Sacral Qualities of Form in Mosque Architecture Transformation of the Arts of the Qur’an into the Arts of the Mosque

Abstract

By the year 800 c.E., and within less than two centuries from the inception
of Islam, a new religious and secular architecture materialized in a vast
area: western Asia, all of North Africa, and southern Spain. The archeological
and textual references for these projects have provided us with a
wealth of physical and descriptive evidence of the emerging building types
and forms of Islamic architecture. The mosque, for example, developed
into a well-defined building type with characteristic physical feams and
spatial organization, among them the mihrdh, the minhur, calligraphic
inscriptions, and surface Ornamentation, all of which are architectural elements
whose designs and dispositions in the mosque space have taken on
various reoccurring patterns.
The theological rationalization behind the historical evolution of
mosque architecture is more formidable to consolidate, however, for information
is scarce and it is difficult to interpret subjective information. The
Qur’an decreed emphatically the, Salah (prayer) but did not describe what
features a house of worship should incorporate. The Prophet taught Salah
to early Muslims and continued to lead the faithful in prayer in the architecturally
modest mosque of Madinah. When the spatial requirements for
congregational mosques became apparent, such architectural features as
the mihrcth appeared ...