Izu Campbell-Lange, year 1, 2021

Izu Campbell-Lange

History and Theory- Term 2

A Survey of Architecture and Urban History

Ricardo Ruivo Pereira

Word count: 2153

3. medina

1

2

3

mise en abyme 2. mosque

1. prayer space within communal prayer mat

Title: Observing dialectics through the communal prayer mat of the Umayyad Mosque.

Pre-suppositions: (I choose the word supposition as it includes uncertainty.)

Aspects of gathering histories I have noticed: Thoughts cannot be fully developed.

Memory by its nature negates fixity.1 There is no perfect method of expression for fixing meaning.

Through retrospective inquiry, temporal layers blur.

There is never a single author.

These elements form part of the cast for the following writing; as though its unconscious.

Imagining myself into the temporal and physical (and other) locations of the artefact also contribute to the cast.

Koselleck set out ‘history’ as conducting the category ‘erfahrungsraum’ or ‘experience space’2. Perhaps this writing conducts hypothetical-experience spaces. _____________________________________________ The interior with no exterior has layers.

Just as the non-figurative mosaics of the Umayyad Mosque could be seen to be inhabited through the people moving within the spaces they enclose, the prayer hall carpet and the sounds of the mosque together construct mutable architectures wherein believers can forge their individual connection to God. The separate spaces outlined on the carpet for individual prayer I will argue enact the smallest frame within my reading of Islamic architectures as conducting mise-en-abyme. The prayer mat is not only the most compressed iteration/layer in scale, but is also compressed in relief, and therefore is the most analogical reading within the framework of this mise-en-abyme.

I will explore these separate prayer spaces as mirrors, transposing not only the architecture of the Umayyad mosque, but also its precedent, the serai or caravanserai of Muhammad's house (622 AD). This reading creates layers within the image of Islam as a vessel for radical inclusion (or a possible trajectory towards an interior-with-no-exterior), and blurs boundaries drawn by walls, freeing readers to traverse the synonymous qualities of different scales.

In moving between the microcosm and the macrocosm, two dialectical tensions arise; the relationship between the wall and the infinite interior, and the dynamic between the individual and the collective.

‘The spatial configuration of the early mosques embeds two fundamental aspects of the growing Islamic empire, as a diagram of organisation combining finitude with the capacity to expand.’3 Khosravi’s reading of the mosque can be transposed onto the Umayyad mosque: ‘The first mosque in Arabia was a model of simplicity. It was composed of a rectangular enclosure with a roof for protection from the elements at one 1

Hunter, I. M. L. ‘Memory’. England: Penguin Books Ltd. 1957

Schulz-Forberg, Hagen. "The Spatial and Temporal Layers of Global History: A Reflection on Global Conceptual History through Expanding Reinhart Koselleck's "Zeitschichten" into Global Spaces." Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 38, no. 3 (145) (2013): 44. Accessed March 21, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23644524.

2

3

Khosravi, Hamed. ‘Inhabitable Walls: The Genealogy of Islamic Sacred Space’ Architectural Association London; 2016 p38

end…In the years 714-715 A.D., the Great Mosque in Damascus was built within the same traditions, but on a grander scale.’4 The form of Muhammad’s house (or mosque) is transplanted in physical and temporal locations, and expanded in scale through the development of the Umayyad mosque. Its walls dissolve through the reading of mise-en-abyme demonstrating how it simultaneously expands into the medina, and contracts into the prayer mat.

The ‘serai…[as a] house for the sacred’5 can be read as held within the form of the individual prayer carpet through the two dimensional allusion to significant three dimensional aspects of sacred Islamic space: The qibla is revealed through the composition of the textile, and the framing of the four sides marks the mimesis with the form of the mosque; through stepping into the frame one performs the symbol of stepping into the faith as an interiority.

The ‘serai’ of the Umayyad mosque could be perceived as recursively appearing through the medina of Old Damascus (a walled space which houses Islam). ‘The common image of the mosque (masjid) as a place for prayer took shape after the twelfth century, during the Seljuk empire. Indeed, according to the Quran, the mosque did not originally imply a religious function; there was no spatial code for the act of individual prayer.’6 The mosque, in extending the form of the sheltered caravanserai introduces a spatial opportunity for community and sanctuary, and this idea of the space of inclusion extends beyond the mosque as a sheltered space to encompass the medina, almost as though the medina is the unsheltered part of the courtyard of the Prophet’s house.

The caravanserai’s conception as a space for travellers to rest extends to embody the concept of ‘umma’ as ‘nation’ but also as a synonym for the Islamic community: Perhaps ‘rest’ could refer to acts of spirituality in replacing human reality with glimpses of a transcendental sense of scale (as God is ‘ontologically distinct from the rest of reality’7), and this could occur within the space of the prayer mat, the mosque, the medina, and continue to extend infinitely: The practice of salat punctuates the day with five pauses where the scale of God recontextualizes human life. Despite the mosque not being a necessary space for the performance of salat, the grid of the communal prayer mat is visually interesting in its depiction of the temporal and spatial unison of ritual prayer that occurs globally, activating the ground plane as the root of connection. Despite this unison, each opening marked within the continuous textile for the individual signifies an opportunity for a relationship to God sui generis. This intersection between autonomy and unison develops one dialectical quality perceptible through islamic architecture to do with the individual and the collective. The grid within Islamic imagery is explored further through: ‘Tillard’s engraving divid[ing] [a] scene into two equal parts, showing the earthly vista and the heavens. The physical world is bound by a generic enclosure that fits the exact proportions of the plate and is pictured from a bird’s eye view. A tile grid fills the space. Its squares lend an absolute order to the world… All this surrounds the Ka’ba, which is located just off-centre as the only element that does not follow the logic of the chosen perspective; rather than being viewed from a similar aboveground standpoint, the Ka’ba seems to almost float above the contrasting grid.’8

4

Ahuja, Mangho, and A. L. Loeb. "Tessellations in Islamic Calligraphy." Leonardo 28, no. 1 (1995): 42. Accessed February 23, 2021. doi:10.2307/1576154.

5

Khosravi, Hamed. ‘Inhabitable Walls: The Genealogy of Islamic Sacred Space’. within: ‘Rituals and Walls’. Architectural Association. 2016 p39

6

Khosravi, Hamed.. Inhabitable Walls.: The Genealogy of Islamic Sacred Space (Architectural Association, 2016), 40

HUSSAINI, SAYED HASSAN. "Islamic Philosophy between Theism and Deism." Revista Portuguesa De Filosofia 72, no. 1 (2016): 66. Accessed March 24, 2021. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/43816275.

7

8

(Hamed Khosravi’s ‘Camp of Faith, the Political Theology of the Islamic City’) Aureli, Pier Vittorio. ‘The city as a project’. Berlin: Ruby Press, 2014.

Considering this notion that the order of the earthly world can be depicted through a grid, with the Ka’ba9 transcending this order, perhaps a similar method of perception could be applied to the grid of the communal prayer hall’s carpet: Perhaps the architecture of prayer ‘almost float[s] above’ the grid which forms its foundation. The empirical trace of this transcendence could be the sounds of the mosque; those of prayer, conversation and movement. The underlying grid could equate to the democratic space within Islam for equality between supplicants.

The rigidity and almost mechanical nature of the contemporary prayer carpet in its grid structure leaves no space for improvisation or invention outside of movement and thought. ‘The interiors of mosques have no furnishings, except for carpets covering the floor and the minbar’10. Beneath ancient ceilings and surrounded by ornamental walls is a modern furnishing, one of the only furnishings, which could be said to demonstrate the aspect of the inclusive philosophy of Islam that has proved to be expansionist. The prayer mat could be perceived as a democratic grid, perhaps seeming similar to the Greek notion of insomnia ('the Greek colonial gridiron was influenced by the principle of isonomia, meaning equality of citizens before the law, which was translated spatially into the even distribution of land tenure to each household.’). However, it could also seem to dictate the precise inhabitation of space, enforcing a formula that applies to all. This dialectical quality of the prayer carpet is caused though the dialectical quality of Islam as a theological and political space which accommodates contradiction.

Each individual in creating a bridge between the ground and the transcendental through prayer connects the physical with the spiritual through ritual: ‘Before the prayer, the body is prepared and cleansed. This practice readies the body for both active participation and heightened perception. One feels the floor under one’s feet, and during the prayer touches one’s forehead to the floor several times.’11 The contrapuntal movements of body and thought could relate to how ‘in Sufi tradition, the stimulation of all five senses is crucial to attaining truth.’12 Perhaps prayer can be a space for utopia as it is a no-place, connected to the ground only through the cycles of rakat13.

The compressed caravanserai of the individual space within the collective prayer mat dematerialises when one shifts their line of sight from looking down towards it, to facing outwards14 , where a ‘field of columns’ (hypostyle structure) or illusion of infinite or ever-expandable space becomes visible. These coexisting vertical and horizontal landscapes of perception, moved between through the standing, sitting and kneeling motions of prayer, could be considered an archetype of how within the fixed geometries of Islamic architecture motion exists: This idea of perspectival flux aligns with Cafer Celebi’s responding to the Blue Mosque in stating; ‘when looked from one angle, one type of form or circle was seen, and when looked at again from another angle, other types of designs and patterns emerged’15 . This sense of the possibility for infinite expansion through the mosque is perhaps evident through the universal interior existing between the reiterated forms of existing mosques: ‘In Diarbekr, capital of Mesopotamia, stands the famous Great

The Kaaba, also spelled Ka'bah or Kabah, sometimes referred to as al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah, is a building at the center of Islam's most important mosque, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is the most sacred site in Islam.

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ERZEN, JALE NEJDET. "Reading Mosques: Meaning and Architecture in Islam." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 128. Accessed February 22, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42635843.

11

ERZEN, JALE NEJDET. "Reading Mosques: Meaning and Architecture in Islam." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 128. Accessed February 22, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42635843.

12

ERZEN, JALE NEJDET. "Islamic Aesthetics: An Alternative Way to Knowledge." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (2007): 71. Accessed March 23, 2021. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4622211.

13

rakat - the cycles of bows and prostrations in islam/prayer

14

alternating between the two landscapes in switching what is focal and what is in the peripheral

Jale Nejdet Erzen. "Islamic Aesthetics: An Alternative Way to Knowledge." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (2007): 70. Accessed February 23, 2021. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4622211.

15

Mosque […] its plan being a very accurate copy of the Umayyad Mosque; the original plan of the Great Mosque of Aleppo was, likewise, a copy of that of Damascus.’16 This project observes some histories of the ground beneath the contemporary communal prayer mat, before suggesting readings of the artefact as almost a physical compression of aspects of this history. The Umayyad mosque was built on the site of a demolished cathedral, however the shrine to St John the Baptist was preserved. Roland Barthes described ‘the text [as] a tissue of quotations’17, perhaps the same is true of architectures in that matter is reformulated over time: This notion of impermanence and recycling of histories is especially important to this Islamic monument as it represents Islam’s theological development from Christianity (among other religions). Since its initial construction, the mosque has undergone many alterations and conservations, thus introducing metaphysical questions of identity. Heraclitus is said to have stated; ‘no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.’18 However, if the Umayyad mosque is an ornate reiteration of Muhammad’s house (the medina, and the prayer carpet as also falling into this process of reiteration), then perhaps the material evolutions of the site are irrelevant to its identity. The woven textile of the existing communal prayer carpet in central prayer hall divides between spaces for individuals through imagery that resembles corinthian columns; perhaps this points towards the cross-pollination of Hellenic and Arabian cultures: The ground beneath the prayer mat, along with the textile itself, embody narratives where cultures and times meet, further contributing to the inclusive philosophy underpinning the ‘universal interior’ of Islam.

The relationship between the framings and spaces for individuals on the collective prayer mat is differentiated further through colour; the corinthian columns and surrounding imagery appear yellow, whereas the remaining space for the interior/ individual to pray is red. Goethe wrote, ‘a powerful impression of light leaves the sensation of red on the retina. In the prismatic yellow-red which springs directly from the yellow, we hardly recognise the yellow.’19 This inclination of yellow towards red, as red being the more powerful hue, allows for the prayer carpet textile when seen from a distance to be perceived as predominantly red; the yellow dissolving. (Just as the individual dissolves into the the community through the universal interior.) This symmetry between the dialectics of the Islamic community and the dialectics held within the form of the communal prayer carpet could relate an image of the community becoming one fabric, which seen from afar appears continuous. This sense of dissolving which is an innate aspect of mise-enabyme as a thought-process for conceiving Islam architecturally, could be ascribed to the architecture of prayer: The meters of the rhythmical poetry are known in Arabic as ‘seas’ (buhur), perhaps reciting the Quran in prayer or through the adhan20 enacts the dissolving of walls and perimeters in extending the interiority of Islam through the waves of sound travelling.

These final walls21 for individual autonomous prayer space within the collective cannot be dissolved, symbolising the final frame of mise-en-abyme and the conceptual space that forms the core of the extrapolated scales which form the universal interior (directed through the qibla). These reiterated rectangular openings are almost like the private rooms which were the inhabited walls of Muhammad’s house; only the privacy afforded through the prayer mat is not to do with three-dimensional walls but solely the framing of space for private thoughts. This dissolving of relief and three-dimensional walls reveals the ground plane as the most significant architecture, demonstrated through the caravanserai of the Prophet’s

16

Herzfeld, Ernst. "Damascus: Studies in Architecture-IV." Ars Islamica 13 (1948): 135. Accessed February 23, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4515649.

17

Barthes, Roland. ‘The death of the author’. London: Fontana. 1977. p146

18

DK B91, from Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392b

Goethe, ‘On Colours’. Translated by Charles Lock Eastlake. The Project Gutenberg EBook. 1810. Accessed March 10, 2021. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50572/50572-h/ 50572-h.htm 19

20

call to prayer (often sounded from the minaret)

21

represented two-dimensionally through the framing of the space for the individual within the communal prayer carpet

house. At the very moment one’s forehead meets the ground an interiority is made through an exteriority, as the universal interior of Islam and the individual connect through the ground.

Bibliography:

Ahuja, Mangho, and A. L. Loeb. "Tessellations in Islamic Calligraphy." Leonardo 28, no. 1 (1995): Accessed February 23, 2021. doi: 10.2307/1576154.

Barthes, Roland. ‘The death of the author’. London: Fontana. 1977.

Erzen, Jale Nejdet. "Islamic Aesthetics: An Alternative Way to Knowledge." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (2007): Accessed March 23, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4622211.

Erzen, Jale Nejdet. "Reading Mosques: Meaning and Architecture in Islam." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 125-31. Accessed March 24, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42635843.

Goethe, ‘On Colours’. Translated by Charles Lock Eastlake. The Project Gutenberg EBook. 1810. Accessed March 10, 2021. https:// www.gutenberg.org/files/50572/50572-h/50572-h.htm

Herzfeld, Ernst. "Damascus: Studies in Architecture-IV." Ars Islamica 13 (1948): Accessed February 23, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4515649.

Hunter, I. M. L. ‘Memory’. England: Penguin Books Ltd. 1957

Hussaini, Sayed Hassan. "Islamic Philosophy between Theism and Deism." Revista Portuguesa De Filosofia 72, no. 1 (2016): Accessed March 24, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43816275.

Khosravi, Hamed. ‘Camp of Faith, the Political Theology of the Islamic City’. ‘The city as a project’. Berlin: Ruby Press, 2014.

Khosravi, Hamed.. Inhabitable Walls. The Genealogy of Islamic Sacred Space. (Architectural Association, 2016)

Lindberg, David C. "Alhazen's Theory of Vision and Its Reception in the West." Isis 58, no. 3 (1967): 321-41. Accessed March 24, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/227990.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. "The Meaning and Role of "Philosophy" in Islam." Studia Islamica, no. 37 (1973): 57-80. Accessed March 24, 2021. doi:10.2307/1595467.

Plutarch On the E at Delphi

Schulz-Forberg, Hagen. "The Spatial and Temporal Layers of Global History: A Reflection on Global Conceptual History through Expanding Reinhart Koselleck's "Zeitschichten" into Global Spaces." Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 38, no. 3 (145) (2013): Accessed March 21, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23644524.