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]
