Islamic Architecture in Iran

Poststructural Theory and the Architectural History of Iranian Mosques

Saeid Khaghani

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781786723024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Islamic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The architecture of the Islamic world is predominantly considered in terms of a dual division between 'tradition' and 'modernity' - a division which, Saeid Khaghani here argues, has shaped and limited the narrative applied to this architecture. Khaghani introduces and reconsiders the mosques of eighth- to fifteenth-century Iran in terms of poststructural theory and developments in historiography in order to develop a brand new dialectical framework. Using the examples of mosques such as the Friday Mosques in Isfahan and Yazd as well as the Imam mosque in Isfahan, Khaghani presents a new way of thinking about and discussing Islamic architecture, making this valuable reading for all interested in the study of the art, architecture and material culture of the Islamic world.

Chapter 1

ISLAM AS AN ATTRIBUTION

Introduction

Expressions like ‘Islamic houses’ or ‘Islamic textiles’ are examples of phrases broadly used in academic literature. The adjective ‘Islamic’ is attributed approximately to cultural materials in their entirety, not only to indicate the geopolitical connection of objects to an Islam-governed territory, past or present, but also as an attribution to Islam. What does Islam have to do with the ordinary materials of Muslims’ lives? In other words: ‘How are these Islamic materials Islamic?’ Islam, or ‘surrender into God’s will’,¹ not only as a religion but as a way of life,² requests the submission of human life to God’s will and theoretically covers every aspect of life. What does this supposed totalitarian inclusion bring to the material world of Islamic culture and how does it? Addressing this general question reveals the fundament that enables us to deal with the more specific question of why mosques in the Islamic world were built in the way they were.

Islam knows itself as the last religion in the chain of Abrahamic religions, yet there are nonetheless peculiarities which give Islamic culture an incomparable position in cultural material studies. One of these is the position of visual images in Islam. Functionally, the unnecessary use of any particular object to perform Islamic rituals, and the aniconic attitude of Muslims³ empowered by Islam’s view of visual images, problematises the existence of any Islamic iconography. On the one hand, ‘Islamic tradition has not distinguished neatly between sacred and secular activities in general’;⁴ on the other, ‘the Islamic tradition has drawn an exclusively fine line between divine initiative and human effort … between visual imagery and transcendent reality to which they allude’.⁵ The attribution of ‘Islamic’ to visual materials is formed between these absolutisms of rejection and acceptance. Rather than being the direct application of Islamic doctrines to visual images, any ‘Islamic’ attribution can only be applied through the investigation of the conducting principles Islam imposes through and on the everyday life of believers. From this point of view, the attribution of Islamic is contextual.⁶

Any approach to answering this question with regard to the adjective ‘Islamic’ has a dual direction. On the one hand, what is sought is an ‘Islamic yardstick’⁷ that defines positions from which to judge visual images in regard to what is within the borders of Islamic and what lies beyond. On the other hand, the attempt is to define the spatio-temporal conducting patterns of Islam and to examine the sociopolitical process by which these outlines are applied in reality. These approaches have positives and negatives. The first view stands outside the real world of Islam and has a theological standpoint. The other looks at on the religious role with a diagrammatic nature⁸ and suggests that Islamisation happens through a contextualisation, at the end of which the product is not necessarily Islamic. This is the matter of Islam as ‘the ought’ to be and the ‘is’.⁹ The first view positions an Islam outside history,¹⁰ while the other fails to establish a rigid core in the process of Islamisation, for as in reality the outlines that represent the borders of Islamic ideals can be potentially surpassed.

Questioning the definition of Islamic attribution could simply lead to a subjective interpretation. On the one hand, the desire for a homogeneous entity of Islam, and on the other the plurality which real life breathed into historical Islam calls for an interpretation which includes both. Islam, like other religions of the world, ‘integrates a multiplicity into unity … to create a religious civilisation’.¹¹ Nevertheless, here the aim is to show how these different views were legitimated, how these differences were lived alongside, and how they materialised in the formative process of Islamic conceptions.

In searching for the islamic¹² essence of the Islamic attribution, semantically, and from an art historical viewpoint as well, the issue of ‘what makes Islamic phenomena Islamic’ is fundamental, whether a Muslim seeks direction for her/his Islamic concerns or an art historian searches for a ‘formative Islam’. It is a basic request which should investigate the existence of a uni-tary character in the material cultures of the Islamic world primarily, and thereafter investigate if Islam has been a formative feature in this unification, and if possible how. These questions have different dimensions depending on the question’s intent, be they purely art historical approach which seeks the semantics of Islamic art, to personal, ethical and sociopolitical concerns. In spite of a personal interest, the aim of this book is to find nevertheless a positive point of judgement.

As a first step, I outline the main blueprints of the Islamic worldview, that is, those which influence the formation of material culture, especially visual images. In the second part of this chapter, different characteristics of Islamic art as shaped by these different factors are investigated. The aim of this chapter is to show how visual images reach a valuable position in the Islamic system. Finally, the goal is to suggest an answer to the question, ‘In what sense are Iranian mosques Islamic?’

The Emergence of Islam

Islam as a religion came into existence when the archangel Gabriel revealed God’s message to Muhammad, a 40-year-old man from the western lands of the Arabian Peninsula, praying in a cave in the mountains of Mecca. Gabriel ordered him to read: Muhammad was illiterate but Gabriel repeated:

Read in the name of your Lord who created

Who created man of a clot of blood.

Read! Your Lord is the most beneficent,

Who taught by pen,

Taught Man what he knew not.¹³

These statements became the first verses of a body of text – the Qur’ān, the very word of God – which was revealed to Mohammad who afterwards ‘guided his life as the messenger (al-rasul) and Prophet (al-nabi) of Allah’.¹⁴

Mohammad did not immediately proclaim his message in public. Three years later he discussed his mission with a small group of his relatives. Soon after, the ‘Prophet preaching evoked strong opposition from Meccans,’¹⁵ which finally lead him to emigrate to Medina through an agreement with the Medinans. This journey, in ad 622, is the starting point of the Muslim calendar. The Prophet established the community of Muslims in Medina with himself as their leader.

Mohammad was a businessman before his Prophecy, known as Amīn because of his honesty. He married Khadīje, whose caravan Mohammad was in charge of. Now in Medina, he was in charge of a fast growing community, and also the army commander in battles between them and the Meccans and other protesters. His residential complex became the centre of the community as well as the place to perform Islamic rituals, mainly salāt or praying.¹⁶ First a businessman, then a prophet and now a politician, Mohammad embodied his religiosity in his everyday life.

Following the death of the Prophet, Abū Bakr, one of the closest companions of Prophet, was selected as the ‘Commander of the Faithful’ and after him ‘Omar, ‘Othmān and ‘Ali.¹⁷ These four Islamic rulers, known as ‘caliphs in the age of the Rāshidūn’, occupy an important place in the historical consciousness of Sunni Muslims: ‘theirs was a transitional age from a simple community established by the Prophet to a major religious tradition that constituted an empire’.¹⁸

A disagreement about the successor of the Prophet led to two different beliefs about who was the legitimate Governor of the Islamic state, represented by the Shī’ah and the Sunni. During the fourth Caliph and first Imam’s era, major sectarian conflicts started. Khārijites (literally ‘those who go out’) are the first sectarians in the history of Islam. The succession of the Umayyads and Abbasids as the Caliphates of the Islamic world drew the conception of Islamic government into crisis. Different sects gradually emerged, with different ideas about Islamic government arising from the injustices of the Umayyads toward non-Arab Muslims, and the criticisms of Abbasids in regard to Islamic principles.

Before his demise, the Prophet stated in a Hadīth (one of the statements of the Prophet) that ‘I leave you two things and as long as you cling into them, you do not be misled’. These two things were the Qur’ān and his tradition,¹⁹ and this was the main motivation for Muslims to spend a great amount of energy in gathering the sources of tradition and attempting to derive the principles of Islam and the Islamic community from them. This movement became the starting point for the formation of Islamic law or Sharī’ah. Different methods of derivation lead to the emergence of different schools of law.

By the nature of its rituals and with its focus on community, Islam has a strong social dimension. Its fate is not only self-salvation in the other world but also creation of a living community under God’s wishes. From early on, Islam introduced social organisation based on Islamic mores as an inevitable part of its ideals. Sharī’ah or Islamic law helped Muslims to apply the concepts of the Qur’ān and Sunnah (tradition) in the social context. In other words, Sharī’ah was the channel through which Islam as the religion became Islam as the culture.

Under the Abbasid caliphate Islam experienced a flourishing of science and philosophy, as well as literature and historiography in addition to the religious sciences. Baghdad and Khorāsān became centres in which Greek philosophy, the mystical ideas of the Gnostics, Indian medical science and Persian governance interacted. Islam cultivated the seeds of another system of thought in its soil: Sufism. While the focus of Sharī’ah was to establish a social structure on the basis of Islam, the efforts of Sufism or Gnosticism (Irfān) was to form a personal relationship between believers as Seekers and God as Sought. With its dependent institutions Sufism also had a considerable influence on the social movements of the Muslim community.

Islam, with its sociopolitical aims to establish a community according to its principles, with its mystical viewpoint which seeks an individual connection to God, and with its co-existence of different branches of knowledge which do not necessarily share similar viewpoints, shows a historical existence more than an ideal reality outside its context. If the real islam exists outside the history of Islam, the reality of Islam shows a historical being.

Islamic Ideals and Realities

As the Qur’ān describes, Islam is not a new message but the last in a chain of revelations and Muhammad is the last prophet, from Adam to Jesus. Islam considers itself not as a religion, but as the Religion or dīn al-fitrī, which is the very centre of different religions, especially Abrahamic ones. On this basis, this out-of-time concept of islam – different from Islam with capital ‘I’ – is the core of human religiosity.

God is the ultimate reality – the Absolute – greater than any description (Allāh-u Akbar-u min al-Yūsaf). Everything else is created and relative, thus incomparable to His Almightiness. Tuhīd, or the idea of God’s unity, is the central concept of the Qur’ān, and its application in the belief and behaviour of Muslims makes it the backbone of Islam. It is an unforgivable sin to share this ‘Otherness’ with others. The confession of ‘There is no god but God’, and the acceptance of Muhammad as the messenger of God, is one of the five practical pillars of Islam,²⁰ which is the key to membership of the Islamic community.

Man is part of the created world: God chose him as His representative on earth, and breathed His soul into him. He taught him all His names, a gift presented only to human beings. God offered his trust (Amānah) to the heavens and earth, they refused it but Man accepted it.²¹ God asked, ‘Am I not your Lord?’²² and Man answered, ‘Yes, we testify.’²³ This promise brought with it the responsibility of bearing God’s trust for all humanity which he or she must fulfil while he or she is on earth. Accordingly Man enters history in order to fulfil His promises.

Man’s worldly life is a phase from God to God. This is the field where its fruit marks otherworldly destiny.²⁴ God was like a hidden treasure and wanted to be known²⁵ – the duty of Man – and this familiarity is achieved through knowledge, which is the affirmation of God’s unity. It is the confession that there is no reality besides God which is actualised only in practice. Ideally, nothing must fill the human’s heart other than God; this is Tuhīd. It is on this foundation that Islam as a religion comes to reality. The Qur’ān as the backbone and the Prophet’s Tradition or Sunnah as the flesh makes the body of the religion of Islam. Sharī’ah or Islamic law is no more than the application of the Qur’ān’s doctrines and the prototype of tradition into different times and places. It is the law which tries to build a community according to divine wishes. In this social spirit, mysticism emerged to establish first a direct relationship between Man and God and second to maintain the inner core of faith. Historical Islam is the battlefield of these ideals and the real world.

The Qur’ān

The Qur’ān, ‘from the Arabic root “qara’a” (to read), or “qarana” (to gather or collect)’,²⁶ is both the core and very source of Islam, and diagrammatically, the provocative element of all Islamic phenomena. As Muslims believe in Mohammad as the seal of Prophecy, the Qur’ān is also considered as ‘God’s final revelation to man’.²⁷ ‘The basic élan of the Qur’ān is moral’,²⁸ and its social and economical implications follow this élan.²⁹ B...