Islamic Architecture

Islamic Architecture in Umayyad Period:
Person And Place

The Umayyad caliphate was established in 661 after Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet was murdered in Kufa. Muawiyah I, governor of Syria, became the first Umayyad caliph. The Umayyads made Damascus their capital. Under the Umayyads the Arab empire continued to expand, eventually extending to Central Asia and the borders of India in the east, Yemen in the south, the Atlantic coast of what is now Morocco and the Iberian peninsula in the west.

The Umayyads adopted the construction techniques of the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, and often re-used existing buildings. There was some innovation in decoration and in types of building. Most buildings in Syria were of high quality ashlar masonry, using large tightly-joined blocks, sometimes with carving on the facade. Stone barrel vaults were only used to roof small spans. Wooden roofs were used for larger spans, with the wood in Syria brought from the forests of Lebanon. These roofs usually had shallow pitches and rested on wooden trusses. Wooden domes were constructed for Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, both in Jerusalem.

One of the first buildings they did build, in the 600s AD, was the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, on the site where the Jewish temple had been before the Romans destroyed it. Right away you can see that Islamic mosques are very different from Christian churches. Instead of being made like a Roman basilica, long and narrow, the Dome of the Rock is hexagonal (six-sided). The architect may have been thinking of Roman funeral chapels, which were sometimes polygonal (many-sided) like this, or he may have been thinking of early Christian baptistries, which also were polygonal.

Great Mosque in Damascus

Another early Umayyad building was the Great Mosque in the Umayyad capital of Damascus (in modern Syria), which was built about 710 AD. (for the interior, click here).

This was built more like a Christian church, but you'll notice there are no pictures of people on it - only plants and buildings.

Great Mosque at Cordoba

Another Umayyad building was the Great Mosque at Cordoba in Spain, begun in 754 AD. The architects took the many columns from older Roman buildings, which is why the columns don't match each other. This was partly because it was more efficient to reuse columns, but also to show how Islam had triumphed over Rome and destroyed their buildings to make new mosques. The striped stone arches, which are also found on the inside of the Dome of the Rock, became a very common choice in Islamic architecture, and within forty years they were copied in Christian France in Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen, and then in Italy too, for instance in the cathedrals of Florence and Pisa.

Great Mosque at Kairouan

The Umayyad caliphs built their last major building in the 700s AD, in North Africa (modern Tunisia) - the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Kairouan's mosque has the oldest surviving minaret in the world.