Secular Architecture
Court of the Lions, Alhambra The Court of the Lions is in the center of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. The rooms surrounding the court are famous for their intricately detailed stucco reliefs. The Islamic palace fortress was built for the Moorish kings during the 13th and 14th centuries.Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York During Umayyad and early Abbasid times, princes of... the caliphs' families built a number of desert palaces in Syria and Iraq. Some of these had hunting parks—like those of late Sassanian kings—or domed baths, derived from late Roman types of buildings. Thus, these palaces demonstrate the synthesis of the Western and Eastern artistic heritage that characterized early Islamic art, and also demonstrate its relative freedom before the traditional proscriptions against figural art were codified, not in the Qur'an but in the Hadith (Traditions) in the 9th century. The Umayyad palaces featured mosaics, wall paintings, and plaster relief sculpture showing courtiers, animals, and even the caliph himself; much of this ornament was derived from Sassanian tradition.
In the middle period, the Islamic world produced the greatest flowering of urban civilization yet seen. With the coming of the Mongols, however, many such cities were destroyed or reduced to villages, and the water systems on which they depended were also demolished.
Under the Abbasids, an entire administrative city, Samarra’, was started—but never completed—in the desert near Baghdad. Within Samarra’ was an enormous walled building, 175 hectares (432 acres) in extent and containing many gardens, which was a city in itself. It comprised offices, a mosque, baths, and living quarters. Some of the residential buildings had painted figural decorations, but the finest decorative work was of carved plaster in overall geometric patterns based on Turkish (Central Asian) motifs. Planned cities such as Samarra and Al Fustat (near Cairo, and known through excavation) are notable for their efficiently designed aqueducts and sewers; all the houses had baths and latrines.
Another Abbasid city-building project was the construction of the Round City (762) at Baghdad, known primarily from written descriptions because its site lies under the modern city. The Round City contained a series of concentric rings, with the caliph's residence, mosques, and household in the center. The conception of the plan has its roots in Sassanian Iran.
Palace complexes, similar to that of Samarra’, were built in later times at Cairo, at Madinah al-Zahra (Spain), in North Africa, and in Istanbul, where in 1459 the Ottomans began the Topkapi Sarayi, now the Topkapi Palace Museum. The tradition was continued also in the 14th-century Alhambra Palace of the Moorish kings at Granada, Spain. Of particular note here is the Court of the Lions with a fountain surrounded by stone lions spouting water. These Alhambra lions have their counterparts in animal-shaped bronze and pottery vessels; although figural, their function keeps them within the category of decorative art. (See Decorative Art below.)
In Iran, the last great buildings were those erected by the Safavids, whose contributions to secular architecture included bridges, polo grounds, and palaces built with wooden kiosks from which the ever-present fountains could be appreciated or polo matches observed. An art gallery, intended by Shah Abbas I for his collection of Chinese porcelains, was also part of the palace.
The caravansary (or, in Turkish, han) was the particular contribution of the Seljuks. These rest houses for travelers, built along the caravan routes, had an aisled hall and a courtyard for animals. Other types of buildings that were prominent in the history of Islamic architecture were public baths, bazaars (marketplaces), gardens as well as garden pavilions, and ribats, or frontier garrisons, extant examples of which are now found only in Tunisia.
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posted by Ronald @ 4:08 AM
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