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Welcome to ARCHNET, an open access, interdisciplinary, intellectual resource focused on the built environment of Muslim societies.Focused on the built environment of Islamic civilizations past and present, we seek to:<ul><li>Facilitate excellence in scholarship and professional work by&nbsp;providing reliable information and ready access&nbsp;to vetted, high-quality textual and multimedia resources&nbsp;focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design,&nbsp;heritage&nbsp;conservation, economic and environmental sustainability, community development and resilience in the face of rapid change, and related topics.</li><li>Enable teaching and learning in these domains by providing educators with reliable, effective pedagogical material and teaching aids.&nbsp;</li><li>Serve as a platform through which scholars, practitioners, and institutions can bring their work to new global audiences.&nbsp;</li><li>Promote intercultural understanding and dialogue through reliable, high-quality, peer-reviewed material on the diversity of and pluralism within Muslim societies and the interaction between Islamic and other religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions as it relates to architecture and urbanism.</li><li>Enable easy access to a wide variety of resources via a custom-built, web-based, mobile-friendly platform optimized to minimize financial, infrastructural, linguistic, and other barriers to access.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li></ul>Launched in 2002 after several years of development, ARCHNET is a pioneering digital resource that has proven a reliable authority on the built environment of Muslim societies, past and present.&nbsp;ARCHNET is a partnership between the <a href="https://www.archnet.org/collections/1342" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries</a> (AKDC@MIT) and the <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/1903" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Aga Khan Trust for Culture</a> (AKTC), with support from the <a href="https://www.archnet.org/collections/50" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture</a> at Harvard and MIT.&nbsp;ARCHNET is developed and maintained by <a href="https://www.performantsoftware.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Performant Software Solutions</a>.

About

Bodo Rasch

architect/planner

Medina 

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digital graphic

IAA707930

place

religious

mosque

Saudi Arabia

The insertion of 12 mechanical umbrellas in a mosque courtyard to provide climatic control and shade. The umbrella structure is made of steel and the fabric membrane is coated in Teflon. Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture

Import

tent structures

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slide

IAA10911

Prophet's Mosque Courtyard Treatment

Center for the Study of the Built Environment 

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An overview of the mosque's historical evolution over the course of the millennium extending from the birth of Islam until the mid-seventeenth century. Since the mosque is a historically defined building type, however, the course provides an overview of its historical evolution over the course of the millennium extending from the birth of Islam until the mid-seventeenth century. This will be followed by the impacts of Westernization and modernization on its architecture beginning in the mid-eighteenth century. The course presents initial attempts dating back to the 1950s that aimed at designing mosques that are more rooted in contemporary architectural practices rather than being defined by historical prototypes. Beginning with mosques designed since the 1970s, the course focuses on ones that have received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and that have been shortlisted for it. This lecture presents the House and Mosque of the Prophet.

01. House and Mosque of the Prophet (Mosques of Early Islam: The Hypostyle Mosque)

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IAA10903

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IAA10904

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IAA10905

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IAA10906

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IAA10909

First established under the name of Yathrib by Jewish tribes that settled there in the 6th century BCE, it was the city to which the Prophet Muhammad emigrated in the 7th century/1st century AH. It became the capital of the expanding Muslim empire, and was renamed Madina al-Munawwara.

Medina

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General view of the city

The Mosque of the Prophet was built in 622 by the Muslim community after they reached the city of Yathrib, which would later be called <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/3802" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">al-Madina al-Muanwara</a>. The mosque was situated next to the Prophet's house, and it consisted of a square enclosure of thirty by thirty-five meters, built with palm trunks and mud walls. It was accessed through three doors, Bab Rahmah to the south, Bab Jibril to the west and Bab al-Nisa' to the east. Within this enclosure, the Prophet created a shaded area to the south called the suffrah and aligned the prayer space facing north towards Jerusalem. After the revelation of Surat al-Baqara, the qibla direction was set to the south in order to face <a href="https://www.archnet.org/sites/3792" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Masjid al-Haram</a>, or, the <a href="https://www.archnet.org/sites/3790" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ka'ba</a> in the city of <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/5337" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mecca</a>. Seven years later, the mosque was doubled in size to accommodate the increasing number of Muslims. After the death of the Prophet, the mosque was again enlarged to twice its size. In 707, <a href="https://www.archnet.org/collections/2350" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Umayyad</a> Caliph <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/2609" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">al-Walid</a> (705-715) tore down the old structure, in order to build a larger mosque measuring eighty-four by one hundred meters, with stone foundations and a teak roof supported on stone columns. The new mosque included the house of the Prophet under which he was buried. The mosque walls were decorated with mosaics by Coptic and Greek craftsmen similar to the decoration of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and the one of the <a href="https://www.archnet.org/sites/2814" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dome of the Rock</a> in <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/6579" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jerusalem</a> built by the same caliph. The courtyard was surrounded by a gallery on four sides and four minarets added to its corners. A mihrab topped by a small dome was built on the qibla wall. Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi (775-785) period, destroyed the northern section of al-Walid's mosque between 778 and 781 to enlarge it further. He added twenty doors to the mosque, eight on each of the east and west walls, and four on the north wall. The <a href="https://www.archnet.org/collections/2365" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mamluk</a> Sultans maintained the tradition of restoring and expanding of the Prophet's Mosque. During the reign of <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/7172" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sultan Qala'un</a>, a dome was erected above the house and tomb of the Prophet and an ablution fountain was built outside of Bab al-Salam. Sultan Nasir bin Muhammad bin Qala'un rebuilt the fourth minaret that had been destroyed earlier. After a lightning that destroyed a big part of the mosque in 1481, <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/2639" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sultan Qaytbay</a> rebuilt the east, west and qibla walls. The <a href="https://www.archnet.org/collections/2368" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ottoman</a> sultans who held Hijaz region from 1517 until World War I, also contributed to the Mosque of the Prophet. <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/2620" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sultan Suleyman</a> I (1520-1566) rebuilt the western and eastern walls of the mosque and built the northeastern minaret known as al-Suleymaniyya. A new mihrab, called al-Ahnaf, was built next to the Prophet's mihrab known as al-Shafi'iyyah, and a new dome covered in lead sheets and painted green, above the Prophet's House and Tomb. During the reign of Ottoman Sultan <a href="https://www.archnet.org/authorities/2638" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Abdulmecid I</a> (1839-1861), the entire site was remodeled with the exception of the Prophet's Tomb, the three mihrabs, the minbar and the Suleymaniyya minaret. The precinct was enlarged to include an ablution area to the north. The prayer hall to the south was doubled in width and covered with small domes equal in size except for domes covering the mihrab area, Bab al-Salam and the Prophet's Tomb. The domes were decorated with Quranic verses and lines from Nahj al-Burdah the famous poem by thirteenth-century Arabic poet al-Busiri. The qibla wall was covered with glazed tiles featuring Quranic calligraphy. The floors of the prayer hall and the courtyard were paved with marble and red stones and a fifth minaret, known as al-Majidiyya, was built to the west of the enclosure. After the foundation of the Saudi Kingdom of Arabia in 1932, the Mosque of the Prophet underwent several modifications. In 1951 King Abdul Aziz (1932-1953) ordered major demolitions around the mosque to make way for new wings to the east and west of the prayer hall, which consisted of concrete columns with pointed arches. Older columns were reinforced with concrete and braced with copper rings at the top. The Suleymaniyya and Majidiyya minarets were replaced by two minarets in Mamluk revival style. Two additional minarets were erected to the northeast and northwest of the mosque. A library was built along the western wall to house historic Qurans and books on religion. In 1973 Saudi King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz ordered the construction of temporary shelters to the west of the mosque to accommodate the growing number of worshippers in 1981, the old mosque was surrounded by new prayer areas on these sides, enlarging five times its size. As it stands today, the mosque has a rectangular plan on two floors with the Ottoman prayer hall projecting to the south. The main prayer hall occupies the entire first floor. It has a flat paved roof interrupted by twenty-four domes raised on square bases. Forty-eight pierced into the base of each dome illuminate the interior. The roof is also used for prayer during peak times, when the twenty-four domes slide out on metal tracks to shade areas of the roof, creating light wells for the prayer hall. At these times, the courtyard of the Ottoman mosque is also shaded with umbrellas affixed to freestanding columns. The roof is accessed by stairs and escalators. The paved area around the mosque is also used for prayer, equipped with umbrella tents. The north façade has three evenly spaced porticos, while the east, west and south façades have two. The walls are composed of a series of windows topped by pointed arches with black and white voussoirs. There are six peripheral minarets attached to the new extension, and four others frame the Ottoman structure. The mosque is lavishly decorated with polychrome marble and stones. The columns are of white marble with brass capitals supporting slightly pointed arches, built of black and white stones. The column pedestals have ventilation grills that regulate the temperature inside the prayer hall. The mosque enclosure is one hundred times bigger than the first mosque built by the Prophet and can accommodate more than half a million worshippers. Sources: Damluji, Salma Samar, ed. The Architecture of the Prophet's Holy Mosque, Al Madinah. London: Hazar Publishing Limited, 1998. Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture, Form Function and Meaning, 72-73. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. Michell, George, ed. Architecture of the Islamic World, 210. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.

Masjid al-Nabawi

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Prophet's Mosque Courtyard Treatment
Medina, Saudi Arabia

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Medina, Saudi Arabia

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Prophet's Mosque Courtyard TreatmentMedina, Saudi Arabia

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Prophet's Mosque Courtyard Treatment
Medina, Saudi Arabia