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By Root 2025 0

Network (see the boxed text, Click here), the first stage of the US$30 million project involved creating the 30-hectare Al-Azhar Park on land reclaimed from what had been a rubbish dump for 500 years. The project also involved restoring 1.5km of the 12th-century Ayyubid Wall, rescuing a number of dilapidated mosques and an integrated plan for improving housing, infrastructure and living conditions in the adjacent Darb al-Ahmar, one of Cairo’s poorest districts and home to more than 90,000 people; many of the rooftops were fitted with solar heating systems, water cisterns and vegetable gardens. It’s one of the most exciting projects for urban renewal seen in the Middle East for decades. Let’s hope it encourages other governments to do the same.

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Aga Khan: Islamic architecture’s saviour

If there is one figure who has been responsible above all others for reviving Islamic architecture worldwide, it’s the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan IV, the current imam (religious teacher) of the largest branch of the Ismaili Shia Muslims, inherited a vast family fortune upon succeeding to this hereditary position in 1957. Ever since, he has set about putting the money to good use.

Through the Aga Khan Development Network www.akdn.org, one of the largest private development organisations in the world, the Aga Khan funds programs encompassing public health, education, microfinance, rural development and architecture. His interventions in the field of architecture in a region blighted by decades of ill-conceived development and urban decay have been particularly eye-catching.

The main focus of his efforts has been the Historic Cities Program, which aims to rescue, restore and bring back to life public buildings across the Islamic world. Egypt and Syria have been the main beneficiaries in the Middle East. Rather than focusing solely on bricks and mortar, the projects prioritise improvements in social infrastructure and living conditions in surrounding areas, thereby transforming architectural restoration into wider projects for social renewal.

A further pillar in the Aga Khan’s masterplan has been the triennial Aga Khan Award for Architecture (www.akdn.org/akaa.asp), one of the world’s most prestigious architecture awards. The award’s primary aim is to promote excellence and creativity in Islamic architecture within a framework of heritage values and contemporary design, with special consideration given to social, historical and environmental issues. Winning projects since the award was announced in 1977 have included İstanbul’s Topkapı Palace, Cairo’s Citadel of Saladin and Aleppo citadel.

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Rural Buildings

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Gertrude Bell described the beehive houses of central Syria as ‘like no other villages save those that appear in illustrations to Central African travel books’.

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Architecture in rural areas of the Middle East has always been a highly localised tradition, determined primarily by the dictates of climate. In the oases, particularly the Saharan towns of Egypt’s Western Oases, mud-brick was easy to manufacture and ensured cool interiors under the baking desert sun. Although perfectly adapted to ordinary climatic conditions, these homes also proved extremely vulnerable to erosion and rains, which explains why so few examples remain across the region.

Among other natural building forms in the Middle East, the extremely sturdy conical beehive houses of central Syria (see the boxed text, Click here) are among the most distinctive. They owe their endurance to the whitewashing of the unusually thick mud walls, which reflects the sun and slows the ageing of the underlying structural materials. But the undoubted star when it comes to unique traditional architecture is Cappadocia (Kapadokya; Click here), where homes and churches were hewn from the weird and wonderful landscape of caves, rock walls and soft volcanic tuff.

Unrelenting urbanisation in Middle Eastern cities has seen them grow at an alarming rate and this same urbanisation has stripped rural areas of much of their lifeblood. The