Courtesy : en.wikipedia.org
Green islamic architecture
Islamic architecture comprises the architectural styles of buildings associated with Islam. It encompasses both secular and religious styles from the early history of Islam to the present day. The Islamic world encompasses a wide geographic area historically ranging from western Africa and Europe to eastern Asia. Certain commonalities are shared by Islamic architectural styles across all these regions, but over time different regions developed their own styles according to local materials and techniques, local dynasties and patrons, different regional centers of artistic production, and sometimes different religious affiliations.
Early Islamic architecture was influenced by Roman, Byzantine, Iranian, and Mesopotamian architecture and all other lands which the Early Muslim conquests conquered in the seventh and eighth centuries. Further east, it was also influenced by Chinese and Indian architecture as Islam spread to Southeast Asia. Later it developed distinct characteristics in the form of buildings and in the decoration of surfaces with Islamic calligraphy, arabesques, and geometric motifs. New architectural elements like minarets, muqarnas, and multifoil arches were invented. Common or important types of buildings in Islamic architecture include mosques, madrasas, tombs, palaces, hammams (public baths), Sufi hospices (e.g. khanqahs or zawiyas), fountains and sabils, commercial buildings (e.g. caravanserais and bazaars), and military fortifications.
Early history (up to 10th century
See also: Mosque § History
Origins
The Mosque of the Prophet, standing on the site of Muhammad’s first mosque in Medina. The present-day building is the result of many reconstructions and expansions up to modern times.
The Islamic era began with the formation of Islam under the leadership of Muhammad in early 7th-century Arabia. The first mosque was a structure built by Muhammad in Medina in 622, right after his Hijrah (migration) from Mecca, which corresponds to the site of the present-day Mosque of the Prophet (al-Masjid an-Nabawi). It is usually described as his house, but may have been designed to serve as a community center from the beginning.It consisted of a simple courtyard structure built in unbaked brick, with a rectangular, almost square, floor plan measuring about 53 by 56 meters. A shaded portico supported by palm trunks stood on the north side of the courtyard, in the direction of prayer (the qibla), which was initially towards Jerusalem. When the qibla was changed to face towards Mecca in 624, a similar portico was added on the south side, facing towards that city.Muhammad and his family lived in separate rooms attached to the mosque, and Muhammad himself was buried in one of these rooms upon his death in 632.Over the rest of the 7th century and in the 8th century the mosque was repeatedly expanded to include a large flat-roofed prayer hall supported by columns (a hypostyle hall) with a central courtyard. It became one of the main models for the early mosques built elsewhere.Scholars generally agree that aside from Muhammad’s mosque/house, the architecture of the Arabian Peninsula seems to have had only a limited role in the formulation of later Islamic architecture.
Prior to the start of the Arab-Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the two major powers in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean world were the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and the Sasanian Empire. These two empires both cultivated their own major architectural traditions. Occupying the borderlands between these two empires – in the desert and steppe regions of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and northern Arabia – were two Arab tribal client states: the Lakhmids, who were clients of the Sasanians and had their capital at al-Hira (in present-day Iraq), and the Ghassanids, who were clients of the Byzantines and protected their eastern borders.These two Arab dynasties were significant patrons of architecture in their respective regions.Their architecture is not well understood due to the scarcity of identifiable remains today, but they borrowed and adapted the architecture of their Byzantine and Sasanian suzerains. Some of their buildings are known from archeology or historical texts, such as the Lakhmid palaces of Khawarnaq and al-Sadir in al-Hira, a Ghassanid church with mosaic decoration at Nitil (near Madaba), and a Ghassanid audience hall incorporated into the later Umayyad rural residence at ar-Rusafa. The culture and architecture of the Lakhmids and Ghassanids probably played a subsequent role in transmitting and filtering the architectural traditions of the Sasanian and the Byzantine/Roman worlds to the later Arab Islamic dynasties who established their political centers in the same regions.
When the early Arab-Muslim conquests spread out from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and advanced across the Middle East and North Africa, new garrison cities were established in the conquered territories, such as Fustat in Egypt and Kufa in present-day Iraq. The central congregational mosques of these cities were built in the hypostyle format. In other cities, especially in Syria, new mosques were established by converting or occupying parts of existing churches in existing cities, as for example in Damascus and Hama. These early mosques had no minaret, although small shelters may have been constructed on the roofs to protect the muezzin while issuing the call to prayer.
Umayyad and Abbasid eras
Section of the Umayyad-era Mshatta Facade, now in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, from a palace near Amman
The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) combined elements of Byzantine architecture and Sasanian architecture, but Umayyad architecture introduced new combinations of these styles. The reuse of elements from classical Roman and Byzantine art was still widely evident because political power and patronage was centered in Syria, a former Roman/Byzantine province. Some former Ghassanid structures also appear to have been reused and modified during this period. However, a significant amount of experimentation occurred as Umayyad patrons recruited craftsmen from across the empire and architects were allowed, or even encouraged, to mix elements from different artistic traditions and to disregard traditional conventions and restraints.Partly as a result of this, Umayyad architecture is distinguished by the extent and variety of decoration, including mosaics, wall painting, sculpture and carved reliefs.While figural scenes were notably present in monuments like Qusayr ‘Amra, non-figural decoration and more abstract scenes became highly favoured, especially in religious architecture.
The Umayyads were the first to add the mihrab to mosque design, a concave niche in the qibla wall of the mosque. The first mihrab reportedly appeared at Muhammad’s mosque in Medina when it was rebuilt by al-Walid I in 707. It seems to have represented the place where the Prophet stood when leading prayer.This almost immediately became a standard feature of all mosques.In hypostyle mosques, the Umayyads also introduced the tradition of making the “nave” or aisle in front of the mihrab wider than the others, dividing the prayer room along its central axis. Several major early monuments of Islamic architecture built under the Umayyads include the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (built by Caliph Abd al-Malik) and the Great Mosque of Damascus (built by al-Walid I). The Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif, also in Jerusalem, was also rebuilt by al-Walid I, replacing an earlier simple structure built around 670.Both the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Great Mosque of Damascus featured a hypostyle hall and a dome above the space in front of the mihrab, and both were influential in the design of later mosques elsewhere.A number of palaces from this period have also partially survived or have been excavated in modern times.The horseshoe arch appears for the first time in Umayyad architecture, later to evolve to its most advanced form in al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula).
The walls and minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra built by the Abbasids in the 9th century
The Abbasid architecture of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1513) was particularly influenced by Sasanian architecture, which in turn featured elements present since ancient Mesopotamia.Other influences such as ancient Soghdian architecture in Central Asia have also been noted. This was partly a result of the caliphate’s political center shifting further east to the new capital of Baghdad, in present-day Iraq.Features from the late Umayyad period, such as vaulting, carved stucco, and painted wall decoration, were continued and elaborated in the Abbasid period.]Abbasid mosques all followed the courtyard plan with hypostyle halls. The earliest was the mosque that Caliph al-Mansur built in Baghdad (since destroyed). The Great Mosque of Samarra built by al-Mutawakkil measured 256 by 139 metres (840 by 456 ft), had a flat wooden roof supported by columns, and was decorated with marble panels and glass mosaics.The prayer hall of the Abu Dulaf Mosque at Samarra had arcades on rectangular brick piers running at right angles to the qibla wall. Both of the Samarra mosques have spiral minarets, the only examples in Iraq.A mosque at Balkh in what is now Afghanistan was about 20 by 20 metres (66 by 66 ft) square, with three rows of three square bays, supporting nine vaulted domes. While the origins of the minaret are uncertain, it is believed that the first true minarets appeared in this period. Several of the Abbasid mosques built in the early ninth century had minaret towers which stood at the northern ends of the building, opposite the central mihrab. Among the most famous of these is the Malwiyya minaret, a stand-alone tower with a “spiral” form built for the Great Mosque of Samarra.