Middle East - Anthony Ham [58]
▪ Umayyad Mosque, Damascus (Click here)
▪ Azem Palace, Damascus (Click here)
▪ Citadel, Aleppo (Click here)
▪ Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (Click here)
▪ Mosque of Qaitbey, Cairo (Click here)
▪ Oasis architecture ofSiwa, Egypt (Click here)
* * *
* * *
Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture and the Literary World, by Robert Irwin, one of the premier scholars on the Arab world, traces the development of Islamic arts from the 5th to the 17th centuries against the backdrop of prevailing social and political upheaval.
* * *
Urban Buildings
It’s in the cities of the Middle East that you’ll find the region’s major architectural landmarks. Beyond the soaring mosques that adorn city skylines at almost every turn, it’s the private world of palaces and homes that truly distinguishes urban Middle Eastern architecture. Often hidden behind high walls, these palaces were built on the premise of keeping the outside world at bay, allowing families to retreat into a generous-size refuge.
Usually built around a courtyard, these private homes and palaces were perfectly adapted to the dictates of climate and communal living. The homes often housed up to a dozen families, each with their own space opening onto the shared patio. The palaces worked on the same principle, containing the royal living quarters with separate rooms for women and domestic staff. Most such residences included a cooling central fountain and an iwan (arched alcove that served as a summer retreat), and were adorned with tilework, wood-carved lintels and elegant arches. Comfortable and stylish, private and largely self-contained, these homes were ideally suited to a region with long, hot summers and where complicated rules of engagement existed between the public and private spheres. You’ll find such architecture in most Middle Eastern cities, but the most splendid examples are in Damascus.
* * *
Per capita, Cairo has one of the lowest ratios of green space to urban population on earth with just one footprint-sized plot of earth per inhabitant.
* * *
The Middle East’s cities are also where the failure of architecture and urban planning to keep pace with burgeoning populations is most distressingly on show. Take Cairo, for example. In 1950, Cairo had a population of around 2.3 million. Now as many as 17 million people live cheek-by-jowl within greater Cairo’s ever-expanding boundaries. The result is an undistinguished sprawl of grime-coated, Soviet-style apartment blocks and unplanned shanty towns, often without even the most basic amenities.
Another major issue is the decay of the beautiful homes of the old cities that once formed the core of Damascus, Aleppo and other cities. Throughout the 20th century, the trend was for old-city residents to leave homes that had been in their families for generations and move into modern homes in newer parts of town. Emptying old cities with ageing infrastructure were left behind and vulnerable to developers.
* * *
Architecture and Polyphony: Building in the Islamic World Today is an exciting work stemming from the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. It’s filled with the innovations of modern Middle Eastern architecture – an antidote to the dominance of mosques in the aesthetics of Middle Eastern cities.
* * *
Belatedly, but perhaps just in time, something is being done to halt the decline. Since 1994, Unesco, the local Aleppo government and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation have been involved in an ambitious program of rehabilitation to make the remaining areas of Aleppo’s old town more liveable. For more information, see the boxed text, Click here. A similar plan is also in its early stages in Damascus. Tourism is playing an important role in bringing Syria’s old cities back to life – many courtyard homes in Damascus and Aleppo have been saved from the wrecker’s ball, painstakingly restored and converted into boutique hotels.
Even more ambitious has been the attempt to impose some order onto Cairo’s unsightly sprawl. Funded by the Aga Khan Development