Early Islamic Architecture and Structural Configurations
الموضوعات :
Kubilay Kaptan
1
(Assistant professor, Disaster Education, Application and Research Center, Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey)
الکلمات المفتاحية: Early Islamic Architecture, Structural configurations, Islamic Architercture `s eleme,
ملخص المقالة :
Islam spread rapidly after its founding, encompassing much of North Africa, the Middle East, andSoutheast Asia. The art of this vast region draws its distinctive character both from Islam itself and from the diverse cultural traditions of the world’s Muslims. Because Islam discouraged the use of figurative images, particularly inreligious contexts- unlike Christian art- Islamic artists developed a rich vocabulary of aniconic, or nonfigural, ornamentthat is a hallmark of Islamic work. This vocabulary includes complex geometric patterns and the scrolling vinesknown outside the Islamic world as arabesques. Figural representation, to the extent it was permitted which variedfrom time to time and place to place, first developed most prominently in regions with strong pre-Islamic figuraltraditions, such as those that had been under the control of the Roman and Byzantine empires. Stylized forms forrepresenting animals and plants developed in the regions that had been under the control of the Sassanian dynasty ofPersia (modern Iran), the heirs of the artistic traditions of the ancient Near East, who ruled from 226 to 641. Becausethe Arabian birthplace of Islam had little art, these Persian and Roman Byzantine influences shaped Islamic art in itsformative centuries.The elements of early early Islamic architecture were formed to respond effectively to people’s physical, environmental,social, physiological and religious requirements at their time. The research demonstrates that architects used tocopy-paste various elements of the Islamic historical buildings in their design work without understanding the meaningsand values that it holds. Such approach would only transfer the element’s form though strips it from its historicalcontext and values. The paper argues that architect should comprehend not only the hidden values of the historicalelements only but also how values interacted and are integrated into these elements. By doing so, the architect wouldbe able to correctly perceive and read these elements thus incorporate it successfully in his/ her design. This articlegives perspective of early Islamic architecture and structural configurations of the related era.
