Umayyad palaces included elaborate bathing facilities, which were an inheritance from ____?

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, 687-692

• During the early centuries of Islamic history, the Muslim world's political and cultural center was the fertile crescent of ancient mesopotamia
• The Caliphs of Damascus [capital of modern syria] and Baghdad appointed provincial governors to rule the vast territories they controlled.
• these governors eventually gained relative independence by setting up dynasties in various territories and provinces: the Umayyads in Syria [661-749 and in Spain [756-1031], the Abasids in Iraq and so one even including the Fatimids in Egypt
• The first great achievement of islamic arch is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
• The muslims had taken the city from the Byzantines in 638 and the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik [r. 685-705] erected the monumental sanctuary between 687 and 692 as an architectural tribute to the triumph of islam.
• The dome of the rock marked the coming of the new religion to the city that had been, and still is, sacred to both jews and Christians.
• the structure rises from a huge platform known as the Noble Enclosure.
• The sanctuary was erected on the traditional site of Adam's burial, of Abraham's preparation for Isaac's sacrifice, and of the Temple of Solomon the Romans destroyed in 70

Interior of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, 687-692

• the interior of the dome of the rock houses the rock form which Muslims later came to believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven
• As Islam toook much of its teachign from Judaism and Christianity, so its architects and artists borrowed and transformed

• in islam worshiping can be a private act, the most important part is the qibla -- the direction towards mecca
• but worship also became a communal act with the first Muslim community established a simple ritual for it.
• to celebrate the Muslim sabbath, which occurs on Friday, the community converged on the home of the prophet's home at noon in Medina
• the main feature of the prophet's home was the large sq court lined with rows of palm trunks supporting thatched rooms along the north and south sides.
• the souther side was wider and had a dbl row of trunks that faced mecca
• during these communal gatherings the imam, or leader of collective worship stood on a stepped pulpit or minbar set up in front of the souther qibla wall
• these features became standard in the Islamic house of worship, the mosque, from the arabic word masjid, a place of prostration, where the faithful gathered for the five daily prayers.
• the congregational mosque [also called the friday mosque or great mosque], was ideally large enough to accommodate the communitiy's entier population for the friday noonday prayer.
• a very important feature of both ordinary and congregational mosques is the mihrap, a semicircular mice usually set into the qibla wall.
• often a dome over the bay in forn tof it marked this position
• the niche was a familiar greco-roman architectural feature, generally enclosing a statue
• but for islamic arch its origin, purpose and meaning are still debated
• some scholars believe the mihrab originally may have honored the place where the prophet stood in his house at medina when he led communal worship. it thus would have been a revered religious memorial
• in some mosques, a maqsura precedes the mihrab,
• the maqsura is the area generally reserved for the ruler or his representatives and can be quite elaborate in form
• many mosques also have minarets towers form which the faithful are called to worship.
• when buildings of other faiths were converted into mosques the change was clearly signaled on the exterior by the construction of minarets.
• early mosques were generally characterized by hypostyle halls, communal worship halls with roofs held up by a multitude of columns
• later variations of the early mosque formulation include mosques with four iwans [vaulted rectangular recesses] one on each side of the courtyard and central plan mosques with a single large dome covered interior space as in byzantine churches, such of which were later converted to mosques
• the mosque's origin is still in dispute although one prototype may well have been the prophet's house in medina
• once the muslims had firmly established themselves in their acquired territories they began to build on a large scale, impelled, perhaps by a desire to create such visible evidence of their power as would surpass in size and splendor that of their non-islamic predecessors
• today mosques continue to be erected throughout the world. despite many variations in design and detail and the employment of modern building techniques and materials unknown in Muhammad's day the mosque's essential features are unchanged
• all mosques wherever they are built whatever their plan are oriented toward mecca and the faithful worship facing the qibla wall.

Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria, 706-715

• The Umayyads transferred their capital from Mecca to Damascus in 661
• there, Abd al-Malik's son, the caliph al Walid [r. 705-15] purchased a byzantine church [formerly a roman temple and built an imposing new mosque for the expanding muslim population
• the umayyads demolished the church but they used the roman precinct walls as a foundation for their own construction.
• like the dome of the rock the great mosque of damascus owes much of the architecture of the Greco-Roman and early christian east
• it is constructed of masonry blocks, columns, and capitals salvaged from the roman and early christian structures on the land al-walid acquired for his mosque
• the courtyard is bounded by peir arcades reminiscent of roman aqueducts
• the minarets two at the southern corners and one on the northern side of the enclosure, the earliest in the islamic world, were modifications of preexisting roman square towers.
• the grand prayer hall taller than the rest of the complex is on the southside of the courtyard [facing mecca.
• its main entrance is distinguished by a facade with a pediment and arches, recalling classical and byzantine models, respectively the facade faces into the courtyard like a roman forum temple, a plan maintained throughout the long history of mosque arch.
• the damascus mosque synthesizes elements received form other cultures into a novel architectural unity, which includes the distinctive islamic elements of mihrab, mihrab dome, minbar and minaret

Detail of a mosaic in the courtyard arcade of the Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria, 706-715

• an extensive cycle of mosaics covered the walls of the Great Mosque
• in one of the surviving sections seen here a conch shell niche 'supports' an arcaded pavilion with a flowering rooftop flanked by structures shown in classical perspective.
• like the arch design, the mosaics owe much to roman, early Christian, and byzantine art.
• some evidence indicates that the great mosque mosaics were the work of Byzantine mosaicists.
• Characteristically, temples, clusters of houses, trees, and rivers compose the pictorial fields, bounded by stylized vegetal design, familiar in roman, early christian and byzantine ornament
• no zoomorphic forms, human or animal appear either in the pictorial or ornament spaces
• this is true of all mosaics in the great mosque as well as the mosaics in the earlier dome of the rock.
• islamic tradition shuns the representation of fauna of any kind in sacred places
• the world shown in the damascus mosaics, suspended miragelike in a featureless field of gold, was explained in accompanying [but now lost] inscriptions as an image of paradise.
• many passages form the koran describe the gorgeous places of paradise awaiting the faithful - gardens, groves of tree,s flowing streams, and lofty chambers
• indeed abundant luxurious images and ornament, floating free of all human reference, create a vision of paradise appealing to the spiritually oriented imagination, whatever its religion.

Plan of the Umayyad palace, Mshatta, Jordan, ca. 740–750

• the many palaces constructed by the umayyad rulers acted as nuclei for the agricultural development of acquired territories and possibly as hunting lodges. In addition, the Islamic palaces were symbols of authority over new lands as well as expressions of their owners' wealth
• though uncompleted the plan of this palace resembles the layout of a Roman fortified camp, the high walls of the Mshatta palace incorporate 25 towers but lack parapet walkways for patrolling guards.
• the walls, nonetheless, offered safety from marauding nomadic tribes and providing privacy for the caliph and his entourage.
• Visitors entered the palace through a large portal on the south side.
• to the right was a mosque [the plan shows the mihrab niche in the qibla wall], in which the rulers and their guests could fulfill their obligation to pray five times a day.
• the mosque was separated from the palace's residential wing and official audience hall by a small ceremonial area and an immense open courtyard.
• Most Umayyad palaces also were provided with fairly elaborate bathing facilities that displayed technical features such as heating systems, adopted from roman baths.
• just as under the roman empire, these baths probably served more than merely hygienic purposes.
• indeed in several Umayyad palaces, excavators have uncovered in he baths paintings and sculptures of hunting and other secular themes including depictions of dancing women - themes traditionally associated with royalty in the Near east
• large halls frequently attached to many of these baths seem to have been as places of entertainment, as was the case in Roman times.
• Thus the bath-spa-social center, a characteristic amenity of roman urban culture that died out in the christian world but survived in islamic culture

Frieze of the Umayyad palace, Mshatta, Jordan, ca. 740-750

• The architectural ornamentation of many of the early Islamic palaces was confined to simply molded stucco and decorative brickwork, but at Mshatta the facade is enlivened by a richly carved stone frieze.
• The long band is more than 16 ft high and consists of a series of triangles framed by elaborately carved moldings.
• each triangle contains a large rosette that projects from a field densely covered with curvilinear, vegetal designs.
• no two triangles were treated the same way, and animal figures appear in some of them. Similar compositions of birds, felines and vegetal scrolls can be found in Roman, Byzantine and Sasanian art.
• The Mshatta frieze, however, has not animal figures to the right of the entrance portal --that is, on the part of the facade corresponding to the mosque's qibla wall.

The Abbasid City of Peace

• in 750 after years of civil war the Abbasids who claimed descent from Abbas an uncle of Muhammad overthrew the Umayyad caliphs.
• the new rulers moved the capital from Damascus to a site in Iraq near the old Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon.
• there the caliph al-Mansur established a new capital, Baghdad which he called Madina al-salam, the city of peace.
• the city was laid out in 762 at a time astrologers determined as favorable.
• it was round in plan, about a mile and a half in diameter.
• the shape signified the new capital was the center of the universe. at the city's center was the caliph's palace, oriented to the four compass pts
• for almost 300 years baghdad was the hub of Arab power and of a brilliant Islamic culture
• the Abbasid caliphs were renowned throughout the world and even established diplomatic elations with Charlemagne at Aachen in Germany
• the Abbasids lavished their wealth on art, literature and science and were responsible for the translation of numerous grk text that otherwise would have been lost. Many of these works were introduced to the medieval west through their Arabic version.

Aerial view of the Great Mosque, Kairouan, Tunisia, ca. 836-875

• of all the variations in mosque plans, he hpostle mosque most clearly reflects the mosque's supposed origin, Muhammad's house in Medina.
• one of the finest hypostyle mosques , still in use today, is the mid-eight-century great mosque at Kairouan in Abbasid Unisia.
• it still houses its carved wooden minbar of 862, the oldest known. The precinct takes the form of a slightly askew parallelogram of huge scale, some 450 x 260 feet. Built of stone, tis walls have sturdy butresses, square in profile. A series of lateral entrances on the east and west lead to an archaded forecourt, the open space on the plan

Plan of the Great Mosque, Kairouan, Tunisia, ca. 836-875

• The precinct takes the form of a slightly askew parallelogram of huge scale, some 450 x 260 feet. Built of stone, tis walls have sturdy butresses, square in profile. A series of lateral entrances on the east and west lead to an archaded forecourt, the open space on the plan, oriented north-south on axis with the mosque's impressive minaret, the black square at the bottom, and the two domes [two circles along the long open nave] of the hypostle prayer hall [the two dotted, because of columns squares the flank the nave].
  
• the first dome closest to the forecourt, is over the entrance bay, the second over they bay that fronts the Mihrab [2] set into the qibla wall the wall that runs along the top in dark black
• a raised nave connects the domed spaces and prolongs the north-south axis of the minaret and courtyard. Eight columned aisles flank the nave on either side, providing space for a large congregation

Which of the following is built over the spot from which Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven?

What monument contains this example of Islamic experimentation with Multilobed arches?

What is the first great Islamic building?

Which Islamic dynasties are responsible for the Islamic buildings of Córdoba and Grenada?