Islamic Art & Architecture Midterm Review (Images)

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, Israel, completed 691 CE

• Oldest architectural monument in Islam

  • Holds the very first architectural inscription of the Koran

• Dome represents heaven

• Octagonal design is part of the architectural tradition of late antiquity of the Byzantines

• Inside: Foundation Stone – venerated by all three Abrahamic religions

  • The dome is not a mosque – it is a monument made to surround the stone

• Double wing motif in mosaics = royal motif from the Sassanians

Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria, completed 706 CE

• Considered a holy site by both Christians and Muslims, as they believe the head of John the Baptist was buried here

  • Holds the shrine of John the Baptist

• Hypostyle

• Bears incredible resemblance to early Byzantine basilica-style churches

• Muhammad’s grandson, Huseyn ibn Ali, was martyred and died in a similar fashion to John the Baptist

  • Two shrines were built in the Great Mosque for him

• Largest amount of mosaics than anywhere in the world

Qasr-al-Hair al-Gharbi Palace Gate, Syria, c. 730 CE

• Ornamental gateway

• Really strong Sassanian influences

• Now the entrance to the Damascus National Museum

Khirbat al-Mafjar Palace, Palestine, c. 730 CE

• One of the two oldest settlements that have been found

• The complex contained a castle, a mosque and a bath (bath hall was hypostyle)

• It was a pleasure palace, with a long courtyard and a huge fountain

• Enormous arch construction was very Roman

• Largest mosaic floor in the world (9,000 sq. ft.)

Floor Fresco with Fertility Goddess, Qasr-al-Hair al-Gharbi, Syria, c. 730 CE

• Fresco used for floors is exceedingly rare due to its fragility

• Pagan symbolism

Lion and Gazelle Mosaic, Khirbat al-Mafjar, c. 750 CE

• In the small private room in the corner of the bath hall – a kind of receiving room for the ruler

• Theme may be related to Umayyad poetry, or it may be an allegory of Umayyad power

  • Lion has always been a symbol of royalty

  • Could have a dynastic meaning

• Theme may be Eastern, but the style of the mosaic is directly related to Roman and Byzantine mosaics

Stucco Dome, Khirbat al-Mafjar, c. 750 CE

• Above the Lion and Gazelle Mosaic floor

• Was once painted

• Byzantine style, with a Roman-style rosette in the center

Stone Wall Facade, Mshatta, near Amman (Jordan), c. 740 CE

• Repeating motifs (like the Roman-style rosettes in the Stucco Dome) and using a lot of Sassanian motifs

• Animal figures are on one half of the wall – they resemble the Sassanian animals figured on plates and other metal work

  • The fact that there are animals only on ½ the façade may indicate that the other half backed up to the palace mosque and could not be decorated in the same manner

  • Florals on the other half

Model of Circular City of Baghdad (Iraq), founded 762 CE

• Founded during the first move of the capital of the Abbasid caliphs’ empire

  • The inner ring was government offices, etc.

    • In the center was the mosque and the caliph’s palace attached to it

  • The gates did not face the four points of the compass, but instead the inter-cardinal points, so that one gate (and the mosque complex) faced Mecca

  • The outer ring was shops and houses, cut by four longs streets leading to gates

Fortress of Ukhaydir (Iraq), c. 778 CE

• Excellent example of a fortified palace

• Built of brick and rubble covered with stucco – a holdover from Sassanian building techniques

• The second story of the palace survived in part, giving us a better idea of what the living spaces were like

• Iwans:

  • The southern arcade of the Ukhaydir Palace mosque – facing Mecca, with geometric stucco vaults

  • The entrance iwan, the largest room in the palace, leading to the throne room across the courtyard

Malwiya (spiral tower), Great Mosque of Samarra, 847-61 CE

• Not connected to the Great Mosque, but outside its main wall

• Known in the west becomes kind of a representation of the Biblical Tower of Babel

Samarra A

• Has decoration within long bands, sometimes T-shaped or rectagonal spaces

  • It has a vine and leaf pattern and is sharply outlined

  • Very deep, very simplistic

Samarra B

• Was usually carved free hand, with more complicated frames and a wider variety of motifs

  • Contrast between motif and background is not as great as in Style A (not cut as deeply)

  • More “lace like”/delicate looking, more complex

Samarra C

• Design is actually molded, not carved, and has an endless pattern repeat

  • Lines are beveled at an angle, not cut straight down into the stucco, making the forms look more rounded and 3D

Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Fustat (Cairo, Egypt), completed 879 CE

• Plan of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun shows the ziyada around three sides, a hypostyle prayer hall, central ablutions fountain in the courtyard, and arcades around the three sides of the walls

• The minaret was originally a spiral, like  the Malwiya at Samarra

  • Ibn Tulun lived in Samarra for many years

• The mosque of Ibn Tulun uses the pointed arch more than any other to date

  • Not always so much a structural form, but something to make the architecture more visually interesting

Great Mosque of Qayrawan (Kairouan, Tunisia), 836, 862, and 875 CE

• The mihrab at the Great Mosque of Qayrawan, showing spolia capitals and columns, a stucco-work niche, and inserted luster-ware tiles around the arch

  • The tiles were imported from Iraq, where the lusterware technique was developed

    • They show both abstract geometric designs and Sassanian motifs (the double wings)

  • This decoration, together with the dome over the mihrab, shows for the first time a desire to make the mihrab area special – to outshine the rest of the mosque

Glazed Earthenware Bowl, c. 900 CE

The craftsman used a chip-cutting technique (Kerbschnitt) to decorate the bowl before glazing it; this technique is still used in decorative wood carving and clay production

Lusterware Plate, c. 950 CE

Use of ruby and gold lusterware to define the leaf pattern and background

Earthenware Dish Imitating Chinese Ceramics, Iran, 10th C. CE

Iranian Abbasid allied arts were strongly influenced both by the imperial wealth of the “home” empire, and the good traveling along the Silk Road

Incised and Slip-Painted Earthenware Bowl, Iran, 10th C.. CE

Architectural decoration  also influenced ceramics – the central motif in this bowl resembled stucco designs

Fritware Bowl, Iran, 1150-1200 CE

Fritware involved adding ground glass to the glaze, which fused in the firing process

Min’ai Bowl, Iran, 1187 CE

Min’ai ware is characterized by its white background, with the design painted over it

Ceramic Mihrab, Kashan (Iran), 1226 CE

Underglazing has the design painted directly onto the ceramic surface, with a transparent glaze covering it (most ceramics are decorated in reverse – glaze first and then decoration)

Mosque, Nayin (Iran), 10th C. CE

• Smaller mosque (much smaller than the “imperial” Abbasid mosques)

• Distinctive minaret

• Most important development in the area was the consistent use of the iwan

• Hypostyle, with very heavy columns and piers, vaulted ceilings, and three domes in the mihrab area

• Does not use spolia, and the brickwork is very heavy and stumpy with low ceiling vaults

  • Built to be warm in the winter (easily heated)

• Designs on the columns showing influence of Samarra C

  • Repeated rosette designs, but each one is slightly different

  • Horror Vacui – “Fear of Emptiness”

Mosque, Niriz (Iran, 10th C. CE

• One of the first mosques to employ a pishtaq

  • Like one giant iwan (but as a monumental entrance)

• Ceramic brick, not tile (glazed one side of the brick before laying)

• Operating as much as a mosque as it is a roadside hostel for travelers

• “Floriated Kufic” = taking scripture from the Koran and turning it into architectural ornamentation

  • Background behind the script is filled with organic arabesques resembling vines

Mausoleum of Isma’il the Samanid, Bukhara (Uzbekistan), c. 925 CE

• The entire surface of the tomb, inside and out is covered with decorative, 3-D brick forms

• Canopy tomb – a domed cube

  • Made entirely of brick

• The tomb has three registers – the cube-like room, the transitional register above it, and the dome

  • The transitional zone uses squinches in each corner to convert the cube into an octagon

  • Squinch is not weight-bearing so it can be pierced with windows

• The brickwork cenotaph (a fake coffin or sarcophagus)

  • Muslims should be buried underground, so the grave should be under the floor of the tomb, with this structure symbolically marking the grave

Arab-Ata Mausoleum, Tim, Samarqand (Uzbekistan), 977-78 CE

• It is a canopy tomb with a fully developed, integrated façade (pishtaq)

• It incorporates stucco into the brickwork and seems to be the first instance of this technique in this area

• One of the first double domes

• Introduces the articulated squinch

Gunbad-i Qabus Mausoleum, Gurgan (Iran), 1006-07 CE

• Tower tomb (associated with local rulers, not holy people)

• Very plain and severe, with virtually no decoration

  • The interior shows no sign of ever having had a cenotaph, and there was no grave found

• The only decorations are two bands of Kufic script naming the ruler buried there, and indications of both a solar and lunar calendar in the quotation

  • Shape of the tomb and the inscriptions may refer to similar Sassanian monuments and the Zoroastrian religion they followed

  • This type of architecture would be considered heretical

Great Mosque of Cordoba, (Spain), begun 784-6 CE

• Renaissance Cathedral situated in its center

• A different kind of decorative effect around the exterior (almost looks like a fortress)

• Three new types of arches: horseshoe, interlaced, & polylobed

• Spanish Umayyads wanted to recreate the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus – many references to early Umayyad monuments, like the bi-colored arches in the Dome of the Rock

Maqsura, Great Mosque of Cordoba, (Spain), 833-52 CE

• Three domes decorate the area in front of the mihrab – the maqsura reserved for the royal family

  • Interlaced polylobed arches mark off the maqsura from the rest of the prayer hall

• The central maqsura dome (in front of the mihrab room) is the highlight of al-Hakam’s additions to the mosque - like its sister, it rests on ribs that are purely ornamental

  • The dome is fluted, and divided into 8 segments (melon or pumpkin dome; looks like a giant bundt pan in the middle)

• Many of the decorative motif come from Visigothic works – the Visigoths were the inventors of the horseshoe arch

Mihrab, Great Mosque of Cordoba, (Spain), 833-52 CE

• The mihrab is an actual room, not a niche, and is decorated with mosaics (another reference to the Dome of the Rock); giant horseshoe arch

  • Mosaics were not used after the Umayyad’s were wiped out (Abbasids used stucco and sometimes ceramics)

Bab al-Mardum, Toledo (Spain), c. 1000 CE

• One of the seven remaining mosques in Spain – it was converted to a Catholic church

• Use of many of the elements in the Great Mosque of Cordoba, but on a much smaller scale

• In theory a hypostyle hall, it is a simple, nine-compartment room; each compartment has a different style dome

• Simple, repeated geometric forms give the room an unsurpassed serenity

• The columns and capitals are spolia from Visigothic monuments

Madinat al-Zahra, near Cordoba (Spain), begun 936 CE

• The city-palace was built on three large terraces, with extensive gardens

  • The relationship between gardens and Paradise is emphasized in Spanish Umayyad poetry

• Massive retaining walls were built to create the terrace gardens

• Entrance to the Court of the Viziers – echoing the style of the Great Mosque of Cordoba

• More refinement – the horseshoe arches are more recurved, the circular arch above them swells upward – intricate stucco filigree work decorates everything

• Interior of the caliph’s audience hall – with Visigoth spolia again (columns) = shows conquest of the Visigoths in this context

Aljaferia, Zaragoza (Spain), 1050-1100 CE

• Another example of Spanish Umayyad “pleasure palace”

• Had its own mosque

  • Entrance into the mosque, showing typical Spanish Umayyad decorative motifs

  • Like Cordoba, mihrab is a room, rather than a nich

    • Unlike Cordoba (decorated with mosaics), stucco is used (painted) – reminiscent of Visgoth designs

• The dome has a transitional zone with spolia columns, polylobed arches, and windows between the walls of the room and the dome

  • Another example of the “riffs” on Spanish Umayyad design at Aljafería: deeply cut polylobed arch with lace-like relief work around it, and spolia columns beneath

Wooden Minbar, Great Mosque of Qayrawan (Kairouan, Tunisia), 965-68 CE

• The world’s oldest minbar remaining in situ

• Crafted by Spanish Umayyads and gifted to Tunisia

Ivory Pyxis, Cordoba (Spain), 964 CE

• Ivory was a favorite material for jewelry boxes and perfume jars

• This pyxis was carved from a section of elephant tusk, and shows motifs associated with feminine beauty – peacocks and other birds

Azhar Mosque, Cairo (Egypt), founded 969/73 CE

• Very first mosque built in Fatimid Dynasty

• Cresting on top of walls

  • Venice Palace mimics cresting of mosques → Venice maintains a vibrant economic exchange with Egypt during the 15^th and 16^th centuries (when this part of the palace was constructed)

• Uses spolia

• Arches are shaped like ships’ keels (unique)

• Unique mihrab niche (shape is very similar to the Great Mosque of Qayrawan

  • Arabesques and leaf patterns in gilded stucco

Al-Hakim Mosque, Cairo (Egypt), 990 and 1013 CE

• Retains the entrance to the ziyada

• Very urban

  • Buildings are following the curves of the streets

• Has similarities to Al-Azhar but is much starker and about half the size

  • Same cresting, but much simpler (more sculptural)

  • Soft, rounded arches (tall and narrow)

• Very close design to Mosque of Ibn Tulun, completed 879 CE

• Mihrab is inlaid stone (interlace of white, grey, and red stone)

• Exterior → carved out of stone, not stucco

  • No Islamic inscription

Aqmar Mosque, Cairo (Egypt), 1125 CE

• Doesn’t have a minaret (right next to the palace)

• First urban mosque to truly integrate the urban topography into the construction of the building itself

  • Built specifically to fit into the streets

• Like a miniature Al-Azhar

  • Neighborhood mosque

• Façade is very sculptural (very impressive façade for such a small building)

  • Fluted dome on the front, very deep carving

Seated Figure, Lusterware Bowl, Cairo (Egypt), c. 1075 CE

Fatimids were experts at lusterware; exported everywhere (considered luxury goods)

Cameo-Glass Ewer, Cairo (Egypt), c. 1000 CE

Fatimids were good with glasswork

Rock Crystal Ewer, Cairo (Egypt), c. 975-96 CE

Fatimids were good with glasswork

Wooden Ceiling, Cappella Palatina, Palermo, Sicily, 1140

Wooden ceiling over the nave – decorated in the Fatimid style with muqarnas

Coronation Mantle of Roger II, Palermo, Sicily, 1133-34

• Representative of the extremely high quality workmanship in the Palermo tiraz workshop

• Red silk, gold stitching, and thousands of seed pearls

Liturgical Alb, Palermo, Sicily, 1181

• Representative of the extremely high quality workmanship in the Palermo tiraz workshop

• Religious connotation: becoming priest and emperor

Paradise Cloister, Amalfi Cathedral, Amalfi, Italy, 1255-1268

• Strong Muslim influence in its Christian architecture

  • Interlaced arches

• Double columns → western medieval influence