Sacral Qualities of Form in Mosque Architecture

Abstract

By the year 800 c.E., and within less than two centuries from the inceptionof Islam, a new religious and secular architecture materialized in a vastarea: western Asia, all of North Africa, and southern Spain. The archeologicaland textual references for these projects have provided us with awealth of physical and descriptive evidence of the emerging building typesand forms of Islamic architecture. The mosque, for example, developedinto a well-defined building type with characteristic physical feams andspatial organization, among them the mihrdh, the minhur, calligraphicinscriptions, and surface Ornamentation, all of which are architectural elementswhose designs and dispositions in the mosque space have taken onvarious reoccurring patterns.The theological rationalization behind the historical evolution ofmosque architecture is more formidable to consolidate, however, for informationis scarce and it is difficult to interpret subjective information. TheQur’an decreed emphatically the, Salah (prayer) but did not describe whatfeatures a house of worship should incorporate. The Prophet taught Salahto early Muslims and continued to lead the faithful in prayer in the architecturallymodest mosque of Madinah. When the spatial requirements forcongregational mosques became apparent, such architectural features asthe mihrcth appeared ...