Islamic Architecture: Mosques, Domes and Patterns

Islamic architecture is the building art of countries and cultures shaped by Islam, from the seventh century to the present. It is marked by mosques with domes, minarets and courtyards, by horseshoe arches and vaults, and by rich ornament of geometry, vine scrolls and calligraphy rather than images of people.

Facts

The mosque and its parts

The early mosque was a simple building: a rectangular courtyard, the sahn, with a hall of columns where the faithful gather for prayer. The wall facing Mecca is called the qibla, and in it is a niche, the mihrab, marking the direction. Beside it stands the minbar, the pulpit, and outside rises the minaret, the tower from which the call to prayer is made. A fountain or water basin for ablutions often stands in the courtyard.

The mosque is thus a room for community rather than a sacred room for a particular image of God, and it can hold thousands of people at prayer. The ground plan is therefore flexible and could develop in different ways in different regions: a hall of columns in Arabia and Spain, four iwans around a courtyard in Persia and a central dome among the Ottomans.

From Jerusalem to Córdoba

The oldest surviving great building is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built in 691–692 with a golden dome over an octagonal plan. The Great Mosque of the Umayyads in Damascus, built around 706–715, took up Byzantine mosaics and Roman forms. In Córdoba in Spain work on the mosque began in 785–786, with double horseshoe arches of red and white blocks in a forest of columns.

In the Middle Ages Islamic building carried on the legacy of antiquity. Byzantine domes such as Hagia Sophia became models; read about Byzantine architecture. Islamic building in turn passed much on to Europe, for example the pointed arch, which was known in Islamic architecture before Gothic; see how a Gothic cathedral was built and vaults and arches.

Patterns, light and gardens

The best-known feature is the ornament. Because images of people were avoided in religious spaces, geometry, plant patterns (arabesques) and calligraphy, often verses of the Quran, became the most important art forms. The patterns can continue endlessly and recall the unity of God. Muqarnas, stalactite-like vault decorations, make domes and portals seem to float. Tiles in blue, turquoise and white cover walls, and ceramics such as the Iznik dish, textiles such as the Ardabil Carpet and interiors such as Murad III’s Chamber belong to the same visual world.

Granada in Spain got the Alhambra in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a palace complex with lush courtyards, reflecting pools and stucco like lace. The garden was a paradise on earth: the Persian chahar bagh divides the garden in four with water channels, a form that recurs at the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan in 1632–1653 as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal.

Ottomans, Safavids and today

The Ottoman architect Sinan built the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul in 1550–1557 and the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne in 1569–1575, where the dome rests on eight piers in a space of almost perfect clarity. In Isfahan in Persia the Safavids built the seventeenth-century Shah Mosque, covered in blue tiles. The Ottoman domes started from Hagia Sophia but became lighter and more open, a reminder of how the Pantheon in Rome once showed the way; see Roman architecture.

Today the tradition is alive. Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel and opened in 2017, has a dome 180 metres across of perforated layers of metal that filter the sun into a rain of light resembling a palm roof or a traditional pattern. Read also about vaults and arches, about the church for comparison and about the Middle Ages and the present.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What is the niche in the mosque wall that shows the direction to Mecca called?