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By Root 1975 0

spread his teachings, his followers had formed a faith distinct from Judaism. A Greek-speaking Christian community emerged in Jerusalem in the mid-2nd century and the Greek Orthodox Church is now the largest denomination in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, having jurisdiction over more than half of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre and a bigger portion of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity than anybody else. Numerous other denominations claim bits and pieces of other holy sites and ownership is fiercely defended, such as in November 2008 when a brawl between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks broke out in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem) in front of stunned pilgrims.

Arts

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ARCHITECTURE

CARPETS

CINEMA

DECORATIVE ARTS

VISUAL ARTS

LITERATURE

MUSIC

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ARCHITECTURE

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Dictionary of Islamic Architecture, by Andrew Petersen, is for those who can’t quite distinguish a sahn (courtyard of a mosque) from a riwaq (arcade) and is useful primarily if your journey has whet your appetite to learn more.

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Middle Eastern architecture ranges from the sublime to the downright ugly. On one hand, the graceful lines of Islamic architecture draw on the rich historical legacy left by the great empires that once ruled the region. On the other, the perennially unfinished cinder-block architecture of grim functionality that blights many city outskirts and smaller towns.

Mosques

Embodying the Islamic faith and representing its most predominant architectural feature throughout the region is the masjid (mosque, also called a jamaa). The building, developed in the very early days of the religion, takes its form from the simple private houses where the first believers gathered to worship.

The house belonging to the Prophet Mohammed is said to have provided the prototype of the mosque. It had an enclosed oblong courtyard with huts (housing Mohammed’s wives) along one wall and a rough portico providing shade. This plan developed with the courtyard becoming the sahn, the portico the arcaded riwaq and the house the haram (prayer hall).

The prayer hall is typically divided into a series of aisles. The central aisle is wider than the rest and leads to a vaulted niche in the wall called the mihrab; this indicates the direction of Mecca, towards which Muslims must face when they pray.

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Islam: Art & Architecture, edited by Markus Hattstein and Peter Delius, is comprehensive, lavishly illustrated and one of those coffee-table books that you’ll treasure and dip into time and again.

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Before entering the prayer hall and participating in communal worship, Muslims must perform a ritual washing of the hands, forearms, neck and face (by washing themselves before prayer, the believer indicates a willingness to be purified). For this purpose mosques have traditionally had a large ablutions fountain at the centre of the courtyard, often fashioned from marble and worn by centuries of use. These days, modern mosques just have rows of taps.

Within these overarching architectural themes, each region developed its own local flourishes. The Umayyads of Damascus favoured square minarets, the Abbasid dynasty built spiral minarets echoing the ziggurats of the Babylonians and the Fatimids of Egypt made much use of decorative stucco work. But it was the Ottoman Turks who left the most recognisable (and, given the reach of the Ottoman Empire, widespread) landmarks. Ottoman mosques were designed on the basic principle of a dome on a square, and are instantly recognisable by their slim pencil-shaped minarets. The Süleymaniye Camii (Click here) in İstanbul and the Selimiye Mosque (Click here) in Edirne, both the work of the Turkish master architect Sinan, represent the apogee of the style.

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Middle Eastern architecture – our top ten

▪ Topkapı Palace, İstanbul (Click here)

▪ Aya Sofya, İstanbul (Click here)

▪ Süleymaniye Camii, İstanbul (Click here)

▪ The traditional architecture of Cappadocia, Turkey (Click here)