Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam

Author: Samer Akkach

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0791483444

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This fascinating interdisciplinary study reveals connections between architecture, cosmology, and mysticism. Samer Akkach demonstrates how space ordering in premodern Islamic architecture reflects the transcendental and the sublime. The book features many new translations, a number from unpublished sources, and several illustrations. Referencing a wide range of mystical texts, and with a special focus on the works of the great Sufi master Ibn Arabi, Akkach introduces a notion of spatial sensibility that is shaped by religious conceptions of time and space. Religious beliefs about the cosmos, geography, the human body, and constructed forms are all underpinned by a consistent spatial sensibility anchored in medieval geocentrism. Within this geometrically defined and ordered universe, nothing stands in isolation or ambiguity; everything is interrelated and carefully positioned in an intricate hierarchy. Through detailed mapping of this intricate order, the book shows the significance of this mode of seeing the world for those who lived in the premodern Islamic era and how cosmological ideas became manifest in the buildings and spaces of their everyday lives. This is a highly original work that provides important insights on Islamic aesthetics and culture, on the history of architecture, and on the relationship of art and religion, creativity and spirituality.

The Topkapi Scroll
The Topkapi Scroll

Author: Gülru Necipoğlu

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 1996-03-01

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0892363355

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.

In-Between: Architectural Drawing and Imaginative Knowledge in Islamic and Western Traditions
In-Between: Architectural Drawing and Imaginative Knowledge in Islamic and Western Traditions

Author: Hooman Koliji

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1317117700

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Contemporary technical architectural drawings, in establishing a direct relationship between the drawing and its object, tend to privilege the visible physical world at the expense of the invisible intangible ideas and concepts, including that of the designer’s imagination. As a result, drawing may become a utilitarian tool for documentation, devoid of any meaningful value in terms of a kind of knowledge that could potentially link the visible and invisible. This book argues that design drawings should be recognized as intermediaries, mediating between the world of ideas and the world of things, spanning the intangible and tangible. The notion of the 'Imaginal' as an intermediary between the invisible and visible is discussed, showing how architectural drawings lend themselves to this notion by performing as creative agents contributing not only to the physical world but also penetrating the realm of concepts. The book argues that this 'in-between' quality to architectural drawing is essential and that it is critical to perceive drawings as subtle bodies that hold physical attributes (for example, form, proportion, color), highly evocative, yet with no matter. Focusing on Islamic geometric architectural drawings, both historical and contemporary, it draws on key philosophical and conceptual notions of imagination from the Islamic tradition as these relate to the creative act. In doing so, this book not only makes important insights into the design process and act of architectural representation, but more broadly it adds to debates on philosophies of the imagination, linking both Western and Islamic traditions.

The Historiography of Persian Architecture
The Historiography of Persian Architecture

Author: Mohammad Gharipour

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 131742722X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Historiography is the study of the methodology of writing history, the development of the discipline of history, and the changing interpretations of historical events in the works of individual historians. Exploring the historiography of Persian art and architecture requires a closer look at a diverse range of sources, including chronicles, historical accounts, travelogues, and material evidence coming from archaeological excavations. The Historiography of Persian Architecture highlights the political, cultural, and intellectual contexts that lie behind the written history of Persian architecture in the twentieth century, presenting a series of investigations on issues related to historiography. This book addresses the challenges, complexities, and contradictions regarding historical and geographical diversity of Persian architecture, including issues lacking in the 20th century historiography of Iran and neighbouring countries. This book not only illustrates different trends in Persian architecture but also clarifies changing notions of research in this field. Aiming to introduce new tools of analysis, the book offers fresh insights into the discipline, supported by historical documents, archaeological data, treatises, and visual materials. It brings together well-established and emerging scholars from a broad range of academic spheres, in order to question and challenge pre-existing historiographical frameworks, particularly through specific case studies. Overall, it provides a valuable contribution to the study of Persian architecture, simultaneously revisiting past literature and advancing new approaches. This book would be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East and Iranian Studies, as well as Architectural History, including Islamic architecture and historiography.

Synagogues in the Islamic World
Synagogues in the Islamic World

Author: Gharipour Mohammad Gharipour

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1474468438

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This beautifully illustrated volume looks at the spaces created by and for Jews in areas under the political or religious control of Muslims. Covering regions as diverse as Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, it asks how the architecture of synagogues responded to contextual issues and traditions, and how these contexts influenced the design and evolution of synagogues. As well as revealing how synagogues reflect the culture of the Jewish minority at macro and micro scales, from the city to the interior, the book also considers patterns of the development of synagogues in urban contexts and in connection with urban elements and monuments.

Sufi Cosmology
Sufi Cosmology

Author: Christian Lange

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-12-28

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 9004392610

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume discusses origin, structure and levels of existence of the created world and the place of human beings in it, according to the major Sufi thinkers of all times.

Advances in Utopian Studies and Sacred Architecture
Advances in Utopian Studies and Sacred Architecture

Author: Claudio Gambardella

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 3030507653

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At a time dominated by the disappearance of Future, as claimed by the French anthropologist Marc Augé, Utopia and Religion seem to be two different ways of giving back an inner horizon to mankind. Therefore this book, on the one hand, considers the importance of utopia as a tool and how it offers an economic and social resource to improve cities’ wealth, future and livability. On the other, it explores the impact of religious and cultural ideals on cities that have recently emerged in this context. Based on numerous observations, the book examines the intellectual legacy of utopian theory and practices across various academic disciplines. It also presents discussions, theories, and case studies addressing a range of issues and topics related to utopia.

Colour, Light and Wonder in Islamic Art
Colour, Light and Wonder in Islamic Art

Author: Idries Trevathan

Publisher: Saqi Books

Published: 2020-02-17

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 086356190X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A unique investigation into the aesthetics of colour in Islamic art revealing its deeper symbolic and mystical meanings. The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In this new approach, Idries Trevathan examines the language of colour in Islamic art and architecture in dialogue with its aesthetic contexts, offering insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of interpreting colour. The seventeenth-century Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. Here, Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the mosque's backdrop. He shows how careful combinations of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns expresses knowledge beyond that experienced in the corporeal world, offering another language with which to know and experience God. Colour thus becomes a spiritual language, calling for a re-consideration of how we read Islamic aesthetics.

Alphanumeric Cosmology From Greek into Arabic
Alphanumeric Cosmology From Greek into Arabic

Author: Juan Acevedo

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 316159245X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Juan Acevedo embarks on a semantic journey to track the origin and adventures of the Greek term stoicheion, which for at least eighteen centuries, from Pythagoras to Fibonacci, simultaneously meant "element", "letter", and "numeral". Focusing on this triple meaning and on how it was translated and interpreted in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic - especially in key texts of the Abrahamic faiths- a metaphysical study takes shape. With touches of alchemy and theology, it reveals how a shared fundamental alphanumeric cosmology underlay many basic paradigms of science and faith around the Mediterranean until the advent of the Indo-Arabic numerals broke the "marriage" of letter and numeral. Careful readings of Plato, Philolaos, Nicomachus and Philo, of Genesis and the Sefer Yetsira, of the Qur'an, the Ikhwan al-Safa', and Ibn 'Arabi are all woven together into a synthesis full of implications for many disciplines.

The Notion of Space within Diverse Fields of Cognizance
The Notion of Space within Diverse Fields of Cognizance

Author: Driss Bouyahya

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-07-28

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1527573184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume provides a multifaceted approach to how meanings of space are created and how they impact individuals’ perceptions, sense of belonging, identity, actions and ideologies. It brings together various contributions that shed light on the multiplicity of voices and narratives on space, on their co-existence and forms of interactions, and on the ways in which they emerged from, and reshaped, relations of power.