Tanoli: Islamic Architecture

Under theAbbasid caliphate (750–1258), which succeeded the Umayyads (661–750) in 750, the focal point of Islamic political and cultural life shifted eastward from Syria to Iraq, where, in 762, Baghdad, the circular City of Peace (madinat al-salam), was founded as the new capital. The^cAbbasids later also established another city north of Baghdad, called Samarra’ (an abbreviation of the sentence “He who sees it rejoices”), which replaced the capital for a brief period (836–83). The first three centuries of^cAbbasid rule were a golden age in which Baghdad and Samarra’ functioned as the cultural and commercial capitals of the Islamic world. During this period, a distinctive style emerged and new techniques were developed that spread throughout the Muslim realm and greatly influenced Islamic art and architecture.

Following text was originally written by: Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom

The “imperial style “and the cultural unity of the caliphate

In the time of the Prophet and his immediate successors, the mosque had combined several functions. It was, of course, a place of worship, but it was also the social and political center of the nascent Muslim community. Under the Abbasids, the mosque developed a new character as an exclusively religious institution. In early Islamic times, there had been no architectural uniformity, as mosques were made out of older structures or constructed in local vernacular styles. Under the Umayyads, the great Friday (congregational) mosques of the major cities such as Damascus, Jerusalem, and Medina had been monumentalized with the panoply of late antique architectural forms and decoration, but the effective confinement of Umayyad power to greater Syria meant that the “imperial style,” such as it was, was limited to the core Umayyad region. All this changed in the Abbasid period. The great power of the early Abbasid caliphate, combined with the growing role of the ulama, meant that a standard type of Friday mosque evolved over a wide geographical area, although individual examples might differ in the use of local materials and techniques of construction.
The typical Friday mosque in the Abbasid period was a rectangular structure, somewhat longer than it was wide, with a rectangular courtyard in its center. The courtyard was surrounded by hypostyle halls, in which many stone columns or brick piers supported a flat wooden roof. The hall was wider on the side of the qibla wall, which faced Mecca, and had in its middle a mihrab, or niche. In order to emphasize the mihrab, builders might add a small dome directly in front of it or a wider aisle leading from the courtyard. To the right of the mihrab stood a stepped minbar, or pulpit, from which the imam (prayer leader) gave the Friday sermon (khutba). In the Umayyad period, the caliph himself had often given the sermon, but by Abbasid times the caliph rarely, if ever, attended worship in the Friday mosque, and the job of leading prayers was taken over by a member of the ulama.
On the opposite side of the courtyard from the mihrab, stood a tower. This, usually called a minaret (from the Arabic manara, “place of or thing that gives light”), is often associated with the call to prayer, but there is little contemporary evidence that Abbasid towers were used for this purpose. Rather, their monumental size and prominent placement suggest that they were erected to advertise the presence of the Friday mosque from afar and symbolize the preeminent role of the mosque in Abbasid society.

In the same way that a standard mosque style was spread throughout the Abbasid domains, many other forms and techniques that had been developed in the capital were disseminated to the provinces. In contrast to the Umayyads, who in Syria had built stone structures, Abbasid builders favored mud brick and baked brick covered with a rendering of gypsum plaster, often painted, carved, or molded with geometric and vegetal designs. In part, this choice of materials may have been due to the lack of suitable building stone in the heartland of Abbasid power, but in practical terms it meant that Abbasid-style buildings could be erected wherever the raw materials — clay, lime, and gypsum – were found, in effect everywhere. Similarly, the Abbasid style of molded stucco decoration, which combined late anti practical innovation was transformed into an aesthetic one, as builders throughout the Abbasid lands adopted this type of stucco revetment.
Baghdad, the imperial metropolis of a far-flung empire, exerted a magnetic attraction on people and ideas. The capital also served as a kind of clearing house, as people and ideas returned to the provinces with new ideas and experiences. For example, it now seems that in the 8th century Syrian glassmakers invented the decorative technique of using metallic oxides to give their wares a lustrous sheen after they had been fired a second time in a reducing, low-oxygen kiln. This unique technique of luster decoration was adapted by potters in Abbasid Iraq, who used it to decorate their earthenware ceramics. From Iraq, Abbasid potters introduced the technique to Egypt, where it took on a new life of its own.
Baghdad also set the style for cultural norms in the Abbasid period, even for rival powers. For example, the Umayyads of Spain, who challenged the Abbasids political legitimacy, nevertheless emulated their art and culture. The musician Ziryab (789-857), an emigre from Baghdad, became the arbiter of fine taste in 9th-century Cordoba, where he set the standards for dress, table manners, protocol, etiquette, and even the coiffures of men and women.
Similarly, Abbasid elegance was emulated by their religious and political rivals in Byzantium. In 830 a Byzantine envoy went to Baghdad, where he was so impressed by the splendor of Abbasid architecture that on his return to Constantinople he persuaded Emperor Theophilos (829-842) to build a palace exactly like the ones he had seen. Theophilos complied, and a palace was built at Bryas, now Maltepe, an Asiatic suburb of Constantinople on the Sea of Marmara. Only the substructure remains, but it shows a large rectangular enclosure that calls to mind Umayyad and Abbasid palaces. The only departure from the Abbasid model was a chapel added next to the imperial chamber and a triconch church set in the middle of the courtyard.
Virtually nothing but memories remains of Abbasid Baghdad, which has been rebuilt over the centuries, and the vast palaces of Samarra have long since fallen into ruin. Much Abbasid art was ephemeral, made of materials such as cloth, plaster, and wood, which have not survived the ravages of time. Fragile ceramics and glassware were broken, but their shards have remained to give an unusually clear picture of the tableware of the Abbasid elites. Since what remains does not necessarily reflect what was made, the historian needs to combine the artistic remains with the many textual sources for the period and the archeological evidence to recreate a picture of the splendors and glories of Abbasid art.

The search for a capital

Building large new cities was the major architectural activity of the Abbasid caliphs. In terms of function, these cities were logical successors to the garrison cities that the Umayyads had built in newly conquered regions. In terms of architecture, however, these new cities were the continuation of a long Mesopotamian and Iranian tradition of rulers building administrative capitals. These range from Durr Sharrukin, the city founded by the Assyrian ruler Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) northwest of Mosul at Khorsabad, to the round city founded by the Sassanian emperor Ardashir I (224-241) at Gur (modern Firuzabad) in the province of Fars in southwest Iran.
During the first decade of Abbasid rule, the caliphs erected several administrative centers in the vicinity of Kufa, in southern Iraq. They were known as al-Hashimiya (in reference to the family from which both the Prophet and the Abbasids descended), but nothing remains of them and the sources provide little additional information. These centers must have been royal residences, since at least one of them had a throne room, called a khadra, the same word that had been used in the Umayyad period for a throne room.
The Abbasid throne room was on an upper floor, for the 9th-century historian al-Tabari reported that, when the Rawandiya rebels, members of an extremist Shiite sect, approached Caliph al-Mansur (754—775) in his khadra, they attempted to escape out the window and fell to their deaths. Al-Tabari s report indicates that even the earliest Abbasid administrative centers were substantial multistory buildings.

The construction of Baghdad

The residences near Kufa proved unsuitable, so on August 1, 762, the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, decided to move the capital to Medina al-Salam (Baghdad). The site, near Ctesiphon, was chosen for its easy riparian communication with Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, and northern Syria, as well as its important land routes to the Iranian plateau, southern Syria, and the Hijaz. Work on the new capital was completed four years later in 766/767. As with the first Abbasid capitals near Kufa, nothing remains of Abbasid Baghdad, which is entirely covered by the modern city. Extensive descriptions in medieval texts, however, have allowed scholars in modern times to reconstruct the city’s general plan. About 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers), the Round City was surrounded by a double set of sturdy, mud-brick walls, and a broad moat fed by the Tigris River. The walls were pierced at the intercardinal points by four gates — the Khorasan Gate on the northeast, the Basra Gate on the southeast, the Kufa Gate on the southwest, and the Damascus Gate on the northwest – from which roads led to the four quarters of the empire.

Each of the four gates to al-Mansur s Round City possessed a complex, bent entrance passage designed to guard it against violent attack. Each gate was surmounted by an elevated chamber reached by staircases or ramps. Each of the chambers was crowned by a dome, and the whole 50-cubit (82 foot, 25 meter) structure was topped by a weathervane in the shape of a human figure. The caliph used these rooms as audience halls when he wished to view anyone who might be approaching or whatever lay beyond the city walls. The audience halls also marked the extension of his personal domain and authority over the extremities of the city.
Four major avenues lined with shopping arcades and other buildings led from the gates into the interior of the city. Abutting the wall on the interior was an outer ring of residences for the caliph’s family, staff, and servants. An inner ring of residences housed the arsenal, the treasury, and government offices. The innermost zone of the city was a broad esplanade in which stood the police station, the Friday mosque, and the caliph’s palace.
The mosque was a square hypostyle structure measuring 200 cubits (approximately 330 feet, 100 meters) on each side, with an open interior courtyard. Adjacent to the mosque was the palace; located in the exact center of the city, it covered four times the area of the mosque. At the back of the palace, a reception hall (iwan) measuring 30 x 20 cubits (50 x 33 feet, 15×10 meters) led to a domed audience chamber 20 cubits (33 feet, 10 meters) on each side. Above it was another domed audience hall, known to contemporaries as the “Qubbat al- Khadra,” often translated as the “Green Dome” but more accurately rendered as the “Dome of Heaven,” thereby making reference to an ancient tradition of associating the ruler with the heavens. The top of this dome stood 80 cubits (130 feet, 40 meters) above the ground and was itself crowned by a weathervane in the shape of a horseman. Contemporaries considered the horseman the crown of Baghdad, a symbol of the region, and a monument to the Abbasids.

The revolving horseman was also a convenient metaphor for the caliph’s power and authority. It was said that, if the sultan saw the figure with its lance pointing toward a given direction, he knew that rebels would appear, before word had reached him. Like a weathervane, the horseman was supposed to predict storms before they blew in. The collapse of the Qubbat al-Khadra and its horseman during a storm in 941 was indeed an omen: within four years the Buyids entered Baghdad and established themselves as “protectors” of the Abbasid caliphs.

The Round City was built to separate the caliph from his subjects. Several settlements stood outside the walls: a great army camp stood at Harbiya, markets were located in al-Karkh, and al-Mansur’s son al-Mahdi built a subsidiary camp for his troops on the east bank of the Tigris at Rusafa. The Round City soon failed to achieve its original purpose, as the population setded thickly around it, and even the administrative core was quickly transformed into a normal urban entity. This was particularly apparent following the siege of 812/813 during the civil war between Harun al-Rashids sons, when the original Khorasani army was replaced by new units. The victorious Caliph al-Mamun moved his palace from the Round City to a suburban estate on the east bank of the Tigris, and the Round City was swallowed up by the new metropolis developing on the west bank. Sections of the original city wall remained visible for centuries, but no trace of the Round City has been found in modern times.

Its circular form and centralized planning, with the caliphs palace in the exact center of the city and the mosque adjacent to it, invite speculation about the city’s intended cosmic significance as the center of a universal empire. It has been speculated, for example, that al-Mansur modeled his city on such earlier round-shaped royal foundations as Firuzabad, in Fars. As attractive as this hypothesis and others may be, there is no contemporary evidence to either support or disprove them. In any event, within a tew decades, if not years, or its foundation, the administrative center had been transformed from a large-scale palace into a rich and vibrant industrial and commercial center.

Samarra, the new imperial capital

Harun al-Rashid s long and glorious reign left many problems. After his death in 809, civil war broke out between his sons: Amin, who had inherited the caliphate, and Amin s younger brother al-Mamun, who had been given only the governorship of Khorasan. The Abbasid army of Baghdad supported Amin, the local candidate, so al-Mamun was forced to turn for support to independent warlords from his power base in eastern Iran. Al-Mamun emerged as the victor, but, during the bitter civil war, Baghdad was severely damaged, and the Abbasid army and Iraqi population, who had suffered most, were totally alienated from their new rulers.
To strengthen their control over a rebellious population, al-Mamun and al-Mutasim, another of his brothers and his eventual successor (833-842), adopted a new military policy. They appointed several chiefs in Transoxiana, Armenia, and North Africa as hereditary governors and hired regiments of Turkish slaves from Central Asia to serve in the army. This new institution strengthened the hand of the caliph but was also a major source of trouble, for bloody clashes broke out in Baghdad between the foreign Turkish soldiers and the local Arab soldiers and populace.
To separate the feuding groups, al-Mutasim, like his father Harun al-Rashid, decided to establish a new administrative capital. In 836, after trying several sites, he settled on Samarra, located 78 miles (125 kilometers) north of Baghdad on the east bank of the Tigris River, where his father had begun to build a palace some decades earlier. Unlike the Round City of Baghdad, which has been built over continuously since medieval times, the enormous area of ruins at Samarra was largely abandoned in medieval times and remained that way until the 20th century. When archeologists rediscovered it in the early 1900s, the site stretched for 30 miles (50 kilometers) along the bank of the Tigris and covered more than 60 square miles (150 square kilometers).