construction techniques used to meet climatic conditions, while usually simple, contributed significantly to the character of the buildings. From the use of small window openings in thick walls to the sophisticated windscoops (p. 570C) used to carry air into the interiors, the technical mastery of climate in the hot and arid Middle East, was a notable achievement in constructional terms. The essence of any style is the specific handling of forms, spaces and massing; the combination of features, the decoration and the inflections of individual elements in the vocabulary. While Muslim architecture shares with other styles many individual features having borrowed some and donated others, it is only by collective description that it can be identified satisfactorily. Among the notable outwardly characteristic features of Muslim architecture are the pointed arch, and the horsehoe arch in which the lower segment is carried below the normal springing point. The origins of both may be traced back to the pre-Muslim era in the eastern territories of Byzantium, and to the Sassanian Empire. The pointed arch itself appears in the earliest significant Muslim monuments, and both were carried to the western Mediterranean by Muslims in the eighth century. Thereafter, the pointed arch is as typical of Islamic architecture as it is of Gothic. Although in the West the horseshoe shape is frequently round-headed, in the East the round arch virtually disappeared after the ninth century, when the four-centred arch was evolved. Less crucial was the use of cusping and of guarding colonnettes or nook-shafts. Cusping has a pre-Muslim history in church buildings in Syria in the sixth century, but it was first used regularly in decorative frets to arches in late eighth-century Iraq. Nook-shafts are found in Coptic and Hellenistic Christian architecture of the fifth and sixth centuries. Intermittently

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.

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they have appeared at all periods but their regular use in Muslim architecture can be firmly dated to the ninth century, after which they were used widely for entrance openings of significance. By the eleventh century other important decorative elements had also become established, among them the peculiarly Islamic muqarnas or stalactite corbel. Muqarnas are superimposed corbels, angled so that the quoin of the lower corbel is coincident with the groin of two superimposed corbels above. From the tenth to the fifteenth centuries they were developed into a range of astonishingly varied, intricate and imaginative patterns of crystalline brilliance to become one of the most distinctive features of Muslim architecture (p. 572). Initially colour was achieved by the use of mosaics, and sometimes quartered marble panels, but mosaic eventually gave way to coloured glazed earthenware. The absence of figurative design in Islamic imagery has given rise to much misunderstanding and not a little debate. The prohibitions do not arise directly from the injunctions of the Prophet, but from comments based on the impropriety of man attempting to usurp the function of God in creating representations of living creatures. Early Islam was in rivalry with the established Christian churches when iconoclasm was at its height, and the teachings of the church affected the attitudes of early converts to Islam. Consequently, calligraphy and pattern-making took the place of figures.

The most comprehensive range of features, however, does not make a coherent architecture. This arises only from the methods of handling form and space. It is typical of Islamic building that there is no attempt to collect numerous spaces and volumes within one great envelope whose facades then describe a single mass. Each component stands identified in its own right, and is expressed as part of a sequence of linked structures. The coordination and articulation of the individual components together supply the prime discipline. Dome, iwan, cloister or portal may be emphasised or diminished as required within its proper station, and each contains elements which display the essential structural form. Some fundamental aspects of building derive from use and lifestyle. The actual form of the mosque is unique to the faith. So are its madrassas (medreses) or schools and colleges. The emphasis upon privacy and public segregation of the sexes leads to specific handling of the house, the entrance, the sheltered window and the street facade. The uniform height of many settlements derives from the requirement for privacy of rooms used for sleeping. The intricate street structure gives privacy of access. The great mosque may be all but invisible from within the city because the urban matrix engulfs it completely. The external facade is unusual and the formal urban space is equally rare.

(c) The Royal Institute of British Architects and the University of London. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the University of London are the joint trustees of Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture.