A Prophetic Perspective of Mosque Architecture

‘I HAVE NOT BEEN COMMANDED TO APPLY TASHYĪD TO MOSQUES’: A PROPHETIC PERSPECTIVE OF MOSQUE ARCHITECTURE ESSAM S. AYYAD

The Islamic Quarterly/Volume 59/Issue 2/2015

This is an accepted manuscript (post-print version) of the article, but not the published version (version of record) itself. For the latter, please contact the Islamic Cultural Centre 146 Park Road, London, NW8 7RG

How to cite this article: Essam S. Ayyad (2015). 'I Have not Been Commanded to Apply Tashyīd to Mosques': A Prophetic Perspective of Mosque Architecture, The Islamic Quarterly, 59, pp. 1-34

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INTRODUCTION In a recent article,1 I have tried to investigate the primary nature of the building which the Prophet reportedly built at Madina soon after his emigration to it in 622 AD. The evidence available argues in favour of the building being a real mosque, and not just a private residence as believed by a majority of Western academics and quite a number of Muslim art historians. Such a finding, attesting to early Islam’s capacity to produce the mosque type as institutionally and architecturally defined, would introduce a fresh perspective as far as the making of the mosque is concerned. A mosque built by the Prophet would furnish a paradigm for later mosques and give reason to discuss the many mosque-related ḥadīths; the Prophet must have given advice and/or commands concerning the form of his mosque and the mosque in general.2 Such a discussion became more plausible in view of the recent shift in modern scholarship toward the reception of ḥadīth,3 attempting to make a sensible use of it for historical purposes.4 To what extent could these two determinants―the Prophet’s mosque as a practical framework and his relevant ḥadīths as a theoretical one―represent the Prophet’s approach regarding mosque form? This article sets out to deal with this question. It

1

See Essam S. Ayyad, ‘The 'House of the Prophet' or the 'Mosque of the Prophet'?’, Journal of Islamic

Studies (2013) 24 (3), pp. 273-334. 2

In ḥadīth compilations, the traditions on mosques are usually presented in Kitāb al-Ṣalāt, ‘Book of

Prayer’. There are cases, however, where separate chapters/subchapters are dedicated to them. These could bear such titles as ‘K. al-Masājid’, ‘Book of Mosques’, or ‘K. al-masājid wa-mawāḍiʿ alṣalāh’, ‘Book of Mosques and Places of Prayer’, as in al-Nasāʾī and Muslim respectively. In Ibn Māja, the mosque-related traditions are listed under ‘Abwāb al-masājid wa-l jamāʿāt’, ‘Entries on Mosques and Congregational Prayers’, while in al-Bayhaqī they are compiled in a chapter called ‘Jimāʿ abwāb al-ṣalāh bi-l najāsa wa-mawḍiʿ al-ṣalāh min masjid wa-ghayrih’, ‘Collection of Entries on [the Ordinances of] Praying at Unclean Places and the Places of Prayer like Mosques, etc.’ The ḥadīths on the building of the Prophet’s mosque are usually gathered under the ‘Bāb bunyān al-masjid’, ‘Entry on Building the Mosque’. (In this article, all ḥadīths from the Six ‘canonical’ compilations are cited, with the ḥadīth numbers, from Mawsūʿat al-ḥadīth al-sharīf: al-kutub al-sitta, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Nasāʾī wa-Sunan Ibn Māja, revised. by Shaykh Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al- Azīz Āl al-Shaykh (Riyadh: Dār al-Salām, 1999)). 3

On this, see G. H. A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship of

Early Ḥadīth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); John Burton, An Introduction to Ḥadīth (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994); Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1994] 1996); Herbert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period ((Richmond: Curzon, 2000); G. Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, trans. by Shawkat M. Toorawa, New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; rev. edition 2009). 4

See Essam Ayyad, 'Early Transmission of Ḥadīth: Incentives and Challenges', Journal of Islamic and

Human Advanced Research, Vol. 3, Issue 11, 2013, pp. 762-782.

will further investigate the features of such a prophetic model of the mosque, should it exist, and explore whether it was binding or only elective. Such an inquiry, as we shall see, intersects with topics such as Islam’s outlook on visual arts and aesthetics in general. CURRENT VIEWS ON THE PROPHET AND HIS HOMELAND The Prophet Muḥammad is generally conceived to have maintained a negative attitude toward the elaboration of buildings, or rather toward building itself. He is usually referred to in the literature as a man whose date of birth cannot be claimed to have been significant to the history of art,5 who was ‘entirely without architectural ambitions’,6 and who even ‘despised architecture’.7 Such views are sometimes upheld by quoting: (i) some reports on the simple living conditions of the Prophet and his household;8 (ii) and some repeatedly iterated, but not effectively probed, ḥadīths depicting building as a wasteful activity.9 Creswell, for instance, considered one certain ḥadīth from Ibn Saʿd in three positions of his Early Muslim Architecture to make the judgement that the Prophet was reluctant toward construction.10 However, the views conveyed by adherents of this tendency, which undervalues the contribution of the Prophet and the earliest Muslim community in the making of the mosque, are often marred by inconsonance. Paradoxical, indeed conflicting, statements not only proceed from scholars who share such a standpoint, but also from the same scholar. Only twenty pages after Martin Briggs’ above statement on the irrelevance of the Prophet’s birthdate to art history, and with which he preferred to begin his book, Briggs explains how the architectural elements of a standard mosque evolved from features already included in the Prophet’s archetype.11 C. Becker, who also shares the opinions on the Prophet’s preference of simplicity, confusingly states that the latter, having become a

5

Martin Briggs, Muhammadan Architecture in Egypt and Palestine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 1.

See also M. Hamidullah, ‘Ästhetik und Kunst in der Lehre des Propheten’, Akten des 24. OrientalistenKongresses (1959), 359 ff. 6

K. A. C. Creswell (ed.), Early Muslim Architecture: with a Contribution on the Mosaics of the Dome of

the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque in Damascus by Marguerite Gautier-van Berchem (New York: Hacker Art Books, [1940, 1969], 2 vols. in 3, 1979), i. 1. 11. See also pp. 7, 9, 10 (hereafter cited as EMA); E. Richmond, Moslem Architecture (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1926), p. 9. 7

Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 64.

8

Ibid, i .1. 9.

9

These will be discussed below.

10

See Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 8, 11, 40, n. 2. In this Creswell quotes Ibn Saʿd: Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr, ed. by

ʿAlī M. ʿUmar, 11 vols (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī, 2001), i, 429-30). 11

Briggs, Muhammadan Architecture, pp. 21-2.

great man receiving delegates, took the minbar to serve as his throne.12 Had the Prophet become so attached to pompousness, why did he continue—up to the last of his days as we shall see—to resist proposals to get his mosque (which also served as his councils of state) elaborated? An elaborate court is usually the most favourite holding of a ‘great man’. The views on the Prophet’s apathy toward building were consolidated, if not prompted, by already existing ideas on Islam as ‘the religion of the desert’ and ‘the religion of nomadic simplicity’.13 In 1914, G. Bell wrote: The Mohammadan invaders were essentially nomadic; their dwelling was the black tent, their grave the desert sands. The inhabitants of the rare oases of western and central Arabia were content, as they are to-day, with a rude architecture of sun dried brick and palm trunks, unadorned by any intricate device of the imagination, and unsuited to any but the simplest needs.14

In his History of Architecture, J. Fergusson had already gone so far as to argue: ‘had the religion [namely Islam] been confined to its native land, it is probable that no mosque worthy of the name would ever have been erected’. 15 B. Fletcher, the author of another History of Architecture, held similar views: ‘although Arabia was the birthplace of the new faith, neither Mecca nor Medina can boast of any noteworthy buildings. […] and the erection of mosques appears to have been immaterial.’16 In fairness to them, the western vanguard―including eighteenth and nineteenth century amateurs and travellers―were seemingly excused to think in such a way. The history of Islamic architecture is physically to be found in such places as Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Andalusia. The dominant belief is that the most distinctive features of mosque architecture, from minarets to finials, did not materialize in Arabia as did Islam itself. Apart from the two holy sanctuaries at Makka and Madina―and which further did not make the grade of chef d’oeuvres,

12

Carl H. Becker, ‘Die Kanzel im Kultus des alten Islam’, in Orientalische Studien Theodor Nöldeke

(1906), I, pp. 331-51. 13

On such views, see L. Carl Brown, Religion and State: the Muslim Approach to Politics (Columbia

University Press: 2000), p. 28 14

G. Bell, Palace and Mosque at Ukhaiḍir: a Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1914) p. vii. For similar views, see Richmond, Moslem Architecture, p. 9. 15

Fergusson, A History of Architecture in All Countries: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, ed.

by R. Phené Spiers, 3rd edn, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1893), ii, 514. 16

Banister F. Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method, 5th rev. edn (London:

Batsford, 1905), p. 657.

the western vanguard it seems found nothing worthy of mention in Arabia.17 The difference between the artistic legacy of the cradle of Islam and that of its subordinate territories was too glaring to be unnoticed even by the medieval historians, travellers and pilgrims. While giving Arabia the highest credit for being the home of the Prophet and the birthplace of Islam, they generally made note of its little urbanity and architecture when compared to that of other Islamic regions including their own homelands. Not counting the two holy sanctuaries, there was hardly anything intriguing to give account of. Such an approach is quite evident in the writings of, among others, al-Muqaddasī (d. 380/990), Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217) and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 779/1377).18 However, the writings of the celebrated Maghrebi intellect Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406) have had the deepest impact in this regard. Applying his own theory of ʿumrān, ‘civilization’, to Arabia, Ibn Khaldūn expressly maintained that the Arabs were reluctant to arts and ignorant of crafts.19 Such was enough for many of the western forefront to think of the seven-century Arabs as nomads, preferring to use such Eurocentric terms as ‘Saracens’, ‘Moorish’ and ‘Mahometan’ when referring to them. K. A. C. Creswell, the author of the first—and still the most—encyclopaedic work on the architecture of early Islam, amassed and further reinforced many of the above views. Creswell contended that even the rudest type of architecture was only known to and practiced by the ‘settled’ Arabs who, as he maintains, only constituted one-tenth of pre-and early Islamic Arabia. He went even further to argue that the rest of Arabia’s population were Bedouins whose finest architecture was the tent of hair,20 and who suffered a ‘congenital claustrophobia’.21 Creswell’s perception of seven-century Arabia is ideally represented by the subheading he chose for this relevant section of his work: ‘architecture non-existent in Arabia at that time’.22 Creswell concluded: ‘It is clear that Arabia constituted an almost

17

As Stephen Vernoit puts it, ‘it was generally believed that in Arabia, where the Islamic faith originated,

artistic traditions were negligible’: ‘The Rise of Islamic Archaeology’, Muqarnas, 14 (1997), 1-10 (p. 1). 18

See al-Muqaddasī, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: a Translation of Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī

maʿrifat al-aqālīm, trans. by Basil Anthony Collins, reviewed by M. Hamid al-Tai (Doha: Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilization; Reading: Garnet, 1994); Ibn Jubayr, al-Riḥla (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir li-l Ṭibāʿa wa-l Nashr, [1964 (?)]); Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa al-musammāh tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār fī gharāʾib alamṣār wa ʿajāʾib al-asfār, 2 vols (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Khayriyya, 1904). 19

Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima (ed. ʿAbd Allāh M. al-Darwīsh; Damascus: Dār Yaʿrub, 2004), ii. 97–9; i.

287–8. 20

Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 64. Such a standpoint was first adopted by Caetani. See his Annali dell’Islam, i,

442-4. 21

Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 64.

22

Ibid, i. 1. 10-11.

perfect architectural vacuum, and the term ‘Arab’ should never be used to designate the architecture of Islam.’ It is of interest to note, in this context, that such negative opinions regarding the Arabs’ involvement in Islamic art and architecture have also been adopted by many of the Arab scholars.23 It may be enough here to say that the renowned Legacy of Islam,24 where similar views on Arabia and its inhabitants are presented,25 has been translated into Arabic by a notable authority in Islamic art, Zakī M. Ḥasan, in 1984. The thinking that ‘the first Arab conquerors had no architectural skill or taste’ seems to have been taken as granted; the book has been well received by the Arab readers and its authors are acclaimed, in the translation’s preface, for their objective views.26 As already hinted, the classical ideas on Arabia’s poor cultural heritage have further ingrained the thinking that the Prophet’s community, whether in Makka or Madina, was not capable of achieving any architectural success;27 a community that needed foreign help to rebuild its supreme, however simple, 28 sanctuary, the Kaʿba.29 This context, while based on inefficiently examined reports, have led some to wonder how such a basic arrangement as that of the Prophet’s building at Madina inspired the mosque type.30 Some even began to doubt the 23

See Kamāl al-Dīn Sāmiḥ, al-ʿImāra fī ṣadr al-islām (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al -ʿĀmma al-Miṣriyya li-l-Kitāb,

1982), pp. 3-5; Zakī M. Ḥasan, Fī al-funūn al-Islāmiyya (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Iʿtimād, 1938), pp. 8-10. 24

The Legacy of Islam, ed. by Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (Oxford: the Clarendon Press, 1931).

25

M. Briggs, ‘Architecture’, in The Legacy of Islam, ed. by Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (Oxford:

the Clarendon Press, 1931), pp. 155-79. 26

Turāth al-islām: fi-l-funūn al-farʿiyya wa-l-taṣwīr wa-l-iʿimara, trans. by Zakī M. Ḥasan (Damascus: Dār

al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1984). Such a good reception by the Arab readers and academics could be ascribed to the fact that such works, nonetheless, admitted the influence of the faith of Islam on the fine arts that developed in its geographical domain. See Briggs, ‘Architecture’, p. 157. Such views are usually reproduced by Arab scholars. See, for example, Z. M. Ḥasan, Funūn, pp. 7-9 27

See H. Lammens, La Cite Arabe de Tāʾif à la Veille de l’Hégire (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1922),

viii, 183. 28

On the simplicity of the architecture of the Kaʿba, see Fergusson, History of Architecture, ii, 514.

29

Bāqūm, a visiting Rūmī carpenter, is said to have supervised the work. See Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 1-5. This

Bāqūm, however, is also said to have made the minbar for the Prophet. See ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, al-Muṣannaf, ed. by Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī, 11 vols (n.p.: al-Majlis al-ʿIlmī, 1970-83), no. 5244; Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Fatḥ al-bārī: Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. by M. S. ʿAbd al-Maqṣūd, M. A. al-Shāfiʿī, I. alQāḍī et al., 10 vols (Madina: Maktabat al-Ghurabāʾ al-Athariyya, 1996), iii, 316. F. Shāfiʿī remarks that the minbar was made some forty years later than the Qurayshī reconstruction of the Kaʿba. Thus, if we are to believe that Bāqūm was still alive, he would be too aged and weak to make the minabr. Farīd Shāfiʿī, al-ʿImāra al-ʿarabiyya fī Miṣr al-Islāmiyya: ʿaṣr al-wulāh (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l Taʾlīf wa-l Nashr, 1970), pp. 625-8. 30

See Oleg Grabar (ed.), The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 104.

description which the sources give for the building,31 which is over and above not considered a mosque. In his conclusion on ‘primitive Islam’, Creswell states: Muḥammad, as we have seen above […] despised architecture. The detailed descriptions which we possess of what became the first congregational mosque of Islam, the courtyard of Muḥammad’s house at Madīna, shows [?] it to have been primitive in the extreme […].32

Although many of the above theories are more than a century old, they still generally shape the present perception of seven-century Arabia and of the Prophet. This is in spite of the fact that those on Arabia (and which are not the topic of this discussion) have been reassessed by a number of Arab as well as Western academics.33 In the following works, either the above dismissive views are briefly reproduced or the whole topic is fully waived. Grabar, for example, refers to the date of the Hijra and the events it brought until the Prophet’s passing as inconsequential to the arts.34 In another work, he—along with Ettinghausen— maintains: ‘Muḥammad did not rule on or consider problems which immediately affected the arts or artistic activities either in the Koran or in his otherwise welldocumented actions’.35 Many of the more recent writings on early Islamic architecture begin with a discussion of an Umayyad monument, leaving behind a crucial half a century of mosque development. This is because scholars, both western and Islamic, usually credit the introduction of mosque type to the time of the great conquests.

31

Jeremy Johns (ed.), ‘The “House of the Prophet” and the Concept of the Mosque’, Bayt al-Maqdis:

Jerusalem and Early Islam, (1999): ii. 59-112 at 110-1. 32

Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 64.

33

L. Carl Brown, for example, argues that Islam arose as the religion of oasis urbanities, which had

synergetic relations with the desert and its nomadic inhabitants: Religion and State, p. 28. For the range of scholars’ attempts in this regard, see: G. R.D. King, The Traditional Architecture of Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998); id., ‘Creswell’s Appreciation of Arabian Architecture’, Muqarnas 8 (1991): 94102, at 99; id. ‘Building Methods and Materials in Western Saudi Arabia’, in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 14 (1989): pp. 71-78; Barbra Finster, ‘Zu der Neuauflage von K. A. C. Creswells “Early Muslim Architecture”’, Kunst des Orients 9 (1973-4) (1-2): 89–98. Jawād ʿAlī, al-Mufaṣṣal fī tārīkh al-ʿArab qabal al-Islām, 2nd edn, 10 vols (Baghdad: University of Baghdad, 1993); Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, al-Ḥijāz fī ṣadr alIslām: dirāsāt fī aḥwālih al-ʿumrāniyya wa-l idāriyya (Muʾasasat al-Risāla, 1990). On Madina’s architectural heritage in pre- and early Islam, see W. M. Watt, ‘Al-Madīnah’ in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (1986), v, 994-8; Fahd al-Harigi, ‘The Relationship Between the Prophets’ Mosque and its Physical Environment: al-Medina, Saudi Arabia’, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 6-11; H. al-Pāshā, Madkhal ilā al-athār al-Islāmiyya, (Dār al-Nahḍa al-ʿArabiyya, 1990), pp. 16-8; Marco Schöller, ‘Medina’ in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān (2003), iii, pp. 367-71, at 367-8. 34

Grabar, Formation, p. 7.

35

Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650-1250, new edn (New

Haven; London, Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 17-25, at 20.

The views on the Prophet’s ‘anti-building’ disposition have not been committed to any methodical examination. While the Prophet’s attitude toward fine arts, e.g. music, painting, sculpture, etc., has been discussed by later revisionists,36 his toward architecture is not usually considered. Perhaps, the best known endeavour as far as the latter is concerned was undertaken by F. Shāfiʿī, whose argument on pre-Islamic Arabia is still definitely more reflective than his concise discussion of the Prophet’ approach toward building.37 Shāfiʿī’s position is further enfeebled by the fact that he, following Caetani and Creswell, dealt with the Prophet’s structure in Madīna as a private dwelling and not a mosque. More recently, however, the Prophet’s position toward mosque form, in particular, has been discussed―albeit by few works.38 Having been mainly undertaken by Islamic jurists, such works are more related to fiqh than to architecture; they did not make the proper impact in the circles of archaeologists or art historians. Another clear, and a very critical, defect in these writings is that they applied a literalist approach: confined to only relating the best known and most relevant among the traditions of the Prophet, his ṣaḥāba, and prominent tābiʿīn. None of which developed a thorough discussion on the topic. Such an approach is already represented in mediaeval works as Iʿlām al-sājid bi-aḥkām al-masājid by alZarkashī (d. 794/1392),39 a prominent Shafiʿite, and Tuḥfat al-rākiʿ wa-l sājid biaḥkām al-masājid by al-Jurāʿī (d. 883/1478),40 a Ḥanbalī legalist. The former is the first monograph to be dedicated to discussing the ordinances of mosques―form is

36

See, for example, M. ʿImāra, al-Islām wa- l-funūn al-jamīla (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1991).

37

See Shāfiʿī, ʿImāra ʿarabiyya, pp. 37-64, at 47-9; id., al-ʿImāra al-ʿArabiyya al-Islāmiyya: māḍīhā wa

ḥāḍiruhā wa mustaqbaluhā (Riyadh: Maṭbaʿat Jāmiʿat al-Malik Suʿūd, 1982), pp. 1-11. 38

See, for example, Khayr al-Dīn al-Wānilī, al-Masjid fī-l Islām: aḥkāmuh, ādābuh, bidaʿuh, 2nd edn

(Kuwait: al-Dār al-Salafiyya, 1980); Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Ḍawābiṭ al-sharʿiyya li-bināʾ al-masājid (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 2000). Some works appeared as essays in 1999 in Sijil buḥūth nadwat ʿimārat almasājid (Proceedings of the Seminar on Mosque Architecture): Ibrāhīm b. Ṣāliḥ al-Khuḍayrī, ‘Aḥkām bināʾ al-masājid fī-l Sharīʿa al-Islāmiyya’, in Sijil Buḥūth Nadwat ʿImārat al-Masājid, ed. by M. A. Ṣāliḥ and A. al-Qūqānī (Riyadh, Kulliyyat al-ʿImāra wa-l Takhṭīṭ bi-Jāmiʿat al-Malik Suʿūd, 1999), viii, 33-60. Also in the same proceedings: Ṣāliḥ b. Ghānim al-Sadlān, ‘al-Ḍawābiṭ al-sharʿiyya li-ʿimārat al-masājid’, viii, 1-32; Manṣūr al-Jadīd, ‘al-Masjid fī-l Islām, ḥudūd tārīkh: abraz al-ḍawābiṭ al-sharʿiyya al-mutaʿalliqa bi ʿimāratih’, viii, pp. 89-132; M. ʿAbd al-Sattār ʿUthmān and ʿAwaḍ M. al-Imām, ‘ʿImārat al-masājid fī ḍawʾ al-aḥkām al-fiqhiyya: dirāsa taṭbīqiyya athariyya’, viii, pp. 133-60. 39

Al-Zarkashī, Iʿlām al-sājid bi-aḥkām al-masājid, ed. by M. Marāghī, 5th edn (Cairo: Ministry of Waqfs,

1999). 40

Al-Jurāʿī, Tuḥfat al-rākiʿ wa-l sājid bi aḥkām al-masājid, ed. by Ṣāliḥ Sālim al-Nahām, Muḥammad Bānī

al-Maṭayrī, Ṣabāḥ ʿAbd al-Karīm al-ʿAnzī and others (Farawāniyya: Wazārat al-Awqāf wa-l Shuʾūn alIslāmiyya, 2004).

included but not adequately expounded.41 These works are barely more than listing of some relevant ḥadīths. They will, however, represent―in addition to the Qurʾān, ḥadīth collections and commentaries as well as other early writings by legalists, historians, geographers, local chroniclers, and travellers―an important source for our discussion. Withal, the limited impact of such works, both medieval and modern, is mainly put down to current scholarship’s ‘unpreparedness’ to discuss any mosquerelated ḥadīth,42 mainly because of the belief that the Prophet did not fundamentally know the mosque type. A noted exception is M. J. Kister’s ‘A Booth like the Booth of Moses’.43 While the title of the article is itself a part of one ḥadīth in which the Prophet specifies the form he wished for his mosque, Kister uses the ḥadīth to discuss topics other than the Prophet’s perception of mosque architecture.44 Apart from some rare ‘fortuitous’ instances,45 such a depreciative 41

Al-Zarkashī’s work was only preceded by a chapter on mosques in al-Ṭarṭūshī’s (d. 530/1136) al-

Ḥawādith wa-l bidaʿ, ed. by ʿAlī b. Ḥasan al-Ḥalabī, 3rd edn (Dammam: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1998), pp. 103126. The topic of the mosque form was also dealt with in eighth-ninth century AH ḥadīth commentaries. The best example is Ibn Rajab’s Fatḥ al-Barī: see iii, 281-93. 42

The Western scholars, however, dealt with the ḥadīths on the Prophet’s meek living conditions. These

are generally discussed by those who wrote on the Prophet’s biography. Such reports on the modesty of the Prophet’s life and belongings are also considered by a number of art historians, usually in terms of Islam’s attitude toward arts and aesthetics. See K. A. C. Creswell, ‘The Lawfulness of Painting in Early Islam’, in Early Islamic Art and Architecture, ed. by J. M. Bloom, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 101-8; Oleg Grabar, Formation, pp. 81-3. 43

M. J. Kister, ‘“A Booth Like the Booth of Moses...”: A Study of an Early Ḥadīth’, Bulletin of the Society

of Oriental and African Studies, 25 (1962), 150-155. 44

This ḥadīth, having been incorrectly noted by Kister to be missing in the orthodox ḥadīth

compilations, is used by him—not to survey the form of the mosque— but to enhance his approach that early Muslim scholars and ḥadīth compilers had the tendency to omit those early tradition including any unsuccessful divination of the Prophet and those attesting to a Jewish influence on Islam and its founder. See also his discussion on the ḥadīth about the exclusive journey to the three supreme mosques of Makka, Madīna and Jerusalem. M. J. Kister, ‘“You Shall Only Set Out for Three Mosques”: A Study of an Early Tradition’, in Studies in Jāhiliyya and Early Islam (London: Variorum, 1980), pp. 173-196. The ḥadīth on the ‘booth of Moses’ was also seen by some medieval authorities not to be found in ḥadīth collections. Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), for example, states that he found no isnād for it: Ṭabaqāt alShāfiʿiyya al-Kubrā, ed. by M. Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī and A. Muḥammad al-Ḥulw, 10 vols (Cairo: F. alBābī al-Ḥalabī, 1964), vi, 313. Contrary to such judgements, the ḥadīth is reported by ʿAbd al-Razzāq alṢanʿānī (d. 211/826) in his lately published Muṣannaf (no. 5135), through a trustful strand of transmitters. On the isnād of this ḥadīth, see al-Albānī, Silsilat al-aḥadīth al-ṣaḥīḥa, 7 vols (Riyadh: Maktabat alMaʿārif, 1995-2002), ii, 178-81 (ḥadīth no. 616). Like other scholars, Kister posits that the Prophet’s insistence to build ephemeral structures was due to his conviction that either death or the Last Day would soon come. See Rosenthal, ‘The Influence of the Biblical Tradition on Muslim Historiography’, in Lewis and Holt (eds) 1962, pp. 35-45, at pp. 36-9. Kister (‘Booth of Moses’, pp. 150-55) believes that this

approach persisted. This is mainly ascribed, in addition to the historical issues of the ḥadīth genre, to the strong impact of the ‘House of the Prophet’ theory. It is quite telling, in connection with this, that the presumably most earnest attempt to study the interaction between Islam’s written codes and its art and architecture, and which is credited to Oleg Grabar, only considered the Qurʾān and not the Sunna.46 Here, the author reaffirmed one concept on which the ‘House of the Prophet’ theory has been based, i.e. the so-called ‘the Qurʾān non-specific use of the term masjid’.47 The belief that the Prophet’s biography has no bearing on the mosque form has dictated an unwieldy path of inquiry. The mosque evolution was attributed to prompts of various types (including ‘material’, ‘practical’ and even ‘trivial’), but a

‘early' tradition on the ‘booth of Moses’ was omitted by the 3rd/9th century ḥadīth compilers for its inclusion of an unrealized prophecy that the Day of Judgment would come in the lifetime of the Prophet. Indeed, the orthodox collections of ḥadīth, usually referring to the Last Day as imminent, include many clearer references to the ‘short’ time between the Prophet’ advent and the Last Day, but ‘short’ here does not necessarily mean months or years. This ‘short’ period of time should arguably be estimated in relation to the whole age of this world. Neither the above ḥadīth nor any other orthodox one says or even implies, as suggested by Kister (‘Booth of Moses’, p. 152), that the Prophet believed that Day of Judgment ‘would happen in his own lifetime’. In fact, the Prophet, in almost a countless number of ḥadīths, addresses things and events that would happen after his passing. The phrase baʿdī, ‘after my own days’, is copiously found in traditions. His particular statement, ‘al-amru aʿjalu (or asraʿu) min dhālik’, which is included in the tradition on the ‘booth of Moses’ and which is considered by Kister et al. to reach such a conclusion, will be discussed below. Here, we will only refer to another ḥadīth that is also used by Kister to support his argument: narrated ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAmr: ‘the Prophet passed by me while I was treating with mud a wall (hāʾiṭan) in my shack (khuṣṣ). He asked: “what is this ʿAbd Allāh?” I replied: “a wall which I am restoring.” He, then, said: “the affair is not that long (al-amru aʿjalu [in a narration, asraʿu] min dhālik)”.’ Ṣaḥīḥ al-adab al-mufrad li-l-imām al-Bukhārī, ed. by M. Nāṣir al-Albānī, 4th edn (Jubeil: Maktabat al-Dalīl, 1994), no. 354; Abū Dāwūd, nos. 5235-6; Ibn Māja, no. 4160. In this ḥadīth, the Prophet did not mean that either death or the Doom’s Day would come soon (may be before ʿAbd Allāh finishes his work), as Kister maintains. Indeed, he only wanted to draw his follower’s attention to the fact that there were more important things to take care of in such an early stage of Islam. Kister’s argument is further weakened by a cluster of ḥadīths recording of the Prophet a totally different approach to what he suggests: ‘If the Last Day comes while a seedling is in someone’s hand, he/she should plant it (if possible)’. Al-Bazzār, no. 7408; al-Haythamī, no. 6236; al-Adab al-mufrad li-l Bukhārī, no. 371. 45

A good example is Moshe Sharon’s brief reference to ḥadīth interdiction of the heightening and

beautifying of mosques. See Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae 31 vols (ckech vol no.) (Leiden: Brill, 1997), I, 58. 46

By this, I mean Oleg Grabar’s ‘Art and Architecture and the Qurʾan’ in Early Islamic Art, 650-1100, I,

Constructing the Study of Islamic Art (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005). First published in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, 1 (2001), pp. 161-75. 47

Grabar, ‘Art and Architecture and the Qurʾān’, in EQ, pp. 163-4.

religious one.48 For example, the first introduction of pebbles to cover the mosque floor instead of sand is attributed by Creswell to either ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb or Ziyād b. Muʿāwiya. Both are said, through accounts in Ibn Saʿd and al-Balādhurī respectively,49 to have strewed the floor of the mosque with pebbles upon watching the congregation clapping their hands after each ṣalāt to remove the sand stuck to them after prostration. It was feared that the later generations should misguidedly take this as an integral part of the ṣalāh.50 Pebble, however, was used to replace sand according to more authentic reports since the time of the Prophet (see below).51 The same thing applies to the use of saffron to perfume the qibla wall.52 In the following section we will try to investigate the Prophet’s appreciation of building, an indispensable threshold to a subsequent discussion of his perspective of mosque architecture. The latter will be divided into two parts. The first of which will deal with the form of the Prophet’s mosque―not with the aim of giving a new reconstruction of it, but rather of examining its capability to reveal the Prophet’s preferences regarding the mosque form. This is to be followed, and complemented, by the second part which is a discussion of the mosque-related ḥadīths. DISCUSSING ANTI-BUILDING TRADITIONS The above views on the Prophet dictates that, before his perspective toward mosque architecture is surveyed, his toward building should be explored. Traditions are full of reports about the Prophet’s abhorrence, at the mildest indifference, toward building. These, however, are mostly different narrations of three main ḥadīths: one related to Umm Salama; another to Khabbāb b. Aratt; and a third to an anonymous Anṣārī individual. The first is perhaps the best known to Western scholarship. Creswell, while advocating the notion of the Prophet’s reluctance toward building, quotes a fairly lengthy passage from Ibn Saʿd, in which the latter gives a somewhat detailed description of the simple apartments of the Prophet’s wives (which were attached to

48

See how Grabar, for instance, deals with this question: Oleg Grabar, ‘Islamic Art: Art of a Culture or

Art of a Faith’, Art and Archaeology Research Papers, 13 (1978), 1-6. 49

Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, iii, 264; al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, ed. by A. Anīs al-Ṭabbāʿ and U. Anīs al-

Ṭabbāʿ (Beirut: Dār al-Nashr li-l Jāmiʿiyyīn, 1957), p. 389-90. See also Ibn al-Najjār, al-Durra al-thamīna fī tārīkh al-Madīna, ed. by M. Z. ʿAzab (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa, 1981), p. 173. 50 51

See Creswell, EMA, i. 1. 28, 45. Muslim, no. 1219; Musnad al-imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, ed. by Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, ʿĀdil Murshid,

Muḥammad al-ʿIrqsūsī et al., 50 vols (Beirut: Muʾssasat al-Risāla, 1996), v, 150; Abu Dāwūd, nos. 458-60. The Prophet is further reported to have prayed, albeit individually, on more comfortable floor coverings, such as busuṭ, ‘rugs’. See Abū Dāwūd, no. 333. 52

See Ayyad ‘House or Mosque’, p. 291-2.

his mosque). Included in such a description is an account which Ibn Saʿd relates on the authority of one ʿAbd Allāh b. Zayd al-Hudhalī, who saw the apartments just before being demolished by al-Walīd in 88/707 to be merged in the mosque area. According to this, the Prophet blamed one of his wives, Umm Salama, for building a wall of labin, ‘adobe’. ʿAbd Allāh narrates: I saw the apartments of the Prophet’s wives just before being pulled down by ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz [who was by then al-Walīd’s governor at Madīna (86-93/705-12)]. They were apartments (buyūt) of labin, having chambers (ḥujar) of palm stalks plastered with mud. I have counted nine apartments with their chambers […]. And I saw Umm Salama’s apartment and chamber made of labin. So, I asked her grandson, who said: ‘While the Prophet was engaged in the battle of Dawmat [al-Jandal (5/626)], Umm Salama (re-)built her chamber with labin. Upon his coming back, the Prophet, having noticed the new labin structure, went to her before any other of his wives. He wondered: “what is this building?" She replied: “O God’s Apostle! I wanted to obstruct the gazes of the public!” He then commented: “O Umm Salama! The worst thing in which the money of the Muslims would be squandered is building.”’53

In spite of its perspicuity, the Prophet’s reaction in this episode should not be interpreted to reflect an intrinsically reproachful attitude against building; four of the nine apartments of his wives had, according to Ibn Saʿd’s account of ʿImrān b. Abī Anas, already been built with labin (see fig. 8).54 The Prophet, as we shall shortly see, had also applied labin and stone for his mosque.55 He did not mean that building with labin is generally a wasteful act, but rather did not want Umm Salama’s chamber (not apartment) to look distinguished among the other chambers of his wives;56 especially that she, as stated by Abū Dāwūd’s mursal version of the same ḥadīth,57 was a well-to-do.58 The Prophet, it seems, was afraid

53

See Creswell, EMA. i. 1. 8-9; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 429-30.

54

Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 430.

55

Stone and mortar (jiṣṣ) were likewise applied for the mosque of Ṣanʿāʾ, which was reportedly built in

the time of the Prophet (ca. 6/627) by his command and under supervision of one of his Companions (most probably Muʿādh b. Jabal). See al-Mujallad al-sābiʿ min Kitāb al-Aʿlāq al-nafīsa li-ibn Rusta wayalīhi Kitāb al-Buldān li-l-Yaʿqūbī, ed. by M. J. De Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1892), p. 110. A different (extremely more austere) approach is, nevertheless, attributed by early chroniclers such as al-Layth and Ṭāwūs to Muʿādh when founding the mosque. See Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-Bārī, iii, 283. 56

Al-Samhūdī related, also on the authority of ʿAbd Allāh b. Yazīd al-Hudhalī, that all chambers were

made of the stalks of palm leaves except that of Umm Salama: Wafāʾ al-wafā bi-akhbār dār al-muṣṭafā, ed. by M. Muḥyī ad-Dīn, 4 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, [Cairo, 1955] 1984), ii, 541. 57

Mursal, ‘loose’, denotes a ḥadīth which a tābiʿī attributes to the Prophet without referring to the

Companion from whom he took it. As Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ explains: ‘The form of the loose ḥadīth about which there is no disagreement is the ḥadīth of an early Follower (al-tābiʿī al-kabīr) — like ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAdī b. al-Khayyār, Saʿīd b. al-Musayyib and those like them who met a number of the Companions and attended their classes—when he says, “The Messenger of God (Peace be upon him) said”.’ See Ibn al-

that she may pride herself in such worldly matters. Further, the Prophet, who was just back from a battle, wanted that all the potentials of the first believers—money is certainly included—would rather be assigned to the dissemination of the new religion. In such a context, any ‘extra’ act of building would have naturally been deemed wasteful and redundant. Later, when Islam had a more stable ground, such activities were admitted. The two accounts of ʿAbd Allāh al-Hudhalī and ʿImrān b. Abī Anas, when considered together, imply an adaptive attitude on the Prophet’s part. In the beginning, only four apartments were made of labin. The other five were made of the stalks of palm leaves daubed with mud. Later, all nine were built of labin. The second of the main ‘anti-building’ traditions, and which is widely regarded by ḥadīth scholars as possessing a good degree of authenticity, states: ‘a Muslim is rewarded for anything [money, effort, or time] he gives up, except what he pays out in this sand59 (according to another narration, “in building”)’.60 This ḥadīth, however, is not the saying of the Prophet but of Khabbāb,61 a Companion who according to the same ḥadīth was, at that time, in such a poor health as to declare: ‘Unless the Prophet had forbidden us from inviting death, I would have invited it.’62 Therefore, it could be this glumness of Khabbāb that led him to speak of building in such a negative way. Ibn Ḥajar posits that Khabbāb, here, only meant superfluous building.63 Having the biggest number of narrations among the three main ‘antibuilding’ traditions, the third is the most familiar in Muslim scholarship―particularly in the spheres of religious studies: Narrated Anas b. Mālik: One day, the Prophet saw an elevated high dome [with

Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, An Introduction to the Science of Ḥadīth: Kitāb maʿrifat anwāʿ al-ḥadīth, trans. by Eerik Dickinson (Reading: Garnet, 2006), pp. 39-41. 58

Abū Dāwūd, Al-Marāsīl maʿa al-asānīd, ed. by A. ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Sayrawān (Beirut: Dār al-Qalam, 1986),

p. 237. The ḥadīth is also reported by ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Mundhirī: al-Targhīb wa-l Tarhīb, ed. by M. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī and Mashhūr Āl Salmān, 4 vols (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 2003), ii, 753-4. It is graded by the editor as weak. 59

Al-Bukhārī, no. 5672; Ibn Māja, no. 4163; al-Tirmidhī, no. 2483. This ḥadīth is regarded by al-Albānī as

ṣaḥīḥ: Ṣaḥīḥ al-adab al-mufrad, no. 353. See also Abū Dāwūd, no. 5237; Ibn Māja, no. 4161; al-Tirmidhī, no. 2482. 60

Ibn Māja, no. 4163. See also Kister, ‘Booth of Moses’, p. 151.

61

All narrations attributing this saying to the Prophet are either weak or very weak. See al-Mundhirī,

Targhīb wa-tarhīb (pp. 752-3), and the judgment of the editor is therein. 62

See also al-Bukhārī, nos. 6349-50.

63

See M. al-Ghazālī, al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayna ahli-l fiqh wa ahli-l ḥadīth, 6th edn (Cairo: Shurūq,

1996), p. 107.

crenellations] (qubbatan musharrafa). When he asked: ‘what is this?’, he was answered by his Companions: ‘it belongs to so and so, a man from the Anṣār.’ The Prophet said nothing, but kept it in himself. Then, its owner came and greeted the Prophet in the presence of other people, but the Prophet did not reply (aʿraḍa ʿanhū). This kept being the Prophet’s reaction to the extent with which the man became sure of the latter’s resentment toward him. The man complained of that to the Companions, saying: ‘By Allāh, I see in the face of the Prophet signs of resentment for which I ignore the reason (innī la-unkirū rasūlallāh)!’ They explained: ‘when he [namely, the Prophet] went out, he saw your dome.’ Thus, the man turned to his dome and pulled it down to the ground. When the Prophet went out another day and did not see it, he said: ‘what happened to the dome?’ They replied: ‘its owner has complained to us of your resentment toward him (iʿrāḍaka ʿanhū), and we told him [about the reason]. So, he demolished it.’ The Prophet, then, said: ‘Verily, each [affair of] building is against (wabālun ʿalā) whom it belongs to [maker or owner], except what is indispensable.’64

Another narration excepted the mosque,65 and a third excepted the house.66 Some fictitious narrations went as far as to state that the builder of any building, of height more than seven cubits, is to be called: ‘O worst of all debauchees! To where [are you raising your building]?’67 Another ḥadīth states: ‘God has not commanded us to use what he granted us [of bounties] (fī-mā razaqanā) in covering stone and mud.’68 The complete text of this ḥadīth, however, reveals that the Prophet said so in objection to ʿĀʾisha’s taking a namaṭ, ‘a kind of decorated rug’, as a shutter on her doorway while he was away in a military campaign. This is reminiscent of the above ḥadīth on Umm Salama’s mud-brick construction. It could not be argued, however, that the Prophet’s wives took advantage of his absence to add such new devices; ʿĀʾisha stated in the same ḥadīth: ‘I was waiting for his homecoming (fa-kuntu ataḥayyanu qufūlahu)’. This, indeed, give the impression that she might have done so to please him. It is noted that the Prophet, as expressly stated by ʿĀʾisha herself, did not

64

Abū Dāwūd, no. 5237; Ibn Māja, no. 4161; Abū al-Qāsim al-Zamakhsharī, Rabīʿ al-abrār wa nuṣūṣ al-

akhbār, ed. by Amīr Muhannā 5 vols (Beirut: al-Aʿlamī, 1992), i, 297, al-Mundhirī, Targhīb wa-tarhīb, ii, 752. This ḥadīth is regarded by al-Albānī as ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ. 65

See Ibn Māja, no. 4161; al-Albānī, Ṣaḥīḥa, vi, 794, ḥadīth no. 2830.

66

Abū Bakr al-Bazzār, al-Baḥr al-zakhkhār al-maʿrūf bi-Musnad al-Bazzār, ed. by M. Zaynullāh A. Saʿd,

15 vols (Madina: Maktabat al-ʿUlūm wa-l Ḥikam, 1988-2006), no. 7473. 67

See Targhīb wa-tarhīb (ii, 754), where the ḥadīth is considered mawḍūʿ, ‘forged’, by the editor.

According to Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ‘The forged ḥadīth is the fabricated, made-up ḥadīth. Be aware that the forged ḥadīth is the worst kind of the weak ḥadīth. It is not permissible under any circumstance for someone who is aware that a ḥadīth is forged to relate it, unless coupled with a declaration that it is forged.’ Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, Introduction, pp. 77-8. 68

Muslim, no. 5520. This ḥadīth is graded by Ibn Ḥibbān as ṣaḥīḥ: Ṣaḥīḥ ibn Ḥibbān bi-tartīb Ibn Balbān,

ed. by Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 2nd rev. edn, 18 vols (Beirut, Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1993), no. 5468.

blame her for later making two cushions of this namaṭ.69 According to Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Ḥibbān’s versions of the same ḥadīth,70 ʿĀʾisha used the namaṭ to cover a wall (ʿaraḍ or maʿriḍ), and not the doorway as reported by Muslim. This seems in a better accord with the Prophet’s above statement. Other ḥadīths, most probably relating to the same incident, recorded of the Prophet the same reaction—but not dictum. According to these, what ʿĀʾisha covered was a sahwa, ‘niche’, and what she used to cover it was a qirām, ‘a (woollen) fabric with marks and figures’.71 Other narrations speak of a durūk including images of winged horses.72 Given the above context of early Islam, this was more worthy of being considered by the Prophet as superfluous. It is indicative that in later days, i.e. Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid, the erection of high domes and towering minarets was not usually criticized by the contemporary ulema. Their silence implies a ‘liberal’ interpretation of the Prophet’s above position regarding the labin construction of Umm Salama and the crenelated dome of the Anṣārī man. They were presumably helped to think in such a permissive way by authentic reports on the Prophet applying a less stringent manner. Until his mosque and the first two apartments (those of ʿĀʾisha and Sawda) were built, the Prophet is said to have stayed in the upper of a two-storey house owned by Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī.73 The Prophet himself is reported to have had a garret (ʿulliyya).74 69

According to a relevant narration, she saw the Prophet leaning on one of them. Ibn Māja, no. 3653.

70

Abū Dāwūd, no. 4153; Ibn Ḥibbān, no. 5468.

71

In this version of the ḥadīth, the Prophet states that those who compare themselves to the Creator are

to suffer the direst agony on the Day of Judgment. Al-Bukhārī, nos. 5954, 2479, (see also no. 374); Muslim, nos. 5520, 5524, 5528-33; Maʿmar b. Rāshid (in al-Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq), no. 19484; Ibn Māja, no. 3653; Juynboll, Canonical Ḥadīth, p. 617. See also Richard Yeomans, The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo (Reading: Garnet, 2006), pp. 17-8. On the ḥadīths of prohibition, see Ibn Māja, no. 3649-52; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 108. 72

Muslim, no. 5523; Ibn Ḥanbal, no. 26287.

73

Al-Bukhārī, no. 428; Muslim, no. 1173; Abū Dāwūd, no. 453; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, ii, 296; Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq,

p. 64. See also al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, ii, 398-400; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 206; al-Dhahabī, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, ed. by Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Qudsī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, [ 1927] 1988), pp. 232-3; al-Suhaylī, alRawḍ al-unuf fī-tafsīr ‘al-Sīra al-nabawiyya l-Ibn Hishām’, ed. by Magdī Manṣūr al-Shūrā, 4 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), ii, 336; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l Nihāya, ed. by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd alMuḥsin al-Turkī, 21 vols (Jīza: Dār Hajr, 1997-99), iv, 530-1; A. J. Wensinck, A Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tradition: Alphabetically Arranged, (Leiden: Brill, 1960), p. 154; G. H. A. Juynboll, Encyclopaedia of Canonical Ḥadīth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 487; Quṭb al-Dīn al-Ḥanafī, Tārīkh al-Madīna, ed. by M. Zeinhum M. ʿAzab (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 1998), p. 94; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ alBārī, iii, 209; al-Barzanjī, al-Tārīkh al-musammā nuzhat al-nāẓirīn fī-masjid sayyid al-awwalīn wa-l ākhirīn, (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Jamāliyya, 1914), pp. 10-1; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zād al-maʿād fī-hadī khayr al-ʿibād, ed. by Shuʿayb and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnaʾūṭ, 27th edn, 5 vols (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994), iii, 63.

His attitude as recorded above might rather be understood in the sense of not wanting the well-offs to boast about their wealth: a meaning confirmed by another saying of him, ‘the Last Day will not come until the people compete in elevating [their] buildings’.75 Taken for their first value, the three main ḥadīths of interdiction would be enough to depict building as a sinful act or a crime.76 Should they, however, be related to the context in which each was said, our grasp of the Prophet’s actual attitude toward building would be firmer. It is revealing, in this connection, that alMundhirī (d. 656/1258), the author of the most famous work on al-Targhīb wa-l tarhīb, and who collected many of these traditions, chose the following subheading to report them: ‘warning against superfluous building in pursuit of pride and abundance’. A relevant statement of such an early ḥadīth authority as Qatāda (d. 118/736) would further specify what is reproachable among buildings: ‘each building made out of pretension (kullu bināʾin riyāʾan) is wabāl against whom it belongs to’. Qatāda, then, excepted the one who builds a mosque even if out of pretension: ‘it is neither for nor against him’.77 In brief, the Prophet did not prohibit building, but rather warned against bragging and lavishness. Such discretion seems practical, particularly in the early years of Islam where the main attention, potentials and effort were focused on spreading the new religion; the whole community was permanently engaged in such demanding travails as daʿwa and jihād. Any ‘secondary’ matters had to be deferred to such a time when Islam would establish its strong state. But this by no way means that building and construction were looked upon as wasteful activities in early Islam. The Qurʾān states that the main wisdom, beside worship, for which mankind was created is to populate the earth: ‘huwa anshaʾakum min-l arḍi wastaʿmarakum fī-hā’.78 Such a required iʿmār would only be achieved through activities such as husbandry and construction. The fact that the verse addresses the people of Thamūd, who conspicuously excelled in the latter activity,79 implies that in Islam construction should (if practically approached) be viewed as a divine— and not an outrageous—undertaking. Now, let us see how such historical reports relate to geo- and urban 74

The relevant ḥadīth is narrated by Abū Dāwūd under the heading of ‘the adoption of ghuraf,

(chambers)’. Abū Dāwūd, no. 5238. 75

Al-Adab al-mufrad li-l Bukhārī, no. 350.

76

Al-Ghazālī, al-Sunna al-nabawiyya, p. 108.

77

Ibn Rajab Fatḥ al-Bārī, iii, 323.

78

Qurʾān, 11. 61.

79

More on this will be discussed shortly.

morphology. Madīna is located in the farthest eastern part of the Ḥijāz (figs. 1 & 2), between central Arabia (where building with labin is conventional) and the highlands of the western Ḥijāz (where stone is the traditional building material). A vernacular building tradition that employed both mud brick and stone developed centuries before Islam. The latter was brought to Madīna from the vast lava-fields outside the town. It is quite interesting that such a building method was still in practice in the region up to a relatively recent date, even though in a limited measure.80

Figure 1: Map of the Arabian Peninsula, showing important population centres (Walid A. Saleh, 2010)

80

See King: ‘Creswell’s Appreciation’, p. 99.

Figure 2: Map of Madina showing both modern roads and sites of settlements in the Prophet’s time (M. Lecker, 2010)

In addition to mud-brick houses and orchard enclosures (ḥīṭān), Arabia in general, and Madīna in particular, knew a type of architecture called āṭām (or uṭūm, pl. of uṭm or uṭum).81 In addition to ḥuṣūn, ‘fortresses’, these had defensive as well as residential functions. They were usually built near water resources and trade roads. In the main, the āṭām were multi-tiered quadrangular buildings including open yards (riḥāb), enclosed by walls and equipped with fortified entrances. Some were elevated cylindrical structures (rising upward for some tens of meters). The 81

On the āṭām of Madina. See Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, ed. by Ṣalāḥ ʿAbd al-Azīz Salāma (Madina:

Markaz Buḥūth al-Madīna, 2003), pp. 174-83; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 42; al-Maṭarī, al-Taʿrīf bi-mā ansat al-hijra min maʿālim dār al-Hijra, ed. by Sulaymān al-Raḥīlī (Riyadh: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 2005), pp. 134; 154; 216-7; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 190-215; al-Samhūdī, Khulāṣat al-wafā bi-akhbār dār al-Muṣṭafā, ed. by M. M. al-Jakanī, 2 vols (Madina: al-Jakanī, 1978), ii, 15, I, 551-71; Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, ed. by A. al-Kabīr, M. A. Ḥasab Allāh, H. M. al-Shādhilī, revised edn, 6 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1981), i, 93; Schöller, ‘Medina’, pp. 367-8; Watt, ‘Al-Madīnah’, pp. 994-8.

āṭām were frequently constructed out of crude stone blocks, ashlars and bricks, cemented with mud. Their walls were usually plastered with stucco and adorned with various drawings and inscriptions.82 There were allegedly 198 of these āṭām at Madīna in the time of the Prophet.83 Of these, al-Khayyārī mentions the names of 59 built by the Jews, 13 by the Arabs before Islam, and 56 built (in response to the Prophet’s advice) by the ṣaḥāba from the Anṣār.84 According to al-Samhūdī, nonetheless, the last to be built was an uṭum called al-Muʿriḍ which the Prophet allowed Banū Sāʿida to complete after he migrated to Madīna.85 The ruins of some of these āṭām have survived to the present day.86 A number of the survivors, such as the uṭum of Banū Wāqif―situated some five hundred meters to the southeast of the modern Qubāʾ mosque (figs 4 & 5)—are linked with the biography of the Prophet,87 who is even reported, on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar, to have prevented such āṭām from being demolished. The wording of his relevant ḥadīth is quite meaningful to our discussion on his disposition toward building: ‘Do not pull down the āṭām! They are the adornment of Madīna (innahā zīnatu-l madīna)’.88 It is of no less interest that the Prophet, having been concerned about that fact that not all

82

See D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, 3rd edn (New York: Putnam, 1905), pp. 190-1;

Shāfiʿī, ʿImāra ʿarabiyya, p. 63; al-Pāshā, Madkhal, pp. 17- 8; ʿAbd al-Quddūs al-Ansari, Athār al-Madīna al-Munawwara, 3rd edn (Madina: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1973), p. 64. 83

Al-Pāshā, Madkhal, pp. 16-8. See also King, ‘Creswell’s appreciation’, pp. 98- 9. According to al-

Khayyārī there once stood 128 āṭām at Madīna: Tārīkh maʿālim al-Madīna al-Munawwara: qadīman waḥadīthan, 2nd edn (Madīna: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma li-l Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Māʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Suʿūdiyya, 1999), p. 29. 84

Al-Khayyārī, Maʿālim al-madīna, pp. 30-41. Al-Khayyārī takes a ḥadīth in al-Haythamī’s Majmaʿ al-

zawāʾid, in which the Prophet commands those having [real] assets (uṣūl) in Madina to hold onto them and those having not to take assets for themselves, as prophetic advice to build new āṭām: Maʿālim almadīna, pp. 28-9 (quoting al-Haythamī, Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid wa manbaʿ al-fawāʾid, ed. by Ḥusayn alDārānī, (Beirut: Dār al-Maʾmūn li-l Turāth, 1991), no. 5790. 85

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 208-9.

86

Among these are the uṭum Banū Ḥāritha (i.e. uṭum Ṣirār), the two uṭūm of al-Shaykhān, ḥiṣn Kaʿb b. al-

Ashraf, uṭum al-Ḍaḥiyān (fig. 3) and uṭum Abū Dujāna b. Simāk. On these, see al-Anṣārī, Athār almadīna, pp. 65-78. On the uṭum al-Ḍaḥiyān, see also al-Fayrūzabādī, al-Maghānim al-muṭāba fī maʿālim Ṭāba, ed. by Ḥamad al-Jāsir (Riyadh: Manshūrāt Dār al-Yamāma, 1969), p. 457. On the uṭum at Ṭāʾif, see T. Kowalski, ed., Der Dīwān des Ḳais ibn al-Ḥaṭīm (Leipzig: Otto Harrasowitz, 1914), pp. xv-xx; H. Lammens, La Cite´ arabe de Ṭāʾf a` la veille de l’He´gire (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 8 vols., 1922), viii, 184. 87

See al-Maṭarī, Taʿrīf, p. 216; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 195-6; Ibrahim A. al-ʿAyyāshī, al-Madīna bayna al-

māḍī wa-l ḥāḍir (Madina: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, 1972), pp. 272-4. 88 Al-Haythamī, no. 5789; al-ʿAynī, ʿUmdat al-qārī: Sharḥ ‘Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī’, ed. by ʿAbd Allāh Maḥmūd ʿUmar, 25 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2001), x, 327; Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl, ed. by ʿAlī M. al-Bajāwī, 4 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, [1963 (?)]), ii, 513. See also al-Bukhārī, bāb āṭām al-madīna: no. 1878.

believers hear the adhān, contemplated commanding some of his companions to call to prayer from the top of these āṭām.89

Figure 3: Remnants of uṭum al-Ḍaḥyān

Figure 4: Ruins of uṭum Banū Wāqif (now known as ḥiṣn Banū Miẓyān)

Figure 5: Ruins of the majlis of Banū Wāqif (included in their uṭum) where the Prophet reportedly used to meet them

Moreover, in most of Arabia’s urbanities, stone idols of different sizes and forms were constructed. The description given for some of them by such early informants as Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 204/819) and al-Azraqī (d. 250/864) implies quite a 89

Abū Dāwūd, no. 506.

good competence of craftsmanship.90 Also, the Kaʿba was adorned in the interior with images of trees, angels and prophets such as Abraham, Jesus and his mother Virgin Mary. The latter two are said to be the only exception from a prophetic command to obliterate, upon the conquest of Makka in 8/630, all the images in the Holy Sanctuary.91 Some reports, however, attribute wattle-and-daub structures to a number of Madinian individuals (including the Prophet’s household as we have seen), but these were seemingly ancillary housings. The mosque of the Prophet was surrounded with a big number of labin houses owned by his Companions and an uṭum known as Fāriʿ belonging to his favourite bard, Ḥassān b. Thābit (see fig. 6) The ruins of Ḥassān’s uṭum were coincidentally excavated in 1953 during the works of the first Saudi expansion of the Prophet’s mosque.92 Quite a number of ḥadīths imply that in the Prophet’s time most of the inhabitants of Madina, just like the other towns in Arabia, lived in constructed houses. The fact that such ḥadīths concern a variety of topics, not necessarily building, gives them more weight and more point. One of them reckons whomsoever dies because of a house collapse as martyr (wa-man yaqaʿu ʿalayhi-l baytu fa-huwa shahīd).93 One narration adds the one who falls down from the rooftop of a house.94 Another ḥadīth warns against elevating one’s building to such a height that may prevent breeze from getting into his neighbour’s house.95 These, and other ḥadīths of the same implication, give a strong impression that the Prophet’ coevals usually lived in houses—not tents or shacks, as argued by many. 90

Ibn al-Kalbī, Kitāb al-aṣnām, ed. by Aḥmad Zakī Pāshā, 2nd edn (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya,

1924); al-Azraqī, Akhbār Makka wa-mā jāʾa fīhā min-l-āthār, ed. by ʿAbd al-Malik Duhaysh, (Mecca: Maktabat al-Asadī, 2003), pp. 187-205. 91

Al-Azraqī, Akhbār Makka, pp. 248-54.

92

See al-Khayyārī, Maʿālim al-madīna, p. 36. On the uṭum Fāriʿ, see also al-Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-awsaṭ,

ed. by Ṭāriq b. ʿAwaḍullāh and ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Ḥusaynī (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥaramayn, 1995), no. 3754; alSamhūdī, Wafāʾ, i. 210-1. 93

Al-Albānī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr wa-ziyādatuh (al-Fatḥ al-Kabīr), 2 vols, 3rd edn (Beirut: al-Maktab

al-Islāmī, 1988), no. 4172. 94

Al-Suyūṭī, Jāmiʿ al-aḥādīth: al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr wa-zawāʾiduh wa-l Jāmiʿ al-kabīr (qism al-aqwāl), ed. by

ʿAbbās A. Ṣaqr and Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Jawwād, 12 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1994), no. 14673. While considered ṣaḥīḥ by al-Suyūṭī, this narration is judged by al-Albānī as weak: Ḍaʿīf al-jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr waziyādatuh (al-Fatḥ al-kabīr), ed. by Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh, 3rd rev. edn (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1990), no. 3927. A weak (ḍaʿīf) ḥadīth is a report of the Prophet that does not qualify for the standards of being ṣaḥīḥ (sound) or ḥasan (fair), and hence cannot be taken—according to a majority of Hadith scholars— as foundation for a legislative judgment. See Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, Introduction, p. 24. 95

Al-Bayhaqī, al-Jāmi li-shuʿab al-īmān, ed. by Mukhtār al-Nadawī, 14 vols (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd,

2003), nos. 9113-4.

The traditional use of restrictive ḥadīths to portray the Prophet as a ‘building despiser’ seems to run counter to a number of reports implying his appreciation of building. In one ḥadīth, he compares the consolidation of the Muslim community to a construction (bunyān) whose constituent parts buttress one another. In another, he gives example for his position among the earlier prophets with ‘a man who built a house, completed and perfected it (fa-akmalahu wa-atmamah [in a narration, “fa-ḥassanah”, ‘beautified it’]), except for the position of a brick (labina). Thus, the people kept wandering through it and showing admiration (wa-yataʿajjabūna minhā), saying: “how beautiful this house is except for the [the vacant] position of the brick.” I am the position of the brick as I completed the Prophets.’96 Also in tension with the literalist views are many Quranic statements on Paradise’s pleasant life and charming lodgings (ghuraf), attesting to the Prophet’s not only awareness of building, but also receptivity to architectural beauty. One verse states: ‘But it is for those who fear their Lord, that lofty mansions, one above another, have been built: beneath them flow rivers (such is) the Promise of Allāh.’97 There are, likewise, whole chapters in Ṣaḥīḥ compilations of ḥadīth about Paradise and the daintiness of its dwellings, rivers and gardens.98 The following is an example: Narrated Abū Hurayra: [...] we asked [the Prophet] about Paradise: of what it is built? He replied: ‘a brick of silver and another of gold. It is mortared (milāṭuhā) with musk of the most exquisite quality. Its floor is strewn (ḥaṣbāʾuhā) with pearls and ruby and its soil is made of saffron. He who enters it will have a blissful life and will never grieve [...].99

Also in this life, luxurious dwellings are regarded as a remarkable convenience. Addressing the people of Thamūd, the Qurʾān records of the Prophet Ṣāliḥ to have advised: And remember how he made you inheritors after the ʿĀd people and gave you habitations in the land: ye build for yourselves palaces and castles in (open) plains, and carve out homes in the mountains; so bring to remembrance the benefits (ye have received) from

96

Al-Bukhārī, nos. 3534, 3535; Muslim, nos. 5959-63; Ṣaḥīfat Hammām b. Munabbih: ʿAn Abī Hurayra

Raḍiya Allāhū ʿanh, ed. by R. Fawzī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1985), no. 2. 97 98

Qurʾān, 39. 20. See also 25. 75; 29. 58; 34. 37. See Hammām b. Munabbih, no. 86; Maʿmar (in al-Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq), nos. 20866-90;

Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 181-3. On the visions of Paradise in Islamic art and architecture, see P. L. Baker, pp. 115-38. On how beauty is appraised in the Qurʾān, see Rosalind Ward Gwynne, ‘Beauty’, in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, I (2001), pp. 212-4. 99

Abū Dāwūd, no. 2526. On Paradise, see also Muslim, nos. 7141-44; Ibn Māja, nos. 4328-41.

Allāh, and refrain from evil and mischief on the earth.100

It is of interest to note that, while in Paradise a blissful life cannot turn into grief, in this life residing in such wondrous structures may bring arrogance which could in turn lead to turpitude. Ṣāliḥ’s above advice was soon denied, as the Qurʾān states, by ‘the arrogant party among his people’.101 This may explain why the Prophet never aspired for a fancy life in this world, but this is not to say that he chose extreme austerity. He, for example, regarded the wide house as manifestation of one’s happiness.102 He is also reported, through a less authentic account, to have stated: ‘he who builds a structure (buniyān) should build it properly (fa-lyutqinh).’103

100

Qurʾān, 7. 74. See also 14. 45 and 32. 26. In the Qurʾān as well, there is reference to a wall which is

composed of finely-dressed blocks (bunyānun marṣūṣ): 61.4. 101

Qurʾān, 7. 75-9.

102

Other indicators are a benevolent neighbour and a pleasant mount. Al-Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, no.

9111; al-Adab al-mufrad li-l Bukhārī, no. 355. According to al-Albānī, the editor of al-Adab al-mufrad, this ḥadīth is ṣaḥīḥ: p. 175. 103

Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, Kitāb al-ʿiqd al-farīd, ed. by Aḥmad Amīn, Ibrāhīm al-Ibiyārī and ʿAbd al-Salām

Hārūn, [2nd edn (?)], 7 vols (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Lajnat al-Taʾlīf wa-l Tarjama wal Nashr, 1940-9), vi (1949), 221.

Figure 6: Positions of the Companions’ houses around the mosque of the Prophet, after al-Mahdī’s expansion in 165/782 (after M. Ilyās ʿAbd al-Ghanī, 1999)

THE PROPHET’S MOSQUE: A PRACRICAL FRAMEWORK As already hinted, the mosque of the Prophet, while usually recognized to have provided the prototype of the mosque, is seen by many to have had very little of architecture. Briggs, for instance, states: We find that Mohammad left there a structure of such bold simplicity that as Gayet observes, though it may contain the embryo of a plan, it does not embody the constituent elements of a building, and forms a very slender foundation on which to rear the great achievements of Arab architecture in the Middle Ages.104

As defined by the practices of the Prophet and the earliest Muslim community, the mosque is no more than a clean levelled piece of land.105 The worshippers’ need to justly face the qibla and to arrange themselves in straight parallel lines made the qibla wall the most, if not the only, structural requirement for mosque design.106 It was the first part the Prophet laid out when he built his mosque,107 and when he founded the one for Banū ʿAmr b. ʿAwf at Qubāʾ and that for the Anṣārī clan of Juhayna.108 The above prerequisites also dictated that the quadrangular plan, particularly that laying emphasis on width rather than on depth, best fitted the mosque.109 Mainly regarding the different dimensions and materials which the sources give for the Prophet’s mosque as conflicting, scholars usually adopt those given by one account and dismiss the others without giving any explanation. Such measurements and materials, however, relate to different stages of the building. In the beginning, the mosque was no more than a rectangular enclosure (63 x 54.33 cubits) of sun-dried brick, rising on a stone foundation―three cubits in 104

Briggs, Muhammadan Architecture, p. 28.

105

According to some, particularly a group of Mālikīs, the sense of a ‘mosque’ involves a roofed

structure. See Ibrāhīm b. Ṣāliḥ al-Khuḍayrī, Aḥkām al-masājid fī-l-sharīʿa al-Islāmiyya, 2 vols ([Riyadh (?)]: Wazārat al-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya wa-l Awqāf wa-l Daʿwa wa-l Irshād, 1998), ii, p. 18. 106

On such liturgical needs, see Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, 348-53; Ṣāliḥ ʿAbd al-Samīʿ al-Ābī, Jawāhir al-

iklīl: Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Shaykh Khalīl fī madhhab al-imām Mālik imām dār al-tanzīl, 2 vols (Beirut: alMaktba al-Thaqāfiyya, [n.d.]), i, 55. 107

Whether the palm trees, in the earliest stage, were arranged in rows at the qibla space or they were

used to make up the qibla wall, the Prophet was reportedly keen to make the latter evenly straight and correctly aligned. On laying out the qibla at Madīna and Qubāʾ, see Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 210; al-Suhaylī, Rawḍ, ii, 332, 336; al-Samhūdī, Wafā̕, I, 332. 108

See al-Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-kabīr, ed. by Ḥamdī A. al-Salafī, new edn, 25 vols (Cairo: Maktabat Ibn

Taymiyya, 1994 [?; vols. 13–16, 21 as yet unpublished]), nos. 1786-7. 109

Others, such as the circular and the triangular, were not applicable. Some even said that it is makrūh

to build or perform prayers at such mosques. See M. ʿArafa al-Dusūqī, Ḥāshiyat al-Dusūqī ʿalā ‘al-Sharḥ al-kabīr’, ed. by Muḥammad ʿUlaysh, 4 vols (Cairo: Dār Iḥiyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, [n.d.]), i, 255; alĀbī, Jawāhir, i, 55.

height―and pierced with an entrance in each side expect for the qibla wall.110 The latter were purposely kept solid to avoid the reprimanded habit of the late comers going across the congregants (to sit in the front lines).111 The entrances were openings in the wall (furajun lā aghlāqa ʿalayhā).112 This fully hypaethral structure seems to have been suitable for: (i) the ritual and societal needs of the earliest Muslim community; (ii) the concurrent climate; (iii) and the size of congregation in the early months of the Hijra. Al-Samhūdī mentioned that the number of those who welcomed the Prophet to Madīna was about 500.113 The rapid escalation in the number of congregants dictated that the mosque should be expanded to reach 70 x 60- cubits. It had to be rebuilt for yet a third time (in size still less than 100 cubits per side) before its front was roofed with a simple shelter in response to the Companions complaining of the scorching sun heat. Made of palm trunks, the columns were stretched across with ʿawāriḍ, ‘beams’, and thatched with khaṣaf, ‘plaited fronds’, and idhkar, ‘an aromatic plant growing in the desert of Madīna’.114 This would imply a building that was repeatedly modified, strengthened and improved. It might have undergone all such three stages in a time of seven months; a period during which the Prophet is reported on the authority of al-Balādhurī to have stayed at the house of Abū Ayyūb ‘until his mosque and houses were built’.115 The assumption that such stages of building occurred in less than a year’s time is seconded by the fact that the sources, while specifying the Companions’ motives to propose putting up the shelter and treating it with mud, used such expressions as: ‘when it became excessively hot’ and ‘when it rained’—implying that these were the first weather extremes to have been experienced after the mosque was set up. 110

Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 206; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 146; al-Maṭarī, Taʿrīf, p. 103; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i,

336. 111

The Prophet is reported to have commanded: ‘complete the front line and then the one next to it

[and so forth]! Any vacant space should be left to the last line.’ Abū Dāwūd, no. 671. See also al-Nasāʾī, no. 817; al-Bājī, al-Muntaqā: Sharḥ ‘Muwaṭṭaʾ Mālik’, ed. by M. ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 9 vols (Beirut: Dār alKutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1999), ii, 139-40. The habit of walking in front of a worshipper while in prayer is reproached by a big number of traditions. See Mālik b. Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ: Riwāyat Abī Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī, ed. by Bashshār Maʿrūf and Maḥmūd Khalīl, 3rd edn, 2 vols (Beirut: Muʾasasat al-Risāla, 1998), no. 409; al-Bukhārī, no. 510; al-Dārimī, Sunan, ed. by al-Dārinī, 4 vols (Riyadh: Dār al-Mughnī, 2000), nos. 1456-7; al-Bayhaqī, al-Sunan al-kubrā, ed. by M. ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 3rd edn, 11 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub alʿIlmiyya, 2003), nos. 3452, 5886-9. See also Mālik, nos.408- 12. 112

Ibn al-Maḥjūb, Qurrat al ʿayn fī awṣāf al-ḥaramayn, leaf 65 A.

113

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 255.

114

Ibn Zabāla, p. 77; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 335-36.

115

Al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ, p. 12; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 145. According to other accounts, the Prophet

stayed at the house of Abū Ayyūb for ten months. See al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 265.

In the second year AH, the qibla was diverted from Bayt al-Maqdis at Jerusalem to the Kaʿba at Mecca.116 This event is of a special importance for our discussion on mosque layout; another arbour was added at the southern part of the mosque.117 It is believed by many that these two arbours represented the embryo of the later riwāq, while the remaining raḥba they flanked served as the origin of the later ṣaḥn.118 The mosque was enlarged, presumably for the last time by the Prophet, in 7/628, reaching 100 x ca. 100 cubits. Perhaps, the most famous ḥadīth as far as the final form of the Prophet’s mosque is concerned is reported to us by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar: ‘In the time of the Prophet, the mosque was built of labin, ‘unbaked brick’, its roof was made of the stalks of palm leaves, and its columns were of palm trunks […]’.119 Although the mosque of the Prophet had no minaret, minbar or miḥrāb as later defined, it included the rudiments of each of such long-established features of mosque architecture. Let us consider the miḥrāb first. Although there are many references to the miḥrāb in the earliest Muslim sources (including the Qurʾān), there is good reason to think that the term was originally used to refer to something other than the concave prayer niche, which is rather referred to as ‘alṭāq’. The miḥrāb which some early informants attribute to the Prophet was, supposedly, not more than a space in the mosque front where he usually conducted his prayer. The traditional view is that the mosque of the Prophet did not have a concave prayer niche. Al-ʿUmarī (ca. 740/1340), however, stated that the qibla of the Prophet’s mosque was said by some to have been made of a stone build-up (ḥijāratin manḍūdatin baʿḍuhā ʿalā baʿḍ) [...].”’120 The qibla of the mosque of Qubāʾ is also said to have been made of stone blocks.121 F. Shāfiʿī takes such reports to argue that the word qibla could here refer to the miḥrāb as we know it―not only

116

Mālik, no. 546; al-Bukhārī, nos. 403, 4488-94; al-Dārimī, no. 1270; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-Bārī, iii, 99-102.

See also Ibn Khuzayma, Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. by M. Muṣṭafā al-Aʿẓamī, 4 vols (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1980), nos. 430-6; al-Bājī, Muntaqā, ii 398-9. 117

Al-Barzanjī, p. 10; Aḥmad Fikrī, Masājid al-Qāhira wa-madārisuhā: al-Madkhal (Cairo and Alexandria:

Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963), p. 171. 118

Al-Pāshā, Mawsūʿa, I, 49.

119

Al-Bukhārī, no. 446.

120

Al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār: al-juzʾ al-awwal, ed. by A. Zakī Pāshā, (Cairo: Dār al-

Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1924), 124. The same account is also mentioned by al-Suhaylī on the authority of Ibn Isḥāq: Rawḍ, ii, 339. The qibla of the Prophet’s mosque is, however, said by most accounts to have been made of labin. 121

Al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs fī aḥwāl anfas nafīs, 2 vols (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat ʿUthmān ʿAbd al-Rāziq,

1885), i, 344; al-ʿUmarī, Masālik, p. 107. See also al-Suhaylī, Rawḍ, ii, 332. Ibn Kathīr mentions a similar ḥadīth about the laying out of the qibla of the Madīna mosque. Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya wa nihāya, iv, 539.

the front wall. According to him, the alcove of such primitive miḥrābs was made of the space between the thicknesses of two walls, one protruding and the other receding. He argues that such a basic miḥrāb could have taken the same form as that of the mosque at Qaṣr al-Ukhayḍir (fig. 7).122 Shāfiʿī, further, understands the early references to two stone jambs in the Prophet’s mosque, ‘wa jaʿalaū ʿiḍādatayhī min ḥijāra’,123 as referring to the two sides of the prayer niche.124

Figure 7: The miḥrāb of the mosque at Qaṣr al-Ukhayḍar (Shāfiʿī, 1970)

Meanwhile, the Prophet is reported to have usually thrust a ʿanaza, ‘spear’, in front of him before praying at the muṣallā al-ʿīd. 125 This served as a mark of the qibla direction and a scheme to avoid the markedly sinful act of passing in front of a worshipper while in prayer.126 The latter function was also achieved by the sutra, ‘anything put at the head of the worshipper’s specific place of prayer’.127 The miḥrāb could, and could not, have derived from either of the two devices, i.e. ʿanaza and

122

Shāfiʿī, ʿImāra ʿarabiyya, pp. 598-600.

123

See also al-Bukhārī, no. 428; Abū Dāwūd, no. 453.

124

Shāfiʿī, ʿImāra ʿarabiyya, p. 611.

125

Al-Bukhārī, nos. 494-5, 489-500; Muslim, nos. 1115-27; al-Dārimī, nos. 1449-50; Ibn Khuzayma, nos.

798-9; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, iii, 216-7; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 223. Muṣallā is a given, albeit unenclosed, spot in the desert where prayers of annual feasts or those offered to invite rains were frequently performed. 126

Muslim, nos. 1128-33.

127

On sutra, see Muslim, nos. 1111-4; al-Bayhaqī, nos. 3453-65; al-Bājī, Muntaqā, ii, 276-84; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ

al-bārī, ii, 117-31; al-Muttaqī al-Hindī, Kanz al-ʿummāl fī sunan al-aqwāl wa-l afʿāl, ed. by Isḥāq al-Ṭībī, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Beirut: Bayt al-Afkār al-Duwaliyya, 2005), nos. 19201-2; al-Nawawī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim bisharḥ al-Nawawī, 18 vols (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Miṣriyya, 1929-30), iv, 216-29; al-Dusūqī, Ḥāshiya, i, 246-7. See also al-Bukhārī, nos. 496, 497; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, 123; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 223.

sutra. It could have been made concave so as to include the imām (who usually prays individually in the front) and thus save a complete line for congregants. Just like the miḥrāb, the minaret is seen by many to have been borrowed from pre-Islamic types. It is true that we possess no archaeological or historical evidence to suggest that in the time of the Prophet the mosque had a typical minaret. The latter, nevertheless, was most probably inspired from the habit of Bilāl, the Prophet’s muezzin, to call to prayer from the highest roof in the mosque vicinity,128 which reportedly belonged to a woman from Banū al-Najjār.129 According to Ibn Saʿd, however, ‘once the Prophet built [the ẓulla of] his mosque, Bilāl used its rooftop to call to prayer; an elevated platform was therein set for him.’130 It might be this elevated platform which is referred to by other narratives an isṭiwān, ‘pillar’―some even called it manāra―used by Bilāl for the purpose of adhān. According to some reports, it stood at the contiguous apartment of Ḥafṣa bt. ʿUmar (d. ca. 41/661), a wife of the Prophet (see figs. 8 & 9).131 The apartment, and with which the manāra, was handed down to her brother ʿAbd Allāh and then to his son ʿUbayd Allāh.132 Bilāl is said to have used aqtāb to mount the isṭiwān.133

128

Briggs, Muhammadan Architecture, p. 22. The practice of calling to prayer from a raised place is also

confirmed by the reports on the Prophet commanding Bilāl to call to prayer from the roof of the Kaʿba upon the conquest of Mecca. See Ibn Abī Shayba, no. 2344; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, iii, 215. The relevant ḥadīths are reported by Abū Dāwūd under the heading of ‘Entry on calling to prayer atop the manāra’, and by al-Bayhaqī under ‘Entry on calling to prayer in the manāra’. Al-Kutub al-sitta, p. 1262; al-Bayhaqī, Sunan, i, 625-6. They are reported by Ibn Abī Shayba under ‘the muezzins calling to prayer on an elevated place, manāra and the like’. See Ibn Abī Shayba, no. 2190. Some early religious authorities such as Ibn Jurayj and Abū Ḥanīfa said, based on such ḥadīths, that it is allowed to pray in the minaret (miʾdhana). Ibn Abī Shayba, nos. 6221-2. 129

Abū Dāwūd, no. 519; al-Bayhaqī, no. 1995; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 529. See also Wensinck, Early

Muhammadan Tradition, p. 12. 130

Ibn Saʿd mentions that the woman was al-Nawwār bt. Mālik, the mother of Zayd b. Thābit, to whom

the task of collecting the Qurʾān was assigned. Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, v, 306. See also al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 529. 131

Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 164; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 530.

132

See al-Samhūdī: Wafāʾ, ii, 530; 718. On the location of the apartments of the Prophet’s wives and

the houses of his Companions around the Mosque, see Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, pp. 152-3; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 458-65; 717-34; M. Ilyās ʿAbd al-Ghanī, Buyūt al-ṣaḥāba raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhum ḥawla almasjid al-nabawī al-sharīf: dirāsa ʿan al-ḥujurāt al-sharīfa wa-l ṣuffa wa-buyūt baʿḍ al-ṣaḥāba raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhum wa-saqīfat Banī Sāʿida wa-l Baqīʿ, 4th edn (Madina: Maktabat al-Malik Fahd alWaṭaniyya, 1999); Ṣafwān Dāwūdī, al-Ḥujurāt al-sharīfa: sīratan wa-tārikh (Madīna: Maktabat alMalik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya, 2001). The apartment which ʿAbd Allāh bequeathed from Ḥafṣa, and to which he presumably moved the manāra, was not the one which the Prophet built for her, but an abutting one which was formerly a mirbad where the wives of the Prophet used to do ablution. It was given to Ḥafṣa by the Caliph ʿUthmān in return for a part of her apartment which he needed in

Known as al-Miṭmār, this embryonic manāra, and which we are told was quadrangular in shape, survived for several centuries and was seen by al-Aqshahrī (d. ca. 731/1330).134 Ibn Isḥāq al-Ḥarbī (d. 285/898) stated: ‘we have not been told that the mosque [of the Prophet] had a minaret [to be] used for adhān other than this isṭiwān and the aqtāb’.135 Sauvaget believed that this primitive upper dais was the forerunner of the minaret as we know it.136 We, on the other hand, are on firmer ground in ascertaining the Prophet’s adoption of a minbar, a simple one, in 8/629 to replace the palm stem on which he used to lean while preaching.137 There is, however, disagreement in the sources as to whom the idea and the making of the minbar should be credited. Ibn Zabāla and Ibn Saʿd relate, on the authority of Khālid b. Saʿīd b. Abī Maryam and Abū Hurayra respectively, that the minbar was made for the Prophet by Tamīm al-Dārī after the former gained weight.138 Upon his knowledge of the Prophet’s complaining of some weakness in his feet, Tamīm suggested: ‘O Allāh’s Apostle! I shall make a minbar for you just as I saw [the people do] in al-Shām (kamā raʾaytu yuṣnaʿu bi-l shaʾm).’ Tamīm’s proposal was discussed by the chief ṣaḥābīs who then agreed.139 Another account argues that the adoption of the minbar was suggested by the Companions (some speak of one anonymous Companion)140 so that the Prophet would be easily seen and his khuṭba would be clearly heard by the congregants, whose number significantly multiplied.141 Ibn Saʿd also relates, on the authority of Ibn Shihāb al29/650 so as to expand the mosque. See al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 508-10. The remaining part of Ḥafṣa’s apartment was reportedly merged into the mosque in al-Walīd’s expansion in 91/710. Āl ʿUmar, the legitimate heirs of Ḥafṣa were given, as compensation, a house known as Dār al-Raqīq. See alSamhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 514-6; 718; M. Ilyās ʿAbd al-Ghanī, Buyūt al-ṣaḥāba, pp. 81-4. 133

Aqtāb is the plural of qitb or qatab. It is a small gear (saddle) in the size of a camel’s hump usually put

on its back. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān, v, 3523-4. 134

Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 164; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 530.

135

Ibn Isḥāq al-Ḥarbī, Kitāb al-manāsik wa-amākin ṭuruq al-Ḥajj wa maʿālim al-Jazīra, ed. by Ḥamad al-

Jāsir, (Riyadh: Dār al-Yamāma, 1969), p. 368. See also Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq, p. 70; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 526. On these minarets, see Ibn Jubayr, al-Riḥla, p. 173. 136

J. Sauvaget, La Mosquée omeyyade de Médine: Études sur les origines architecturales de la mosquée et

de la basilique (Paris: Vanoest, 1947), p. 156. See also Jonathan M. Bloom, Minaret: Symbol of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 28. 137

See al-Bukhārī, nos. 917-20, 928; Muslim, nos. 1994-6; al-Bayhaqī, no. 5696; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, pp.

155-60; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 388. 138

Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, pp. 86-7; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 215; Abū Dāwūd, no. 1081, al-Samhūdī,

Wafāʾ, ii, 391. 139

Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 215; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, pp. 157-8; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 315; Quṭb al-Dīn,

Tārīkh al-Madīna, p. 101. 140

Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 217. This anonymous companion might be Tamīm al-Dārī.

141

Ibid, i, 216-7.

Zuhrī (d. 124/741-2), that it was the Prophet who put forward the idea and then asked for advice from his Companions.142 The name of the carpenter is no less moot.143 It seems that such disagreement regarding the minbar’s proposer and maker goes back to the first century AH. Those engaged in the controversy went to Sahl b. Saʿd al-Sāʿidī (d. 91/ 710) for arbitration: Narrated Abū Ḥāzim b. Dinār: a group of people came to Sahl b. Saʿd al-Sāʿidī, disputing as to what thing the minbar [of the Prophet] was made of. When they asked him about that, he replied: ‘By Allāh! I do know what thing it was made of [in another narration, ‘no one alive is more familiar with this’].144 […]. The Prophet sent to so and so, an Anṣārī woman whose name was mentioned by Sahl [but the sub-narrator was not certain of it], saying to her: “order your slave carpenter to make a wooden pulpit (aʿwād) for me to take as a seat when I speak to the people [namely preach].” And so she did. He, the carpenter, made it of tamarisk wood (ṭarfāʾ) from the forest and brought it in […].’145

According to another account, the women first offered to make a pulpit for the Prophet and he agreed.146 Ibn Ḥajar argued that when the work went slow the Prophet asked her to speed it up.147 Early chroniclers, however, unanimously agree that the minbar was no more than a three-step seat.148 The measurements, passed down on the authority of Ibn Zabāla, reveal that it was of a small size and that it

142

Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 216.

143

Some said Kilāb, a servant of al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 215; Ibn al-Najjār,

Durra, p. 158. According to other reports, the minbar was made by Sahl b. Saʿd himself who was helped by an unnamed carpenter, the only one in Madīna at that time. Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 216; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 314-5. Some sources named the carpenter as Mīnā. Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 88; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, 158; Quṭb al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Madīna, p. 101; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 317. Others identified him as Ṣabāḥ. Quṭb al-Din, Tārīkh al-Madīna, p. 102. According to yet another account, he was a slave of Nuṣayba al-Makhzūmī. Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 88; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 391. Others argue that he was a slave of Saʿīd b. al-ʿĀṣ known as Bāqūl. Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 88. According to some, the carpenter was a Rūmī convert called Bāqūm. See ʿAbd al-Razzāq, no. 5244; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 316-7. Some accounts, given greater weight by modern scholars, state that it is Tamīm himself who made the minbar for the Prophet. Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 88; Abū Dāwūd, no. 1081; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 315; Quṭb al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Madīna, p. 101. 144

Ibn Māja, no. 1416; al-Bayhaqī, nos. 5229-30; Juynboll, Canonical Ḥadīth, p. 584.

145

Al-Bukhārī, nos. 917, 2094, 2569; Muslim, no. 1216; Abū Dāwūd, no. 1080; al-Bayhaqī, no. 5697; Ibn

Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 217; Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, 87; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, 157; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 198. See also al-Bukhārī, nos. 448-9. 146

Al-Bukhārī, no. 449; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 157; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 198.

147

Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, p. 90.

148

Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 159.

had a back and two armrests.149

Figure 8: Positions of the apartments of the Prophet’s wives (after M. al-Nafīsī)

MOSQUE-RELATED ḤADĪTHS: A THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK The above discussion reveals that the mosque of the Prophet, in spite of its simplicity, could have delivered the straightforward prototype of the mosque. In addition to a distinct and handy outline, it included the embryos of the main architectural features of a typical mosque. Simplicity was the dominant aspect though. What did such simplicity emit from? Did it reflect a prophetic attitude toward mosque form? Was it a parallel of the simple ritual requirements of early Islam? Or was it simply a 149

Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, pp. 90-92; Ibn al-Najjār Durra, p. 160; Quṭb al-Dīn, Tārikh al-Madīna,

p. 102.

manifestation of the cultural life related to place and time? Narrated Anas b. Mālik, the Prophet warns: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come until the people boast at mosques.’150 In another ḥadīth, he, on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, foretells:’ I see that you will heighten your mosques and decorate them with crenellations (satushrrifūna masājidakum) after my passing, just as what the Jews did to their synagogues (kanāʾisahā) and the Christians to their convents (biyaʿahā).151 The Prophet is also reported, via Anas b. Malik, to have advised: ‘Build mosques and make them jumman, ‘shorn of crenellations’.’152 Such was enough for a majority of medieval Muslim scholars to assume that the elevation and decoration of mosques are objectionable. Both are linked with two reproachful matters: (i) they are prophesied to occur near the Day of Judgment (it is known according to other ḥadīths that the Day of Judgment will come while the earth is populated with the depraved);153 (ii) and they are an imitation of non-Islamic nations from whom the Muslims must differentiate themselves, especially in religious matters.154 As far as mosque form is concerned, the Prophet is reported to have refused suggestions to take a Jewish or a Christian device to summon the people for prayer.155

150

Abū Dāwūd, no. 449; Ibn Māja; no. 739; al-Nasāʾī, no. 690; al-Bayhaqī, no. 4299; Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal,

al-Waraʿ bi-riwāyat al-Marūdhī, ed. by Samīr al-Zuhayrī, 2nd edn (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 2000), no. 607; Abū Yaʿlā, no. 2798; al-Dārimī, no. 1448; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 154. This ḥadīth is regarded by a majority of scholars, past and present, as ṣaḥīḥ. Some of them remarked that it is only reported through Ḥammād b. Salama (d. 167/783), who was a reliable narrator of ḥadīth and a notable grammarian. 151

Ibn Māja, no. 740. This ḥadīth is considered weak by al-Nawawī and al-Albānī and ḥasan, ‘fair’, by al-

Suyūṭī. Moreover, its meaning is in accord with a more authentic saying of Ibn ʿAbbās: ‘[Surely], you will decorate them just as what the Jews and the Christians did’. Abū Dāwūd, no. 448; al-Khaṭṭābī, Maʿālim al-sunan: Sharḥ ‘Sunan al-imām Abī Dāwūd (d. AH 275)’, ed. by M. Rāghib al-Ṭabbākh, 4 vols (Aleppo: alMaṭbaʿa al-ʿIlmiyya, 1933), i, 140-2; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, 85-6. 152

Al-Bayhaqī, nos. 4300-1; Ibn Abī Shayba, no. 3171. The authenticity of this ḥadīth is widely disagreed

upon. It is graded as ḥasan by al-Suyūṭī, mursal by Ibn al-Qaṭṭān, munqatiʿ by al-Dhahabī, and ḍaʿīf by alAlbānī. According to al-Nawawī, ‘juman’ means ‘having no shuraf’: Kitāb al-Majmūʿ: Sharḥ alMuhadhdhab li-l Shirāzī, ed. by M. Najīb al Muṭīʿī, 23 vols (Jeddah: Maktabat al-Irshād, 1980), ii, 208. Ibn Manẓūr further explains that shuraf is [that decorative element] which is usually put atop palaces and towns: Lisān, iv, 2241-2. 153

Muslim, no. 7373; Abū Yaʿlā, no. 5248.

154

See al-Bukhārī, nos. 7319-20. On the Prophet’s keenness to censure the observances of the prophets’

late followers (those who did not believe in him), and how this compares to his no less keenness to praise their immediate followers, see Ayyad, ‘House or Mosque’, pp. 319-20. Ibn Taymiyya dedicated his Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm to discuss this subject: Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm li-mukhālafat aṣḥāb aljaḥīm, ed. by Nāṣir al-ʿAql, 2 vols (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, [n.d.]). 155

Abū Dāwūd, no. 498.

Such deprecatory views seem to be backed by a ḥadīth marfūʿ, ‘raised’,156 according to which the Prophet states: ‘I have not been commanded to apply tashyīd to mosques.’157 Tashyīd is taken to mean heightening and beautifying in sense,158 and coating with shīd, ‘stucco’, in another.159 The former meaning, however, is seen by most commentators to be the one meant in the ḥadīth;160 mosques must not be elevated to such an extent that would obstruct breeze or sunlight from reaching those who live in the neighbourhood.161 Some of the medieval Muslim legalists argued that the Prophet refrained from adopting tashyīd, lest it should be taken as pretext for decoration in later times.162 However, the very words of the Prophet seem to connote a less rigorous approach: ‘I have not been commanded to apply tashyīd to mosques’. He did not say: ‘I have been commanded not to apply tashyīd to mosques’. Also, the phrase, ‘I [not we] have not been commanded (mā ʾumirtu)’, may connote that the attitude of not applying tashyīd to mosques is peculiar to the Prophet himself and not to all Muslims regardless of place and time. In Islamic sharīʿa, there are many aḥkām related to the Prophet(s) exclusively. This assumption seems to be supported by quite a number of ḥadīths. One of a good weight of authenticity, ḥasan, states: ‘It is not allowed for me, or any

156

‘The term “raised” applies exclusively to the ḥadīth attributed to the Messenger of God (Peace be

upon him) and it does not apply, when used without qualification, to anything else, just as the term “halted” (mawqūf) is applied to the Companions and others [and not to the ḥadīth of the Prophet]. The raised ḥadīth may be uninterrupted (muttaṣil), interrupted (munqaṭiʿ), loose (mursal) and the like.’ Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, Introduction, p. 33. 157

Abu Dāwūd, no. 448; ʿAbd al-Razzāq, no. 5127; Ibn Ḥanbal, Waraʿ, no. 608; Ibn Abī Shayba, no. 3164;

al-Bayhaqī, no. 4298; al-Baghawī, Sharḥ al-sunna, ed. by Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh and Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 2nd edn, 16 vols (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1983), ii, 348; al-Ṭarṭūshī, Ḥawādith, p. 104; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan Tradition, p. 155. This ḥadīth is considered ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Jāmiʿ, no. 5550) and Ibn Ḥibbān, (no. 1615). See also al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 336. 158

Al-Baghawī, Sharḥ al-sunna, ii, 349; al-Zamakhsharī, Asās al-Balāgha, ed. by Muḥammad B. ʿUyūn al-

Sūd, 2 vols (Beirut, Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998), i, 529; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, p.86. 159Ibn

Manẓūr, Lisān, iv, 2374; al-Fayrūzabādī, al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, 4 vols (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-

ʿĀmma li-l Kitāb, 1978-80), i, 303. 160

See al-Baghawī, Sharḥ al-sunna, ii, 349; al-Khaṭṭābī, Maʿālim al-sunan, i, 140; al-ʿAynī, ʿUmdat al-qārī

vi, 302; al-Shawkānī, Nayl al-awṭār min asrār muntaqā al-akhbār, ed. by M. Ṣubḥī Ḥallāq, 8 vols (Dammam: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 2006), iii, 557-8. 161

The Prophet is reported to have said: ‘there should be neither intentional nor unintentional damage

[to others] (lā ḍarara wa-lā ḍirār).’ Ibn Māja, nos. 2340-2. On how this principle applies to building, see Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Lakhmī (known as Ibn al-Rāmī al-Bannāʾ), al-Iʿlān bi-aḥkām al-bunyān, ed. by Farīd b. Sulaymān (Tunisia: Markaz al-Nashr al-Jāmiʿī, 1999), pp. 57-102; al-Sadlān, ‘Ḍawābiṭ’, pp. 8-9. 162

Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, 86; al-Ṣanʿānī, Subul al-salām al-mūṣilah ilā bulūgh al-marām, ed. by M.

Ṣubḥī Ḥasan Ḥallāq, 2nd rev. edn, 8 vols (Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 2000), ii, 153-6.

prophet, to enter a decorated house (baytan muzawwaqan).’163 It is noticeable here that the Prophet, while refraining from entering the house (to which he along with ʿAlī and Fāṭima was invited for a meal), did not blame the host or prevent his kin to stay in it. As already noted, the mosque of the Prophet, having been mainly composed of an open space and a humble shelter, is usually thought of to fully mirror the above stance of restrictiveness. We have seen, however, that the mosque of the Prophet, especially when compared to its cultural and geomorphological context, was built with an adequate amount of carefulness. Much effort was exerted to prepare the site, which had been occupied by dilapidated structures, graves, ponds of stagnant water and palm trees. The latter were cut and (most likely in a while), arranged in parallel rows to hold the front ẓulla, adobe was moulded, stone foundation was laid, and walls of sun-dried brick were built.164 In the face of the above restrictive reports, we are told that the Prophet wanted his mosque to be properly built. He not only supervised the work but himself participated in it.165 On the authority of Umm Salama, when the Prophet was building his mosque, he brought the labin, along with the other necessary materials and tools near to him, and took off his mantle (as a sign of getting ready for work). When the first Muhājirūn and Anṣār saw that, they likewise took off theirs and began working while reciting enthusing chants.166 Ibn Kathīr added that the Prophet worked with his Companions until his chest was covered in dust.167 Further, the Prophet praised one of the participants, Ṭalq b. ʿAlī, for his skill in mixing mud and moulding adobe. He, having been displeased with the other partakers’ inadequate treatment of mud, asked Ṭalq to do nothing but mix mud, and asked them to leave this particular work to him as he perfected it. To encourage the other partakers to play their parts, the Prophet asked God’s mercy to be conferred upon those who did their bits in the true sense: ‘May God be merciful 163

Abu Dāwūd, no. 3755; al-Hindī, Kanz, nos. 6355-7. See also Ibn Ḥanbal, nos. 1269, 9040; Ibn Māja,

nos. 3649-52; Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-Maʿād, iii, 458. 164

Al-Bukhārī, no. 428; Muslim, no. 1173; Abū Dāwūd, no. 453; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, ii, 397; Abū al-Faraj b.

al-Jawzī, Muthīr al-gharām al-sākin ilā ashraf al-amākin, ed. by Muṣṭafā al-Dhahabī (Cairo: Dār alḤadīth, 1995), pp. 462-3; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, 71-2; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 211; Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya wa nihāya, iv, 531; Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, ʿUyūn al-athar fī-funūn al-maghāzī wa-l shamāʾil wa-l siyar, ed. by M. al-Khaṭrāwī and Muḥyī al-Dīn Mistū, 2 vols (Madina: Maktabat Dār al-Turāth, [n.d]), i, 315; alSuhaylī, Rawḍ, ii, 337; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 146; al-Marāghī, p. 42; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 334. 165

Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq, pp.64-5, Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 75; al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs, i, 344;

Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya wa nihāya, iv, p. 532. 166

Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq, pp.64-5, Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 75; al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs, i, 344.

167

Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya wa nihāya, iv, p. 532.

to whomsoever does his work in a proper way (aḥsan ṣanʿatah)’.168 He further urged, using almost the same terms, that the same approach of maintaining proper work (ḥusn al-ṣanʿah) should be applied to all other mosques. Narrated Samura b. Jundub: ‘the Prophet commanded us to build the mosques in our dūr, ‘communities of kinship’, and to build them properly (nuṣliḥa ṣanʿatahā) and cleanse them’.169 In ʿĀʾisha’s narration of the same ḥadīth: ‘[…], and commanded that they should be cleaned and scented’.170 It is also recorded of the Prophet, through a weak ḥadīth nevertheless,171 to have praised Tamīm al-Dārī for illuminating the mosque using oil lamps brought from al-Shām (in spite of that he was not commanded to do such a precedence): ‘You have illuminated Islam! May God grant you light in this and the Hereafter! Had I had an unmarried daughter, I would have surely got her married to you!’172 The same thing applies to the Prophet’s reaction to the first use of pebbles to cover the floor of the mosque: Narrated Ibn ʿUmar: One night, we became so wet by rains that each one [of us] began to collect pebbles in his clothes and strew them beneath himself. The Prophet then applauded: ‘How good this is!’173

In each of the above episodes, the Prophet allowed an applied device, which he had not prescribed earlier. Such spontaneous improvements could have emitted from the Islamic general principle of praising the perfection of work (itqān al-ʿamal). Narrated ʿĀʾisha, the Prophet says: ‘Verily, God loves that when anyone 168

This ḥadīth has long been thought not to be found in any of the nine canonical books of ḥadīth. It,

however, has been included in a recent complemented edition of Musnad Ahmad in a section titled ‘alMulḥaq al-mustadrak min musnad al-Anṣār’. See Musnad al-imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, ed. by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, ʿĀdil Murshid et al., 50 vols (Beirut: Muʾssasat al-Risāla, 1995-2001), xxxix, 463, 465-6. The same ḥadīth is also reported by al-Samhūdī on the authority of alZuhrī: Wafāʾ, ii, 333-34. On this ḥadīth of Ṭalq, see also Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī, Jāmiʿ al-uṣūl fī aḥādīth alrasūl, ed. by ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnaʾūṭ, 12 vols (Damascus, Maktabat Dār al-Bayān, 1969-72), no. 8716; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, viii, 113; al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs, i, 344; Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Aṭrāf ‘Musnad alimām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’ al musammā iṭrāf al-musnid al-muʿtalī bi-aṭrāf al-musnad al-ḥanbalī, ed. by Zuhayr al-Nāṣir, 10 vols (Damascus, Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1993), no. 2948; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, ii, 89-90; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 303-4. 169

Abu Dāwūd, no. 456; Ibn Ḥanbal, no. 20060; al-Bayhaqī, no. 4309; Wensinck, Early Muhammadan

Tradition, p. 154. This ḥadīth is seen as ṣaḥīḥ by al-Haythamī and ḥasan by al-Albānī. While reported to us through a weak strand of transmitters, the ḥadīth is backed by another of the same meaning narrated by ʿĀʾisha. 170

Al-Tirmidhī, no. 594; Abū Dāwūd, no. 455; al-Bayhaqī, no. 4308; Ibn Māja, nos. 758-8; Ibn Khuzayma,

no. 1294; al-Bazzār, no. 4622; al-Baghawī, Sharḥ al-sunna, ii, 399; al-Khaṭṭābī, Maʿālim al-sunan, i, 142. 171

It is considered weak by Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī: al-Iṣāba fī tamyīz al-ṣaḥāba, 9 vols (Beirut: Dār al-

Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 199- [repr. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1853), i, 191. 172

See Ibn Māja, no. 760; al-Jurāʿī, Tuḥfa, p. 362.

173

Abu Dāwūd, nos. 458-60. This ḥadīth is considered weak by al-Albānī.

of you does a work to do it perfectly’.174 For many, the above reports would connote two paradoxical attitudes of the Prophet regarding what the mosque should look like, i.e. in terms of modesty or improvement. We, thus, need to explore the actual standards he considered to approve or deny an ‘architectural’ feature for the mosque. Reported by Ibn Zabāla and al-Samhūdī, the following story may bring us close to this. The Prophet is reported, on the authority of Khālid b. Maʿdān (d. ca. 103/721), to have approached the mosque while being surveyed by ʿAbd Allāh b. Rawāḥa and Abū al-Dardāʾ,175 who used a qaṣaba, ‘gauging rod’ for that purpose. He wondered: ‘what are you doing?’ They replied: ‘we want to (re-)build the mosque after the buildings of alShām: a work to be shared out between the Anṣār.’ The Prophet took the qaṣaba, threw it away saying: ‘No! I want it in the form of thumām, ‘few pieces of wood and twigs, and an arbour like that of Moses’, as he explained. The Prophet, then, commented: ‘the affair [namely this life] is more evanescent than that.’176 According to some accounts, he was asked: ‘what is the arbour of Moses?’ and he replied: ‘when he stood up his head touched the celling’. 177 According to a less common account, the Prophet prayed in the mosque while in the form of a ʿarīsh for twelve days, before he built and roofed it.178 Ibn Zabāla also recounts, on the authority of Anas b. Mālik, that the mosque, when first built, was made of jarīd, ‘stalks of palm-leaves’, and it was not until the year 4/625 that it was built with labin.179 Al-Samhūdī, nonetheless, comments that this is either inauthentic or misinterpreted, for it collides with all relevant accounts. According to him, stone and labin were used in the first building of the mosque as

174

Al-Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, nos. 4930-31; al-Ṭabarānī, Awsaṭ, nos. 897; Abū Yaʿlā, no. 4386; al-Albānī,

Ṣaḥīḥ al-jāmiʿ, no. 1880; id, Ṣaḥīḥa, no. 1113. 175

According to some accounts Ibn Rawāḥa was accompanied by Ubayy b. Kaʿb. See Kister (pp. 150-1),

and references are therein. 176

ʿAbd al-Razzāq, no. 5135; Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 78; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 339; Ibn Saʿd,

Ṭabaqāt, i, 206; al-Ṭarṭūshī, Ḥawādith, p. 104; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥla, i, 84; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-bārī, iii, 281-2. Al-Samhūdī et al. mentioned a similar ḥadīth according to which, ‘the Anṣār collected money and came [with it] to the Prophet saying: “O Prophet of Allāh! Build the mosque and adorn it for us! Until what time will we pray under these palm fronds?” [...].’ Al-Samhūdī, Khulāṣa, ii, 15. According to Ibn Kathīr, this is gharīb, ‘unfamiliar or rare’: Bidāya wa nihāya, iv, 532-3. 177

See Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 78; Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq, p. 66; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 339; al-

Sakhāwī, al-Tuḥfa al-laṭīfa fī tārīkh al-Madīna al-sharīfa, 3 vols (Cairo: Asʿad Ṭarabzūnī al-Ḥusaynī, 1979), i, 43. An abridged form of this account is mentioned in a ḥadīth reported by al-Bayhaqī in his Dalāʾl. This ḥadīth, however, is judged by Ibn Kathīr as mursal: Bidāya wa nihāya, iv, 532. 178

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 327.

179

Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 79.

stated by sound ḥadīths.180 There were, however, practical reasons to compel the use of stone for the foundations from the very beginning; the mosque was built in a place where stagnant water is reported to have usually stood.181 On the authority of Ibn Zabāla, the eastern wall of the mosque was made thicker than the western one, so as to stand firm against floods.182 While this account relates to the architectural works of the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Mahdī (158-68/775–85), it implies that the mosque site was vulnerable to inundation or episodes of ponding in wet weather.183 The use of stone by the Prophet reflects a responsive approach toward the existing physical conditions. As we have just seen, such responsiveness is also echoed by the Prophet’s adoption of the minbar and his making of the ẓulla at behest of his Companions. Furthermore, he rebuilt his mosque a number of times to accommodate the speedily growing number of congregation, and each time a new part was added and a better method of building was applied. According to tradition,184 the walls of the mosque were first built using a vernacular building technique called ‘al-samīṭ’. It was one adobe above the other. The height of the walls was that of a qāma, ‘fathom, equal to 4 cubits’.185 In the second building, a better technique was used, ‘alsaʿīda’, one brick and a half in thicknesses. The walls were slightly higher than a qāma. The Prophet enlarged the mosque for the third time using yet a better building technique, called as al-dhakar wa-l unthā, the wall thickness being made of two transverse pairs of bricks (fig. 9).186 In this stage, the walls were made particularly thick so as to hold the roof whose introduction, seemingly for the first time, also dictated an elevation in height,187 attaining seven cubits according to some accounts.188

a 180 181

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 327. See M. Hazzāʿ al-Shihrī, ʿImārat al-masjid al-nabawī: mundhū inshāʾihī ḥattā nihāyat al-ʿaṣr al-

mamlūkī, (Cairo: Dār al-Qāhira li-l Kitāb, 2001), p. 35. 182

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, ii, 683.

183

See Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i, 205; al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs, i, 343; al-Shihrī, Masjid nabawī, p. 35.

184

Ibn Zabāla, Akhbār al-Madīna, p. 77; Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 147; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 335-36; al-

Sakhāwī, Tuḥfa, i, 45; Quṭb al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Madīna, p. 93; al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs, i, 346. 185

Some said basṭa, ‘a bit more than a qāma’. Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 147; Quṭb al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Madīna

p. 93. 186

Ibn al-Najjār, Durra, p. 70; al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 346.

187

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 335.

188

See al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 336; Khulāṣat, ii, p. 15; al-Sakhāwī, Tuḥfa, i, 45.

b

c

d

e Figure 13: Figure 9: Different kinds of bricks and techniques used by the Prophet to build his mosque (al-Shihrī 2001) (a) First type of adobe; (b) Second type; (c) al-samīṭ; (d) al-sāʿida; (e) al-dhakar wa-l unthā

Such were deemed basic ‘architectural’ arrangements, and thus approved by the Prophet. The elaboration of the building, on the other hand, was looked upon as surplus—even if the Companions’ aspiration was, according to other episodes, brought down to only treating the ẓulla with more mud,189 or applying a kohl-like paint for the walls.190 In both incidents, the Prophet insisted: ‘[I want it in the form of] a ʿarīsh as that of Moses’. The above phrase, ‘the affair is more evanescent than that (al-amru aʿjalu min dhālik)’, is of a particular significance for our discussion; it brings out one reason for which the Prophet did not want his mosque to be massive or elaborate, i.e. considering the transitory nature of this life. According to many Quranic verses and ḥadīths, the obsession with this life would lead to losing sight of the afterlife and then backsliding to worldly interests.191 It is interesting to note that, unlike the case with erecting mosques on graves—for

189

Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ, i, 335.

190

Ibn Ḥanbal, Waraʿ, no. 612; al-Diyārbakrī, Tārīkh al-khamīs, i, 346; Ibn Rajab, Fatḥ al-Bārī, iii, 282; al-

Zarkashī, Iʿlām, pp. 335-7. 191

See as an example: Qurʾān 2. 86; 2. 204; 3. 14; 3. 152; 3. 185; 4. 77; 4. 94; 4. 32; 6. 70; 7. 51; 8. 67; 9. 38; 10.

24; 13. 26; 14. 3; 18. 45; 29. 64; 31. 33; 57. 20. Also, whole chapters in the canonical books of ḥadīth are dedicated to discuss this issue, usually under the title, ‘K. al-zuhd’, ‘Book of asceticism’.

instance— where repercussion is no less than God’s wrath, the Prophet did not set any punishment for the elaboration of mosques.192 It could be safely argued that the more untoward the consequence of a transgression is, the more plain-spoken the reason of its prevention is, and the bigger the penalty is. It is quite hard to believe that the Prophet wanted the mosque to look wretched while himself asked the worshippers, via some sound ḥadīths, to titivate before attending it.193 The Qurʾān itself commands: ‘O children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer: eat and drink: but waste not by excess, for Allāh loveth not the wasters.194 Just like building, both clothing and eating, while made for people’s delight, should not be approached in a wasteful manner. It seems that the many incidents, in which the Prophet warned against bragging about such matters caused some to get bewildered. One man wondered whether it is of pride (kibr) to have a clean garment, anointed hair, a new footwear, etc. The Prophet replied: ‘God is beautiful; He loves beauty.195 He also loves to see the trace of his bounties on his servant, (and hates misery or affecting it, ‘wayakrahu-l buʾsa wa-l-tabāʾus’).196 Pride is to stultify the truth and disdain the people’.197 This meaning complies with the Qurʾān, which, just following the above verse on beautifying for prayer, wonders: Say: Who hath forbidden the beautiful (gifts) of Allāh, which He hath produced for His servants, and the things, clean and pure, (which He hath provided) for sustenance? Say: They are, in the life of this world, for those who believe, (and) purely for them on the Day of Judgment. Thus do We explain the signs in detail for those who know. Say: The things that my Lord Hath indeed forbidden are: indecent deeds, whether open or secret; sins and

192

The ḥadīth which vows destruction as a corollary of decorating mosques is reported by al-Ṭarṭūshī (p.

105), al-Baghawī (II, 350), and al-Zarkashī (p. 337) as the statement of Abū al-Dardāʾ. It is, further, widely judged as mawqūf, ‘halted’. See Ibn Ḥanbal, Waraʿ, no. 606. ‘The halted ḥadīth is the one which is transmitted from the Companions (God be pleased with them) concerning their words, deeds, and the like and which is stopped at them and is not carried past to the Messenger of God (Peace be upon him)’. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, Introduction, p. 34. Others reported this ḥadīth as the saying of Abū Hurayra. See Saʿīd b. Manṣūr Sunan, ed. by Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh Āl Ḥumayyid, 5 vols (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣumayʿī, 1993), no. 165; al-Hindī, no. 23125. This ḥadīth is regarded as weak by Āl Ḥumayyid, the editor of Sunan Saʿīd b. Manṣūr (ii, 486-90). It is, however, considered ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-jamiʿ, no. 585. 193

Abū Dāwūd, no. 1078; Ibn Māja, nos. 1095-8; Ibn Ḥibbān, no. 2777; Ibn Khuzayma, no. 1765.

194

Qurʾān, 7. 31.

195

One sign for God’s loving of beauty is indicated by the Qurʾān, where one of the reasons for which

stars are created is to adorn the sky for those who look toward it: Qurʾān, 15. 16; 37. 6; 41. 12; 50. 6; 67. 5. 196

The latter addition is a narration of both Abū Hurayra and Abū Said al-Khudrī. See al-Suyūṭī, Jāmiʿ al-

aḥādīth, nos. 5234, 5324. See also no. 833. 197

Al-Ṭabarānī, Awsaṭ, nos. 4668, 6633; al-Albānī, ṣaḥīḥa, iv, 165-8; al-Ṭaḥāwī, Sharḥ mushkil al-āthār, ed.

by Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 16 vols (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994), nos. 5557-63 (at 5559).

trespasses against truth or reason […].198

In one ḥadīth, the Prophet further sets a conspicuous principle to follow: ‘Eat whatever you want and wear whatever you want, as long as you avoid two features: lavishness and pride.’199 It is true that he usually dressed in simple clothes, but he is also reported to have on occasion worn luxurious attires.200 He is even to have prayed while clad in muraḥḥalāt, ‘black-hair garments with marks’.201 Meanwhile, the Prophet was always keen to link his followers with the unwavering pleasure: that of the second world. One day he wore a jubbah of dībājj or sundus, interwoven with gold threads, that he was gifted. He ascended the minbar, sat down but did not speak. When he descended, the people kept on touching and looking admirably at it. Having been afraid of them getting over fascinated by such a dazzling outfit, he said to them: ‘Are you amazed with it?’ They replied: ‘we have not seen a better dress!’ He then said: ‘the kerchiefs of Saʿd b. Muʿādh [a martyr Companion] in Paradise are assuredly more elegant than what you see!’202 The Prophet always accentuated that spiritual qualities are more important than physical features or material belongings: ‘Verily God does not look at [namely, consider] your looks or your wealth, but he does with your hearts and your deeds.’203 Thus, the tendency in ḥadīth to apply simplicity to building could, in addition to resisting pride and lavishness, be attributed to the fact that Islam does not want its followers to be attached to any ephemeral matter, here represented in structures. The group of ḥadīths which urge the Muslims to conduct prayers at certain mosques denote spaces and not structures.204

198

Qurʾān, 7. 32-3.

199

Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Muṣannaf, ed. by M. ʿAwāma, 26 vols (Jeddah: Dār al-Qibla; Beirut: Muʾassasat

ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 2006), nos. 25374-5; Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Hidāyat al-ruwāh ilā takhrīj aḥādīth ‘alMaṣābīḥ’ wa ‘al-Mishkāh’, ed. by M. Nāṣir al-Albānī and A. Ḥasan al-Ḥalabī, 6 vols (Dammam: Dār Ibn al-Qayyim, 2001) nos. 4306-7. This ḥadīth is also reported by al-Bukhārī, but as a comment (taʿlīqan). See Hidāyat al-ruwāh, IV, 217. 200

See al-Bukhārī, nos. 5783-849; Muslim, nos. 5401-51; Abū Dāwūd, nos. 4020-79; al-Tirmidhī, nos. 1720-

35. 201

Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān, iii, 1610; Ḥasan al-Pāshā, Mawsūʿat al-ʿimāra wa-al-āthār wa-l funūn al-islāmiyya, 5

vols (Beirut: Awrāq Sharqiyya, 1999), i, 129. See also Abū Yaʿlā, al-Musnad, ed. by H. Salīm Asʿad, 2nd edn, 14 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Maʾmūn li-l Turāth, 1989), no. 7095. 202

Al-Tirmidhī, no. 1723; al-Bukhārī, no. 5836; Muslim, nos. 6348-52.

203

Muslim, no. 6543.

204

These are: the Masjid al-Ḥarām at Mecca, the Aqṣā mosque in Jerusalem and the mosque of the

Prophet at Madīna: al-Bukhārī, nos. 1189, 1197, 1846, 1995.

CONCLUSION There are, generally, two groups of ḥadīth which seem to reflect divergent attitudes, and thus explain a lot of the later relevant discourses. The first group seems generally to adopt a critical standpoint against the elaboration of mosques, while the second seems not only to permit but actively to urge people to build mosques in a proper form. The former outlook is by far more popular, given an already existing tendency to depict the Prophet as disinclined to building. Such a perception of the Prophet is adopted by a majority of Muslim legalists, both now and then. It also represents the dominant wisdom in western scholarship. Mainly departing from such a concept, some of the recent Ḥanafīs believe that the mosque should be simple in form and material just as that built by the Prophet more than fourteen centuries ago. They build unpretentious mosques of no minarets, domes, concave prayer niches, etc. and call these ‘masājid aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, ‘mosques of the people of ḥadīth’.205 In the same vein, some of today’s Shīʿīs continue to call to prayer from a doorway or a roof instead of using minarets or loudhailers.206 The Wahhābīs’ mosques in Arabia (eighteenth century onwards) also typify such a literalist approach.207 The reports on the Prophet’s negative attitude toward building are, however, found peculiar to certain episodes and thus cannot be taken to reflect a general attitude. Some of these, particularly the most extreme among them, just reflect a later ascetic tendency in face of the Umayyad and Abbasid ‘lavishness’. Some are not the Prophet’s own saying, but belong to a Companion or an early religious authority. Plus, they generally relate to ‘sumptuous’ building. The adjective ‘sumptuous’, here should be considered in relation to the essentials of time and place. Further, such a concept of the Prophet contradicts more authentic reports on his mosque and apartments as well as a big number of ḥadīths and Quranic verses that reflect a good appreciation of art and architecture. Such a concept of the Prophet also contradicts the cultural heritage of seven-century Madīna which is evidenced through a variety of early reports and ḥadīths―many do not address the particular topic of building. It is also supported by archaeology. More importantly, this concept of the Prophet contradicts the clearly stated reason for which mankind is created, i.e. iʿmār al-arḍ. The Prophet’s attitude towards

205

See al-Khuḍayrī, ‘Aḥkām’, p. 35.

206

M. Bloom, ‘Mosque’, in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, (2003), iii, 426-37 at 430.

207

Some of the latter is reported to have even destroyed a number of early Islamic sites including

historic mosques, mausolea and artefacts on the grounds that material objects and sites related to the dead should not be venerated. See Daniel Howden, ‘The Destruction of Mecca: Saudi Hardliners are Wiping out their Own Heritage’, The Independent, 6 August 2005; Salah Nasrawi, ‘Mecca’s Ancient Heritage is Under Attack’, Los Angeles Times, 16, September, 2007.

building, and which is found justly comparable to his toward clothing and eating, reflects an economical but not austere approach. The mosque of the Prophet rightly reflects this. In spite of its simplicity, it was built with adequate carefulness, involving participation from the whole community of believers. With the incessantly growing inflow of worshippers, the mosque was enlarged a number of times and each time a better technique of building was used. This itself reflects an adaptive attitude on the Prophet’s part. By the second year AH, particularly after the change in the qibla direction, the mosque had been composed of an open courtyard surrounded by two porticoes. This outline, while not recommended by the Prophet, represents the prototype for later mosques. Even the most distinguishing constituents of a typical mosque, i.e. the minaret, miḥrāb and minbar could have derived from features and practices already included in the Prophet’s template. The Prophet's adaptive attitude is also accentuated by his consent to features which he did not prescribe, e.g. adopting the minbar, treating the qibla wall with saffron, using oil lamps to illuminate the mosque and using pebbles to cover the floor. That said, the mosque-related ḥadīths are widely regarded to reflect an austere attitude. To understand this paradoxical context and whether later polemics created or just reacted to it, we need to identify the number of things which the Prophet condemned, or at least did not recommend. These include: extravagance, boastfulness, distractiveness, and imitation of non-Muslims. Such a list of constraints did not, however, prevent the Prophet from building his mosque in a proper way. But ‘proper’ here does not mean elegant and massive. It rather means simple but practical, frugal but durable, and fine-looking but neither distractive nor pretentious. To further understand the two paradoxical bodies of reports, which may also well be attributed to the anecdotal and topological nature of the sources,208 we need to assess the mosque of the Prophet not as a thing alone but in the physical and cultural setting in which it was placed. As purveyed by the sources, the mosque of the Prophet well matched the people’s cultural life of the time. The Prophet did not want his mosque to be built after the fashion of the Syrian buildings, as it was not located in Syria. Rather, it was located in a much simpler environment. We could imagine the startling visual impact that an elaborate structure might have 208

See Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture:

650-1250 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 5-6; T. M. Antun, ‘The Architectural Form of the Mosque in the Central Arab Lands: From the Hijra to the End of the Umayyad Period: 1/622-133/750’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, St. Cross College, 2007), pp. 87-8.

had if planted in such a locality as that of Madina in the seven century AD. We, on the other hand, could imagine the negative impact that would be produced by the sight of a mosque (built of rubble and labin, roofed with rushes and lit with oil lamps) in a setting of appealing buildings. The Prophet did not want the mosque to look odd in its surroundings. Given the simplicity of the surroundings of the Prophet mosque in his time and the need for all prospects to support the daʿwa and jihād, elaborating the Prophet’s mosque―or any other building―was looked upon as excessive. Moreover, the Prophet did not want the mosque to be exalted for its striking appearance, but for the spiritual and societal roles it was set to play.