the poetics of arab-islamic architecture

8/7/2019 The Poetics of Arab-Islamic Architecture

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JOTONNA

THE POETICS OF ARAB-ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE

In a recent study of classical architecture AlexanderTzonis and Liane Lefaivre proposed architectural scan-sion, or the methodical analysis of ways of puttingformal structures together, as a way ofjoining a culturaltradition and enjoying the architecture of the past. I

Given the current interest in culturally responsive ar-chitecture, a parallel analysis of historic Arab-Islamicarchitecture would not be out of place. Not only cansuch a "reading" or interpretation of an architecturaltradition be as much ofa creative exercise as its "writ-ing" or production; it may profitably lead to the in-corporation of such values of traditional architecture asare seen to be still valid into the buildings of the future.We shall be dealing here with the symbolic or secondaryfunction of Arab-Islamic architecture, as against theutilitarian or primary one."

ARCHITECTURE AS RHETORIC

The communicative value of architecture was recog-nized by Arab philosophers and exploited by politicalleaders early on. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) distin-guished between the primary purpose of architecture,which was to construct a protective screen against in-temperate climates, and its secondary function, which

he saw as a display of wealth, power, and paternalisticconcern for their subjects by ruling elites, engineeredthrough the use of complex geometry, monumentalscale, fine craftsmanship, and intricate decoration.'While the first caliphs were sensitive to the contradic-tion between monumental architecture and the Islamicvalues of asceticism and cgalitarianism and sometimesacted to prevent its use, the Umayyads were quick toseize on architectural rhetoric as a means of assertingArab and Islamic identity and furthering their political

ends. Ail-Walid is on record as requiring his mosques,and probably his palaces, to be "a wonder to all theworld."? An Arab poetics of architecture began toemerge during his caliphate and those of his Umayyadpredecessors. "Poetics" is here used in a double sense:as a system of forms and compositional rules compara-ble to those which are used to spin words into poetry or

sounds into music; and the poetic utterance or tragicdiscourse to which the forms so composed are ad-dressed. The forms, techniques, and materials thatwere drawn into this system were initially mined fromthe subject cultures but ultimately fused into an authen-tic expression of the Arab and Muslim world vision.

This poetics was rooted in the need to carve out oasesof order and coherence out of a world which was per-ceived as being perilous and chaotic, and to wall themin to protect them, creating the temenoi of Hellenisticcultures and the harams of the Arab world. In classicalarchitecture the protective wall was eventually eroded,but this was far from being the case in the Arab-Muslimworld, where the cult of ritual cleanliness and puri-fication associated with sacred enclosures is as much apart of daily life today as it was in early Islam andbefore. While Western man thought in terms of theAristotelian poetics of beginning, middle, and endingand so ofa temporal sequence which eventually breaksthrough the temenos wall, Arab-Muslim man was moreconcerned with the concepts of center and peripheryand so tended to reinforce the integrity of the enclosedspace. It is no accident that the construction of thatmost seminal of Umayyad monuments, the GreatMosque of Damascus, began with the appropriation ofan existing temenos wall and the restructuring of thespace inside it according to an order that responded toArab needs and sensibilities. According to one theory,the columns of the Christian church which stood in themiddle of the temenos enclosure were taken down andre-erected in new positions to carry the arches and roofof the new rnosque.t What was involved was not so

much the setting up of a new order as the reiterationwith unfamiliar materials of the same kind of orderwhich the Prophet and the early Muslims spontaneous-

ly used to work out the form of their mosques andhouses, and newly sedentarized Bedouins instinctivelyuse to build their first permanent dwellings."

In spite of this fundamental difference in conceptua-

lizing space, the methods employed to establish formalorder in either tradition boil down to the same basicoperation: that of structuring the selected space accord-


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THE POETICS OF ARAB-ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE 183

ng to some system of constraining lines, within whichecurring, unit forms, meaning those sharing similar ordentical shapes, are then deployed. 7 On this point theres firm evidence that in Islamic as in Western culturesmonumental buildings were carefully and sometimeseremoniously laid out on the ground, often in the

resence pf the patron, and in many cases conceptual-zed in the form ofdrawings following regulating grids. 8

Culture-specific differences arose from the kind of for-

mal structures, unit forms, and rhythmic patterns thatwere habitually used.

Of/th_~ Umayyad monuments, both the GreatMosque of'Damascus and the reconstructed Mosque ofhe Prophet ~t Medina were organized around repeti-ion structures," but these were derived in differentways. In the former case a rectangular grid which lent

tself to the construction system was obtained by suc-essive tripartition working inward from the temenos

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. The Great Mosque of Damascus (706---15): a structuring systemobtained by successive partition of an existing enclosure.

wall (fig. I). In the Medina mosque the grid employedroughly square modules and developed from the insideout (fig . .2). In this way the memory of the Prophet'Soriginal mosq ue could be respected in spite ofthe recon-struction. The method used to generate the grid waswell adapted to successive extensions around a stable

core and became the formative principle for many latermosques. The neutral square grid laid out on theground acquired directionality at the level of the ceilingto accommodate the distribution of timber rafters. Inthe aisle which led to the mihrab the prevailing distri-bution was interrupted, the ceiling was gilded, and ashallow dome was introduced at the point where it raninto the qibla wall.!'' The principle of discrete hierar-

chies between central and side aisles, obtained by subtlespatial adjustments, intensified decoration, or changes

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ofcolor, was thus established in this influential mosque.A number of ciues to identify the building's sacred

center were planted amidst the forest of columns with-out making it glaringly obvious,Beginning with the Great Mosque of Kairouan a

number ofele~ant variations on this barely perceptiblemodulation of a repetitive grid appeared all over North

Africa. The principle of tripartition was invoked todivide the mosque enclosure into qibla zone, prayer

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2. The Umayyad Mosque at Medina (705---9): an open-ended griddeveloping from the ins ide ou t. (Afte r H. Stierlin, Arch it ec tu r e de l 'I sl am

[Fr ibourg, 1979)).


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184

hall, and courtyard; each of these parts would then besubdivided into central and side zones, and so on untilthe space was divided down to its smallest module. Theinfinitely extendible grid lent itself quite naturally to theneed to keep up with expanding cities and populations

by successive additions, or ziyadas, to the congregation-al mosques. The principle could work both ways; to

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4. Nesting ground plans in Islamic palaces: (top left) Qasr al-Hayr

East (early 8th century); (top right) Ukhaidir (ca. 778); (bottom

right) Ashir (ca. 947).

tion is also used to embed centralized formal structuresinto larger units having the same form, as in the palacesof Qasr al-Hayr East, Ukhaidir, and Ashir (fig. 4). Theintention seems to be to create a system of worlds withinworlds, but there are other implications which willbecome clearer as we move on to discuss the Arabvocabulary of unit forms, namely, the conjunction offorms and structures of similar configuration but di-minishing scales. This is a central concern for thatarcane branch of mathematics known as fractal geom-etry, which applies itself to the uncovering of the orderconcealed in an apparent chaos, a theme which informsthe origin and nature of architectural poetics itself.

To these alternative methods of generating a repeti-tion structure, we must add a third, also tried out in anearly Umayyad building, the Dome of the Rock atJerusalem (fig. 5): the radiation structure, in which

structural subdivisions and unit forms are repeatedaround a common center." Such an organizing princi-ple lends itself naturally to the Arab preoccupation withcentrality, though the Dome of the Rock is unusual inhaving it laid down on the ground. It is more usual toencounter it overhead, superimposed on a straightfor-ward square grid. In this combination it becomes a

recurring motif of Arab-Islamic architecture, usually

reserved for special buildings or zones within buildings,in mosques, tombs, or harnmams;" the conjunction offour-square structure and radiating superstructure be-ing an obvious and virtually universal reference to themeeting of heaven and earth, and so to an axis mundi.Considering that Arab and Islamic cultures are so in-sistently God-centered the frequency with which this


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THE POETICS OF ARAB-ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE 18 7

motif.recurs} this part of the world should come as nosurpnse.

Within the ordering constraints of repetition andradiation structures Arab-Islamic architecture deploysits preferred unit forms. It is here that its poetics beginsto assume its specificity and direct itself at its favored

themes. Where the classical orders of architecture de-veloped around the column and entablature, their sub-divisions, contour patterns, decoration and distribu-tion, in Arab-Islamic architecture the accent is on thearch and the architectural wall, and especially on theirinterpenetration in the spandrel wall. The great congre-gational mosques may contain forests of columns, but itis what happens in the area between their capitals andthe ceiling that seems to count for most!" - perhapsbecause in so n;J.anyof the earlier mosques the columnswere simply recycled from the ruins of classical build-

ings without much thought to the correspondence oftheir parts. Unlike classical architecture, Arab-Islamicarchitecture also tends to construct its order around the

principle of similarity, rather than identity of its unitforms. Where m classical architecture we find a set of"orders of architecture" which admits only one type ofarch and limits the number of variations on columnshape, in Arab-Islamic architecture, as in the Gothic,there is an infinite modulation of unit forms such as thearch, and these are often encountered in the same build-mg.

The principle of similarity hinges on the generation ofcontour patterns through the opposition and alterna-tion of projections and indentations, convexities andconcavities, straight and curved sections. In architectu-ral poetics this operation is analogous to the manip-ulation of sounds to obtain rhyming, alliteration orcontrasts in poetry, and modifications of pitch in music.To mention an outstanding example, the unit formwhich ultimately weaves the Great Mosque of Cordobainto a vibrant unity, the horseshoe arch, is subjected to anumber of transformations which are then assembled

together to produce an eloquent architectural dis-course. The radiating voussoirs of the basic arch areindividually defined through color contrasts which set

up an opposition between their straightness and the

curvature of the arch. In some parts of the building thearch is then transformed by indenting, its inside edgewith a series df scallops, each reproducing its overallform on a reduced scale, and adding similar forms to itsoutside edge. The scalloped arches which result areoccasionally amplified to twice or three times their ini-tial size, so that we end up with a family of unit forms

sharing the same generic shape without being identicalin size or oonfiguration (fig. 6). Such groups of similarforms can define the genus ofArab-Islamic architectureas well as its localized species and temporal mutations.Local transformations of the basic form, moreover, canprovide the means through which the subtle hierarchies

mentioned earlier are set up. In many Maghribianmosques, to give an example, the more elaborate lobateprofiles are reserved for the cross-arches in the centralaisle, and the most elaborate of all for the arch facing onto the mihrab.

Wall surfaces may be plain, or carved, pierced ormolded; lined with marble, mosaics, ceramics, or stuc-co; layered with blind arcades or interlacing patterns,or girdled with calligraphic bands or moldings. Theiredges are likely to be stepped or crenel.lated where theyhit the sky. This impressive repertoire of edge andsurface treatment tends to be organized around charac-teristic formal structures which have a significance of

their own, especially as surface ornament occupies a farmore central- one would say structural- place on themap of Arab sensibilities than it does in that of theWest: when Arab poets speak of architecture, they tendto think of it in terms of the clothing of buildings. IS

Arab-Islamic decorative patterns do tend to follow theirown internal logic and symmetry as if they were a cloakdraped over the body of the building, often ignoringbreaks and junctions in the underlying surfaces andvolumes.

LINE, PLANE, AND VOLUME

"Clothing" wall surfaces in the way the poets describe itusually involves casting a web of regulating lines across

the surface to be clothed, or, as in the case of the woodenlattices which are so popular in Arab-Islamic architec-ture, actualIy building the surface up from a densenetwork oflinear elements. It does not matter so muchwhether the web takes the form of a geometrical in-

terlace, a meandering arabesque, or an invisible frame-

work to hold a calligraphic inscription together; oftenenough it is a fusion of all three. What matters from ourpoint of view is that planes are either built up from

dense networks of tines, or broken down into them, sothat perceptually speaking there is a perpetual hoveringbetween line and plane, or one and two dimensions:lines are seen as about to fuse into planes, and planes asabout to dissolve into lines. This establishes yet anotherlink with fractal geometry, a discipline which also oper-ates in the elusive transition zones between one dirnen-


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6. Uni t forms and thei r t ransformations from the Great Mosque of Cordoba. (After F. M. Gerhard, Vo n B a gh da d bis C ord oba [G ra z, 1984))

sional system and another, focusing on forms and orga-nisms that can be seen to possess more than one dimen-sion but not quite two, or more than two but not quitethree, and so on; in other words, with flux and change,

the dissolution of order and the ordering of chaos. Thenesting or juxtaposition of unit forms of similar shapebut varying size we identified in the ground plans ofsome Arab-Islamic palaces manifests itself in otherways. Lobate arches, for instance, can be imagined ascircular unit forms around whose edges similar but

smaller unit forms have been cut out; or, ifwe choose tofocus on the shape of what is cut out rather than whatremains, a sector of a circle throwing out similar butsmaller sectors around its edge. In much the same way,the objects and organisms analyzed by fractal geometry

- snowflakes, fern leaves, and so on - take shape bytacking on ever smaller versions of the same formalprinciple around a nucleus of the same shape. Crenel-lated walls can similarly be explained as an interlockingof "positive" crenellations and "negative" intervalssharing similar or identical unit forms. Moreover, thethematic forms of Arab architecture and decorationtend to spread across differing genres and materials; thesame star patterns, for instance, appearing in architec-ture, woodwork, metalwork, pottery, and textiles, sothat differently scaled variations on the same formaltheme are likely to come together in ever-changingcombinations of color and texture, producing a fugitiveenvironmental coherence that can also be seen to havefractal characteristics.


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Arab-Islamic architectural poetics also buildsbridges across the boundary between plane and vol-ume: The roofs of many of the great mosques of theArab-Islamic world are held up by interminable pro-gressions of diaphragm arches, in effect serial planes 16repeating the arched forms cut out of them both lat-

erally and in depth. They are perceived as closelyspaced slices of a solid vault, so that as the gestalt factoris invoked to complete its missing parts, the imaginaryvault, or series of vaults, is intimated without beingactually constructed, an illusion that dissolves into adifferent spatial experience as soon as the line ofvision is

shifted through a right angle (fig. 7). Serial planes canbe aligned parallel to the qibla wall or transversely to it,producing alternative ways of accenting the axis of themihrab without changing the same mosque typology.Just as the arches cut out of a series ofplanes can suggesta tunnel vault if the planes are closely spaced behind

each other, they begin to suggest a dome if the planesare made to intersect according to some radiating pat-tern, a device which was taken up and elaborated withgreat virtuosity in Spain and the Maghreb.

Many tenuous and ambiguous spatial effects can thusbe produced by the manipulation of a planar unit form

7. The generation of spaces and volumes by arches repeated in serial or intersecting planes.


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190 JO TONNA

like the spandrel wall along repeution or radiationstructures. Even muqarnas vaults and surfaces can bereduced to infinitesimal spandrel walis which are bentthrough a variable angle down their center, and thenrepeated and combined according to a variety ofstruc-turing schemata. To recapitulate, Arab-Islamic archi-

tecture deploys a poetics which operates at the inter-faces between line, plane, and volume and habituallyconjoins unit forms of similar shape but differing size.Through this intuitive fractal geometry it instinctivelyreaches out to the themes of growth, change, the order-ing of chaos, and the order concealed under an apparentchaos. The philosophical vision which is implied be-stows the status of a tragic discourse, a visual commenton the nature of existence, on the buildings in which thispoetics is activated. This discourse is set in motion by theway its unit forms are located and combined as much as

by their shape. We thus need to consider the use ofmetricpatterns, meaning the rhythmic disposition :.ofthe unitforms within their ordering structure, and architecturalmotives, or the combination of unit forms into "super-forms" to be repeated in the composition.

METRIC PATTERNS

Metric patterns in architecture are analogous to thesteps ofa dance, the orderly succession of stressed andunstressed syllables in poetry, and the alternation ofaccentuated and non-accentuated sounds in music. Ele-ments like columns, piers, or windows assert themselvesmore readily than the empty spaces or stretches of wallsurface between them and can be considered as thebeats of an architectural composition, with the spacesbetween them as the intervals. Looking for such pat-

8. The use of architectural motifs to elaborate and interrupt rhythms; arcading in the mosques of al-Azhar and Kairouan. (After Gerhard, VD n

Baghdad bis Cordobn and Srierlin, Architecture de l'lslam.)


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terns in Arab-Islamic architecture we come across re-petitive rhythms set up by seemingly endless progres-sions of equally spaced columns, piers and arches; butsubtle modulations of these simple metric patterns canalso be identified. Thus in the mosques of Ibn Tulunand al-Azhar we find alternating sequences of niches,

roundels, and colonnettes interwoven into the dom-inant simple rhythm of piers and arches (fig. 8). In thecase of the latter, as in the Great Mosque of Kairouan,centers are indicated by combinations of coupled co-lumns and amplified or reduced intervals. In each casewe are confronted with an architectural motif, that is,with a standard grouping of architectural elementswhich is either repeated to counterpoint a simple over-.all rhythm with others developing within its main divi-sions, or inserted at one point so as to interrupt it and so

mark out a center.We now return to the Great Mosque of Cordoba to

look at the way in which unit forms and their trans-formations are combined into architectural motifs (fig.9). The architectural dance here involves vertical leapsinto the air as well as horizontal steps, a feat which isachieved by overlapping two or even .three registers ofarches in a vertical sense, so that the arches in the lowerregister penetrate into the space which separates those

in the upper register. The combination of unit formsvaries from place to place within the building accordingto the date of their construction and the ritual impor-tance of the area in which they are located. The crafts-men who worked on extending or elaborating themosque over a period of three hundred years experi-

mented with layers and combinations of plain and scal-loped arches, shifts of half an interval between one layerand another, and occasionally, amplification of archdimensions to two or three times the size of the originalunits so that they begin to leap across intervals, embedgroupings of smaller arches within their span and gen-erate others through their intersection or alignment.There is thus an intricate elaboration of metric patternsin both the vertical and horizontal sense; somethingwhich, as Tzonis remarks, was rarely attempted inclassical architecture.V All this is done within the con-straints of a straightforward rectangular grid at groundlevel.

We go on to look at some of the tropes or figures ofarchitecture employed in Arab architectural poetics,meaning codified combinations of elements that helpdevelop the architectural discourse like figures ofspeechin literature. The madrasas, palaces, and houses of theMaghreb and Andalusia show particular sophistication

9. Architectural motifs and rhythmic patterns in the Great Mosque of Cordoba. (After Gerhard, Von Baghdad bis Cordaba.i


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10. Bou Inaniya Madrasa, Fez: courtyard elevation. (After Marcais, L 'ar chi te c tu r e mumlmane .)

in the deployment of architectural tropes of this kind. Inthe courtyard facade of the Bou Inaniya Madrasa at Fez(fig. 10), to give one example, we encounter a motifconsisting of a tall rectangular panel framing an arch,which in turn enframes a trabeated opening surmount-ed by an arched window. The sequence begins with twosuch motifs repeated side by side, the nascent seriesbeing then interrupted with a new motif that inverts theorder in which shapes nest into each other in the origi-nal. An arch now frames a rectangular panel, whi~h in

turn frames a smaller arch surmounted by a triplewindow. Following this anomalous motif the suspendedorder is restored with the reappearance of the originalmotif o~ the other side, and so the series ends. In

developing the courtyard elevation in this manner thearchitect of the Bou Inaniya Madrasa used most of thesubtle and overt figures which Tzonis and Lefaivre

exemplify through the work of Andrea Paliadio." Co-herence is maintained through the discontinuity by theappearance of similar elements within. both motifs:stepped corbels below the trabeations and the centralarch, arched windows and sunk panels following thesame profile, and so on. These structural divisions of thefacade are then characteristically veiled over by a layerof decoration in the Arab-Muslim tradition.

In the analysis by Georges Marcais of the Court ofthe Lions in the Alhambra,'? what initially appears to

be an arbitrary succession of single and coupled co-lumns turns out to be an extraordinary instance of thedevice of overlapping one architectural part or motifover another so that the same set ofelements pertains totwo or more different sections - the architecturalequivalent of Taktetstickung in music (fig. 11).20 It ispossible to explain these complex rhythms in another


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THE POETICS OF ARAB-ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE 19 3

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II. Overlapping motives in the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra, after Marcais (bottom); and alternative interpretation (top).

way, reading the three bays at each end of the longerfacade as a reflection of the side elevations of the pavil-ions at each end of the courtyard. The large stretch ofarcading that remains can then be seen to divide up intothree parts according to the classic mosque schema: acentral bay which is emphasized by its coupled columnsand oversized arch and flanked on each side by fivearched bays. These flanking sections are in turn sub-divided into three parts by doubling the columns on

each side of their central arch. This is not to challengethe validity of Marcais's interpretation, but rather to

advance an alternative reading with which it can co-exist, and so to demonstrate the Alhambra's architects'skill in weaving poetic ambiguity into the architecturaldiscourse.

It should be clear by now that Arab architects werequite adept in the use of coupled columns, reduced oramplified intervals, changes of height or color, and the


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12. The mosque-madrasa of Sul tan Hasan, Cairo: plan.

modulation ofdecoration to mark out centers or zones ofspecial significance. They rarely use them to mark ter-minations. Like the framing around geometrical in-terlaces and vegetal decoration, the temenos wall islikely to cut off the structuring lattices as if the latterextended beyond it to infinity, and were perpetuallypoised to expand and fill in the available space withtheir unit forms, or contract to retrench them, as soon asthe boundary wall was shifted one way or the other. In

defining centers and privileged zones understatementseems to be the prevailing rule, with none of the out-bursts of architectural rhetoric one comes to expectfrom other cultures in such situations. The intention

seems to be to set up gentle, barely perceptible pulsa-tions rather than violent movement and so safeguardthe feeling of equilibrium and repose. The sacred cen-

ters, as we have already noted, are accented in such away as to require some effort in locating them, just as itrequires much inner concentration to contemplate theAbsolute.

The hypostyle prayer hans in which these centers areoften half-concealed seem to be a perfect illustration ofwhat Demetri Poryphyros calls "homotopia," the es-

tablishment ofexpansive unities through repetition andidentity or similarity of component parts. When itcomes to stringing together a group of spaces, however,Arab architects are more prone to take the oppositeapproach, "heterotopia," that "peculiar sense of orderin which fragments of separate coherences glitter sep-arately without a unifying common law."21 A goodexample is to be found in the mosque-madrasa of SultanHasan in Cairo (fig. 12). Here a number of smallercoherences ~ a domed mausoleum, a toplighted en-trance hall, four college complexes each having its owncourtyard and iwan - cluster around the dominantcentral court, but are dissociated from each other bylabyrinthine passageways calculated to obscure ratherthan to clarify any connection between them. Why

would an architect so well versed in pulling individual

spaces together refrain from linking them together intosome sort of orchestrated sequence? Part of the answermay lie in the exclusivist sacrality of the temenos orharam in general and this intricate complex of teaching,living, and praying spaces and tombs in particular.Their entrances must be protected from intruders bylabyrinths through which only the initiated can pick


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their way. But there are even deeper implications-whichbecome clear as we reflect on certain convergencies

between architecture and other media of Arab cultural

expre~sion.In pre-Islamic poetry individual themes are rendered

with 'Jjrilliant imagery but remain unconnected by any

logic ~f narrative or sentiment." The intricately mod-ulated themes of Arab music burst out in endless ca-

dences without any complex polyphony or contrastingmovements to bind them together into an organic unityor point them towards a climax or finale. A compulsivehorror of the void, or love of the infinite, as Gombrichprefers to put it,23appears in decoration as the visualequivalent of microtonality, an urge to elaborate theparticle prevailing over the articulation of the whole. N

Wherever we look we encounter the celebration of lifeas a succession offragmentary experiences unconnectedby any threads of cause and effect. Architecture andurbanism on any scale beyond that of the single, spar-kling space appear to be no exception.

A TRAGIC DISCOURSE

So while the urge to build an idealized world and to setit apart from an environment which is perceived aspotentially hostile and uncontrollable is perhaps stron-ger in the Arab world than anywhere else, the com-pulsive concern for its security and integrity bringsabout the suppression ofvisible connections with neigh-boring worlds. Having secured its inviolability in thismanner, its builders go on to cultivate its internal orderso as to upgrade their refuge into a model environment,and having regard to the Prophet's remark that "Goddetests dirtiness and uproar," this ordering process

becomes something of a prayer.Within this hermetic, intensely private world much

craftsmanship and visual virtuosity is expended on pro-curing a peculiar vibrancy that makes everything lookunreal and about to change; and yet this visual excite-ment is subsumed into a feeling of serenity and equilib-rium brought about by incantatory repetition and thesuppression of violent contrasts. "'Islamic architec-

ture," notes Frithjof Schuon," "reflects purity and

calm in contemplation. The calm and balance ofmosques is echoed in the murmuring of the fountains,whose undulatory monotony is repeated in the 'ara-besques." This particular way of building a world instone or brick, as we have seen, has its correspondences

with the way Arabs construct their parallel worlds ofpoetry and music. The question is, to what extent are

these correspondences the product and expression ofaparticular view of the world?

That question has fascinated many observers of theArab and Islamic world. Oswald Spengler's typifica-tion of Arab ("Magian") world-vision in terms of a"world-cavern'v" may be too sweeping for discerning

minds," and his characterization of all mosques as ca-verns and the related claim that the Pantheon is "thefirst mosque" appear to be based on an inaccurateperception of the Dome of the Rock as a paradigm forthe world's mosques. Having said that, one must con-cede some relevance to the image of the world-cavernwhich isclosed in on itself, ringed by a spectral darknessbut penetrated by rays of divine light, eternally caughtup in the tension between up and down, heaven andearth, light and darkness, good and evil, which man canonly resolve by submission to God's will. Hypostylemosques apart, there is no denying that the Arab worldis full of man-made caverns in which the thrust of thepoetics we have described was to replicate the cen-trality, introversion, mystic light, and vertical relation-ship between heaven and earth that the image suggests.To this extent such spaces represent a tragic discoursethat transcends the concrete purpose for which theywere built. The works of man become signs (ayat)alongwith the sun, the moon and the stars, mountains, water-courses, forests and flowers, all speaking of God and Hiswork of creation.

The "fragile grace" that Frithjof Schuon observes inmosques'" 'comesfrom the manipulation of forms, colors,and materials so that everything seems to hover aroundand about to change its shape in the next instant. This isa key element in the tragic discourse activated by Arabarchitectural poetics. For one thing it ministers to the

phenomenology of introverted spaces, where the desirefor security and protection is compounded with that forrelease and adventure, so that one begins to wish'thatthe cell was also a world, and that its walls, in the wordsof the poet quoted by Gaston Bachelard.P were capableofclosing in like a coat of armor or floating away into thedistance according to the mood of the moment; a diffi-cult proposition that is instinctively addressed by the

poetics of Arab architecture and decoration.

More importantly, it comes as close as building can toproject the Muslim view that God is continuously cre-ating and re-creating the world and that material thingshave thus a fugitive and ephemereal existence." Thisconviction may account for the 'reluctance to freeze well-

developed local unities into a semblance of immutabilityor integrate them into some grander, all-encompassing


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196 JO TONNA

unity. Seen in this light, the cultivated lightness andarbitrary juxtapositions of Arab-Islamic architecture, aswell as the fugitive decorative patterns, fragmented poeticimages, and musical improvisations converge into a tragicdiscourse unfolded by different media of cultural expres-sion, each according to its own poetics.

In a similar vein the repetitive rhythms of Arab-Islamic architecture assume the cathartic properties ofritual prayer, calming the mind and directing it tointrospection and communion with the Absolute. Thisprocess is supported by the convergence of forms to-wards an inner center, and by such devices as filteredlight brought in from above. One could go on to readsigns of the Absolute in the forms and devices whichArabs traditionally use to moderate a demanding cli-mate. By separating heat from light by various filteringand shading devices they anticipate the cool light whichsuffuses paradise, as opposed to hell where all is heatand darkness. Houses or palaces which have a visibleheart in the shape of a courtyard or a large central hall,and are capable of breathing in cool air and exhaling itas it warms up, as many Arab houses are designed to do,become eloquent symbols as well as comfortable shel-ters: "We inhale luminous, cool air, and our respirationis a prayer, as is the beating of our heart. "31 In suchways the primary and secondary functions of architec-ture are simultaneously addressed, and the paradisebuilt along with the refuge.

The extraction of such meanings from the architec-ture of the past exerts enough fascination to become itsown reward. For those who would go on to build such ofthem as are still felt to be relevant into the buildings ofthe future, the rewards may be even richer.

D ep artm ent of A rch ite ctu re a nd U rba n D esignUniv er sity o f Ma ltaMsida, Malta

NOTES

1. Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lcfaivrc, C la ss ic al A rc hit ec tu re : T hePoe ti cs o fOrd" (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp. 171-74.

2. Symbolism being as much a function of an architectural work asits intended use, a distinction is made between its primary andits secondary functions, or denoted use and connoted meaning.Umiberto Eco, "Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architec-ture," in S ig n, S ym bol a nd A rc hitec tu re ,ed, G. Broadbent et al.(Chichester, 1982), p. 25.

3. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah , trans.]. Rosenthal (Princeton,N.j., 1958), vol. 2, pp. 319, 357.

4. AI-Walid resolved to neutralize the seductive effect of Syria's

splendid Christian churches on Muslims by building them amosque that would outshine them and be "unique and a wonderto all the world." Al-Muqaddasi, as quoted in K.A.C. Creswell,E ar ly Mus li m A rc hi te ctu re(New York, [979), vol. I, p. 151.

5. Henri Stierlin, Arch it ec tu re d e I 'l sl am(Fribourg , 1979), pp. 42 -43 .6. The mud-brick or concrete-block houses built by newly seden-

terized Bedouins in the Wadi Fatima are typologically similar tothe original house/mosque of the Prophet at Medina. M. Katak-ura, Bedou in Villages: A Stu dy of a Sa ud i A ra hia n P eople in Tr(Tokyo, 1977), p. 74.

7. In dissecting formal structures, I shall be drawing on the termi-nology used by Wucius Wong in P r in ci pl es o f Two-Dimen si onDesign (New York, 1972), and P rin ci pl es o f T hr ee -D im en si on alsign (New York, 1977), as this is applicable to a wider range ofgenres and cultural traditions than that used by Tzonis andLefaivre.

8. Ronald Lewcock, "Materials and Techniques," in Architecture oth e I sl am ic Wo rl d:Its His to ry a nd Soc ia l Mean in g,ed. George Michel l(New York, 1978), pp. 12~133; Renata Holod, "Text, Plan andBuilding: On the Transmission of Architectural Knowledge,"and Yasser Tabbaa, "Geometry and Memory in the Design ofthe Madrasat al-Firdows in Aleppo," in Theories a nd P ri nc ip le sD es ig n i n t he A r ch ite ci ure o fJ s lamic Socie t ies(proceedings of a confer-ence held at MIT in 1987), (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 1-]223-34.

9. A repetition structure regulates the placing of unit forms bydividing a space into equal or rhythmical subdivisions. Wong,P ri nc ip le s o fTum-DimensionalDesign, pp. 23-25.

10. Alexandre Lezine, Archi te ct ur e d e l 'l fr iq iy a (Paris, 1966), p. 56,cit ing Jean Sauvaget, Mosqu e Ome yya de d e M ed ine ,pp. 81-{12.

II. Georges Marcais, L 'Ar ch it ec tu re mu su lmaned'Oc ci de nt (Paris,1954), pp. 72-73; Lezine, Arch i te c tu r e de l 'l fr iq iya ,pp. 116-22.

12. Wong, Principles of Tux-Dimensional Design, pp.49-55.13. Bernard Huet, "The Modernity of a Tradit ion: The Arab-Mus-

lim Culture of North Africa," Mirnar 10 (1983): 54.14. A peculiarity of traditional mosque architecture ironically in-

voked by Robert Venturi in his design for the State Mosque atBaghdad, in which the forest of columns is swept away and thedecora ted arches left hang ing in mid-a ir, resolv ing ad absurdumthe programmatic requirement to reconci le s ta te-of- the-ar t tech-nology with ancien t archit ectu ral tr adit ions.

15. In the Alhambra, there are inscriptions describing it as "a bridein nuptial attire," and the poet Ibn Zamraq effusively comparesthe decoration which "clothes" it to brocades from the Yemen;Oleg Grabar, The Alhambra !(Cambridge, Mass., 1978), pp. 143-46. For an exhaust ive expos ition of'the tex tile analogy in Is lamicarchitecture, see Lisa Golombek, "The Function of Decorationin Islamic Architecture," in Theo ri es a nd P ri nc ip le s o f Des ig n(citedabove, n. 8), pp. 35-46.

16. A serial plane is a cross-section of a volumetric form; used as aunit form and repeated regularly, it releases a perceptual mecha-nism which virtually reconstructs the generating volume byfill ing in its mis sing sect ions (Wong , Principle o f Three-DimensionaDesign, pp. 15--17) .

17. Tzonis and Lefaivre, Clas si cal A rchi te c tu r e,p. 128.18. Ibid., pp. 157~0. Analyzing Palladio's church facades, Tzonis

applies terms borrowed from classical music and rhetoric to thearchitectural figures we encounter in the Bou Inaniya Madrasa,aposiopesis,or the int erruption of a ser ies; abruptio, the breaking offof an element in a series, and epistrophe, the return to the initialseries.


16/16


19. Marcais , L 'a rch it e ctu re musu lmane ,pp. 347-48.20. Tzonis and Lefaivre, Class ica l Arch it e ctu re ,p. 163.21. Demetr i Porphyrios, Sou rc e s o f Modem Ec le ct ic ism(London, 1982) ,

pp.I-4.22. Jacques Berque, C ultu ra l E xp re ss io n in A ra b S oc ie ty Tod ay,trans.

IR .W. Stookey (Austin, Tex., 1978), pp. 157-59. However Ka-mal Abu Deeb, in a brilliant analysis of pre-Islamic poetry, takes.ssue with the application of Western notions of "organic unity"to this genre; "Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-IslamicPoetry," international Jou rnal of M id dle Ea st Studies6,2' (April1975): 148--84.

23. E. H. Gombrich, T he S en se'if O rder: A Study in the P sychology ofDe co ra ti ve A r t(Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1984), pp. 80--81.

24. Grabar, Alhambra, pp. 198--99.25. Frithjof Schuon, Und er st an din g i sl am , trans. D. M. Matheson

(London, 1965), p. 137.

26. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the W est,vol. 2: Pe rs pe c ti ve s o fWo rld H is to ry, trans. C. F. Atkinson (New York, 1966), pp.233--38.

27. Edward W. Said dismisses Spengler out of hand in Orientalism(New York , 1978), p. 208 , but Hichem Djai tis more sympathe ticin E urope a nd Isla m (Berkeley: Unive rsity of Cali fornia Press,1985), pp. 87-93 .

28. Schuon, Unde rs ta n di ng I sl am ,p. 137.29. Gaston Bachelard, T he P oetics o f Sp ace,trans. M. Jolas (New

York, 1964) , p. 51. The poet quoted is Georges Spyridaki, Mortelucide, p. 35.

30. Alexandre Papadopou lo, islam and M uslim A rt,trans. R. E. Wolf(New York, 1979), pp. 178--79.

31. Schuon, Unde rs ta n di ng I sl am ,p. 57.

the poetics of arab-islamic architecture

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