Monday, September 6, 2010

An Individual Defence of Islamic Architecture

The story of Islamic architecture cannot be summarized in a small post on it. It is a long story of being influenced, being creative and accordingly being influential.
In the age of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the sagacious caliphs, mosques and other Islamic buildings were so modest and not decorated. It reflects the simplicity and toughness of the first Arab Muslims' life in the desert. With the expansion of the Islamic Empire in the Umayyad Caliphate, Muslims were introduced to new architectural designs that belong to the Byzantines, Sasanians as an example. Muslims architects and designers evolved with a true Islamic art that continued to be developed in other periods and other parts of the world as in AL-Andalus.
The Great Mosque of Cordoba is really one of the wonders of Islamic architecture. It is lavishly decorated and creatively founded reflecting the wealth and the highly-developed state of Islamic art at the time. The founders of this mosque and other Islamic mosques did not imagine that some Muslims in the twentieth-first century would detest these mosques because it may distract people from concentrating while praying to God. Others believe that the founding of these mosques is an epitome of extravagance. It is apparently the result of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and our excessive veneration to the past. They think that anything that happened in the past, especially in the time of the Prophet, is the prototype of everything that has to happen in our ages disregarding the importance of the historical context that stimulates us to differentiate between each era in Islamic history. It is a real disappointing actuality that we turn against our art and civilization while there are other Westerners who celebrate this heritage.