Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer
International Islamic University Malaysia
E-mail: spahico@yahoo.com
Concerning the realm of architecture, the role of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunnah is to provide Muslims with an inspired outlook on life, in general, and on those issues that are pertinent to architecture, in particular, and with some broad rules of morality and guidelines of proper conduct which may, or may not, be directly related to architecture.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer
International Islamic University Malaysia
E-mail: spahico@yahoo.com
According to the worldview of agnosticism, certainty and knowledge are impossible and we will never be able to know the true reality. A constant sceptical approach to epistemology, thus, ought to be a norm. Exemplifying somewhat this doctrine, Albert Einstein once remarked: “I don’t try to imagine a personal god; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.”
However, one wonders if agnostic thought, which originated most likely in ancient Greece in the form of scepticism, was a premeditated philosophical choice or a desperate reactionary repositioning against the inability of established religions to provide a sense of both epistemological and spiritual certitude. The latter seems to be the case, in that the majority of agnostic views and tenets exude opposition and aversion, rather than a homogenous system of thought and action. The sentiment is sufficiently epitomised by the words of Thomas Henry Huxley (d. 1895), a famous English biologist and evolutionist: “Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.”
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer
International Islamic University Malaysia
E-mail: spahico@yahoo.com
Mashrabiyyahs (rawashin) on a house in Cairo, Egypt.
If one thoroughly studies the distinctive character and evolution of the Islamic built environment — and Islamic civilization taken as a whole – against the backdrop of the message of Islam as a complete code of life, one would inexorably infer that the emergence of the rawashin and mashrabiyyah[1] phenomena was fated, as it were. However, when they emerged, mashrabiyyahs (rawashin) were very flexible, and signified a means, rather than an end. Their forms and functions were always susceptible to the forces and influences of the laws of constant change and evolution. As a result, there ultimately emerged many different types of mashrabiyyahs with the latticework and screen designs differing from era to era, and from region to region. “Most mashrabiyyahs are closed where the latticework is lined with stained glass and part of the mashrabiyyah is designed to be opened like a window, often sliding windows to save space; in this case the area contained is part of the upper floor rooms hence enlarging the floor plan. Some mashrabiyyahs are open and not lined with glass, in this case the mashrabiyyah works like a balcony and the space enclosed is independent of the upper floor rooms and accessed through those rooms with windows opening towards it, sometimes even the woodwork is reduced making look much more similar to a regular roofed balcony; this type of mashrabiyyah is mostly used if the house is facing an open landscape rather than other houses, such as a river, a cliff below or simply a farm.”
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences
International Islamic University Malaysia
E-mail: spahico@yahoo.com
Rawashin (mashrabiyyahs) on a house in Makkah.
The Myth of the Mashrabiyyah
In Muslim literature, the earliest explicit reference to the phenomenon of rawashin[1] in the Muslim world was made either in the late 5th AH/11th CE or in the early 6th AH/12th CE century. The first scholar who did so was Imam al-Ghazali (d. 505 AH/1111 CE) — arguably one of the most celebrated Muslim theologians and jurists of Persian descent who lived and worked in Iraq and Khorasan — in his masterpiece Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences) when he discussed the obnoxious practices most commonly committed on the narrow roads. Imam al-Ghazali dealt with the matter as part of his discourse concerning the overarching Islamic principle of enjoining good and forbidding evil (al-amr bi al-ma’ruf wa al-nahy ‘an al-munkar). He wrote: “Of the loathsome deeds perpetrated on the (narrow) streets are: erecting pillars, building shops attached to private and occupied buildings, planting trees, projecting rawashin, placing lumber, or wood, and freights of grains and foodstuff on the road. All these are abominable because they lead to (further) narrowing of the roads, and thus endanger their users. However, if those practices did not pose any perils whatsoever, due to the roads being wide, then they are not to be prohibited.”[2]
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences
International Islamic University Malaysia
E-mail: spahico@yahoo.com
The city of Fez, Morocco.
In Islam, man is a social being entrusted with a noble mission of responsibly inhabiting and developing the earth (vicegerency or khilafah). He is endowed with enough appropriate at once ingenious and executive capacities for the attainment of the former. Proportionate to the intrinsic character of man and his aspirations and undertakings, his terrestrial calling takes account of all the planes of physical and metaphysical existence. The net result of such a mission is always bound to be cultures and civilizations that typify and reverberate the profundity and wholesomeness of the causes and influences that engendered and gave rise to them. Man’s life, accordingly, is all about forging and nurturing relationships, starting with his own self and then with all the other existing spiritual and material, animate and inanimate, realities, and all the way through the horizontal and vertical miscellaneous levels and dimensions of life. It is due to this that man in Arabic is called insan, which is derived from the verbs anisa and ista’nasa which mean: keep someone company, feel at ease with someone or something, get used to, and to become friendly and benign towards others. Total isolation and loneliness would thus always be an excruciating chastisement for man. This is so because that way, man will not be himself, or herself, and whatever he, or she, does in such a state will prove unnatural and against his, or her, primordial penchants and physical as well as mental and spiritual configuration, and so, detrimental to his, or her, overall wellbeing.
At the site of the Mosque, there was a temple in both the Aramaean and Roman eras. The place was later converted into a Church dedicated to St John the Baptist in the Byzantine era. Following the arrival of Muslims, the Church was eventually adopted and modified as a mosque.
Abstract
This paper discusses the concept of al-wasatiyyah and some of its implications for correctly perceiving the phenomenon of Islamic built environment. The paper concludes that although those implications are rather indirect and implicit in nature, the relationship between the two, i.e., al-wasatiyyah and Islamic built environment, is very strong and reciprocal. Since they have much in common, and since they exert a considerable influence on each other’s ultimate actualization, the concepts of al-wasatiyyah and Islamic built environment should be brought much closer to each other in reviving and unifying the Muslim community. The discussion in the paper focuses on the universality and flexibility of Islamic built environment; how a delicate balance between the form and function in Islamic built environment ought to be established; and avoiding vices which are most often associated with built environment and which are caused by extravagant and excessive tendencies. The nature of the paper is conceptual rather than empirical, featuring a qualitative methodology that combines the descriptive and analytical methods.
Keywords: al-wasatiyyah, Islamic built environment, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), universality, the form, function
The best solution for Islamic architecture is to be traditional, but without just blindly imitating and repeating the past, and modern, albeit without rejecting tradition and constantly seeking to break with the past. Tradition and modernity in Islamic architecture must be at peace, rather than at loggerheads, with each other. Traditional and modern architecture in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The Popularity of the Theme
Undoubtedly, the subjects of tradition and modernity and how Muslims responded to them in late nineteenth and twentieth centuries are some of the most important topics that still preoccupy a great many scholars and researches, both Muslims and non-Muslims. A large corpus of literature, as a result, has emerged towards the end of twentieth and in early twenty-first centuries that addressed the subject matter. The studies and books carried different, but in essence very similar, titles such as – for instance – Islam and the Challenge of Modernity, edited by Sharifah Shifa al-Attas and published in 1996 by International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Islam: Motor or Challenge of Modernity, edited by Georg Stauth and published in 1998 by LIT Verlag in Hamburg, Germany; Muslims and Modernity, an Introduction to the Issues and Debates by Clinton Bennett, published in 2005 by Continuum in London, UK; Legitimizing Modernity in Islam by Husain Kassim, published in 2005 by the Edwin Mellen Press in Lewiston, New York, US; Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality and Modernity by Samira Haj, published in 2009 by Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, US; Islam, Modernity and the Human Sciences by Ali Zaidi, published in 2011 by Palgrave, Macmillan, US; Tradition, Modernity and Islam, edited by A. Rahman Tang Abdullah and published in 2011 by the International Islamic University Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur; Islam between Tradition and Modernity, an Australian Perspective by Mehmet Ozalp, published in 2012 by Barton Books in Canberra, Australia, and many others. Continue reading Tradition versus Modernity: Islam’s or Muslims’ Dilemma→
