Preserving
the Living Heritage of Islamic Cities
Toward an Architecture in
the Spirit of Islam
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Yesterday we were
theoretical, as if Islam were primarily or solely a system of
beliefs. What has always impressed me about Islam is that it is a
set of actions if one considers the five pillars. It is not the
belief in God that is important, it is the declaration of God. It is
not the idea of praying, it is prayer itself. It is not the
community of equality as an idea, but the pilgrimage in which all
men stand equal in community. In Ramadan, it does not matter whether
you think you ought not have that cigarette or food. It is not the
smoking or the eating, the thing of im�portance is observing the
fast. The fifth, which has been totally forgotten in the theory is
alms. They are a responsibility of each man toward his fellow man. I
want to talk about practical Islamic spirit. You are practicing
architects, let us see if there is something upon which to practice,
not something for just theorizing.
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Many of the largest cities
and now a few smaller ones in the vast territory shaped by historic
Islam are the repositories of a precious and irreplaceable heritage
(not only for Islamic countries, but for the world) not only for
their archaic qualities, but for their living relevance today. Both
the preservation of that heritage and the harnessing of that vital
relevance are com�pelling rationales for a concern, practical as
well as scholarly, with Islamic architec�ture and urbanism.
There is not, nor was there ever, an
Islamic city or even an Islamic system of city building, if one
means by that term a of tiny space aggregating to vast designs, that
signals the code? Is it the basic archi�tectonic concept of
square-horizontal and round-vertical space that announces the unity
underlying external diversity in exact shape? Is it the overall
emphasis upon enclosing, enfolding, involuting, protecting and
covering that one finds alike in single structures in quarters,
indeed in entire cities? There appear to be certain basic "deep
structures" to the language of Islamic expression in space.
There are also recurring idioms which, while they may not be
attributable directly to the religious or legal system, were
functionally suited to the social structure commonly found within
Islamic cities and to the technology dominant during their periods
of maximum definition and growth. Among these idioms are,
charac�teristically: the saq or bazaar, the residential court
(contiguous but uncon�nected rooms each giving out to a common
gallery or atrium), the blind or deceptively hidden entranceway to
individual struc�tures or quarters, the tri-fold (rather than the
more Western bi-fold) division of space into private, controlled
semi-private and public, and a clear segregation into male and
female spheres, perhaps as an underlying cause of many of the above
features.
Some mechanism, common throughout the lands of Islam, helped to
generate both the deep structure and the more idiomatic expressions.
Without a doubt this was the legal system, which constituted a
common base despite the variations introduced through major
sectarian cleavages and the chief schools of jurisprudence. Rather
than central planning according to certain models (as was true, for
example, in the overseas colonies of classical Greece and Rome), it
was legal notions of proper behaviour in space and legal regulations
in property relations (between theocratically-legitimized ruling
classes and their sub�jects, among fraternal members of the 'Umma,
between believers and non- or semi-believers, between near and
distant neighbours that created, over and over again, certain
recurring solutions to the question of urban spatial
organization,wherever Islam was implanted. Whether one speaks of
restoring and preserving a heritage, or of incorporating into
contemporary planning and building the elements which made Islamic
cities both beautiful and functional, one must try to define this
essence and the prin�ciples that governed its repeated generation.
For only if we can identify those essential qualities can we select
appropriate buildings and quarters for preservation according to the
criterion of exemplariness; and only if we can formulate these basic
principles can we explore their enduring worth and determine whether
they have any applicability for solution of present-day problems in
urban planning.
Excerpts from the Proceedings of Seminar One
in the series, Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World.
Held at Aiglemont, Gouvieux, France April 1978. Preserving the
Living Heritage of Islamic Cities by Janet L. Abu-Lughod.
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