الفنون المعمارية والزخرفية في العهد الأموي ٢_a .. كتاب العمارة العربية الاسلامية

Its art and the traditions it inherited, and this labor force was mostly local, made up of the people of the Levant who mastered the construction industry on the Byzantine road, or more correctly, the local Syrian road.

We can add to these a small group brought from Egypt, carrying with them Coptic traditions, or brought from Iraq and Persia, and carrying with them the traditions of the Mesopotamian and Sasanian arts.

It is appropriate here to discuss the Arab narratives that some orientalists and art historians took without scrutiny, and which mention the bringing in of workers from all over the world, especially from the Byzantine Empire, in order to build the Umayyad Mosque or the Prophet’s Mosque in the city.

Al-Maqdisi mentioned the following in his book Al-Masalik wal-Mamalik, while talking about the construction of the Damascus Mosque: It is said that Al-Walid. It was built by the skill of Persia, India, Morocco, and Romans. He said about the construction of the Medina Mosque: “Al-Walid wrote to the King of Rome: We want to rebuild the Great Mosque of our Prophet, so I will hire craftsmen and mosaics. So he sent loads and twenty-few craftsmen to it. . . “.

After Al-Maqdisi, Ibn Asakir, Ibn Jubair, and Ibn Khaldun referred to something similar. Ibn Jubair even put the number of craftsmen that Al-Walid requested from the Roman king at twelve thousand.

We believe that these accounts are exaggerated. Perhaps its source is the intense admiration of historians for the Umayyad buildings in terms of luxury and artistic splendor, the likes of which the Arabs of the Peninsula had never been accustomed to achieving. It escaped the minds of these historians that the people of the Levant had all the technical expertise to complete such buildings. Syrian buildings were built in the Roman and Byzantine eras with local technical labor, and the Romans and Byzantines did not bring workers from Rome or Constantinople. Even the Umayyad mosaics, which most historians believe were completed by workers brought from Byzantium, the people of the Levant were extremely proficient in making them. This is witnessed by the hundreds of wonderful mats that are seen everywhere in the Syrian country, in cities and villages.

What supports our point is the fame of Syrian engineers, and the extension of this fame beyond the borders of the country, and the fact that some of them, during the days of Roman rule, built important buildings in Rome itself, and in other places in the provinces of the empire. We mention among them the engineer “Apollo Dor” of Damascus, who at the beginning of the second century AD built the well-known building: (Trajan’s Forum) and other buildings.

Third: The third factor in the components of Umayyad art is the need for creation and creativity. Islamic worship and rituals, especially collective prayer, required temples of a special type. The mosque initially appeared simple and naive, but the Umayyads came and worked to develop it and thus laid strong and original foundations for planning major mosques. The same can be said about the development of housing and the caliphs’ need for houses or palaces to be erected. In the desert, they achieve the life they want to live during their periods of recreation and freedom from the strict atmosphere of the city, which is dominated by seriousness and austerity. This led to the emergence of desert palaces and the manifestations of bliss and luxury they were filled with.

To meet these new needs, the artist borrowed and selected from previous arts and mixed the selected elements and achieved harmony between them. He also worked to exclude topics that did not fit the spirit of the era, and replaced them with appropriate topics. All of this had to lead to innovation and the creation of new art.

3_ The Umayyad buildings in the Levant:

The real building and reconstruction movement began in the Islamic era by the Umayyads, in the Levant and in some other regions. Many mosques were built and old mosques were renewed. Palaces and emirate houses were built, in the cities and outside them, and were provided with bathrooms and amenities for recreation.

But how did the years pass before the Umayyad era, and how did the construction and reconstruction process proceed during the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs?

Mosques:

We know that Muslims at the beginning of Islam and in the days of the Rightly Guided Caliphs were victorious in strengthening the new religion and spreading it through conquests. In application of the principles of conquest, they decided to divide some churches and let other sects worship in them, in their own way.

This happened in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Amed. But they used to build mosques in the regions and cities when such conditions did not exist for them. Or when they founded new cities. Omar bin Al-Khattab tended to establish cities for the Islamic soldiers, and during his reign they included Kufa, Basra, and Fustat.

A mosque and an emirate house were built in each of them. Al-Baladhuri mentioned that Saad Ibn Abi Waqqas, when he built the Kufa Mosque in the year 17 AH, used in its construction the ruins of the Al-Hira palaces that belonged to the Al-Mundhir family. Al-Hira is about six kilometers away from Kufa. The sources stated that the Basra Mosque was initially built from reeds, then Omar allowed it to be built with stones and said, “Do not exaggerate in the construction.”

In the year 21 AH, Amr ibn al-Aas built the Fustat Mosque without a courtyard or minarets, and adjacent to it from the direction of the qibla was Amr’s house. It is noted that the role of the emirate was located at the Qibla wall in all Arab cities, from which the caliph or governor would enter the mosque and reach the mihrab without having to cross the Muslims. This is an imitation of what Muawiyah’s palace was like in Damascus.

The ground of Amr Mosque was spread with gravel and then covered with mats. Omar bin Al-Khattab also built a mosque on the rock in Jerusalem, which was replaced during the reign of Abdul-Malik bin Marwan by the current Dome of the Rock.

The oldest of these mosques, the first of which is the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. What we know about its initial state in the time of the Messenger is that it was in the form of a roofed pavilion and a heavenly courtyard, and the roofed pavilion initially occupied the northern side, given that the qiblah of the Muslims, before the conquest of Mecca and its purification of idols, was directed towards Jerusalem, and then the sanctuary was established on the southern side. This situation inspired the general plan of the mosques that were planned later, and they became composed of a courtyard and a sanctuary surrounded by covered arcades. The walls of the Prophet’s Mosque were built of mud over a foundation of stone. The roof was made of palm fronds and clay, supported on poles made of tree trunks. This mosque was rebuilt in the days of Caliph Othman. It was built with stones and plaster, and its pillars were also made of stones.

Thus, mosques began to emerge from their simplicity little by little, until they reached the high artistic level in the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem and the Damascus Mosque. The first was built by Abdul Malik bin Marwan and the second by his son Al-Walid. Both are considered the pride of the Umayyads in particular and of Islamic civilization in general.

There is no harm in enumerating the names of other mosques that were built during the Umayyad era to get a quick idea of ​​the development of the urban movement and the line that the art of mosque architecture followed.

Muawiyah renewed the Mosque of Basra, and his governor in Iraq, Ziyad Ibn Abih, ordered it to be rebuilt in the year 665/545 AD. Ziyad also renewed the Mosque of Kufa in the year 556/675 AD. He made the sanctuary composed of five porticoes parallel to the Qiblah and supported the roof on five rows of columns without arches. .

The mosque had four doors on the direction of the Qiblah, five on the north side, three on the east, and the same on the west.

During the reign of Muawiyah, modifications were also made to the Amr Mosque in Fustat, which was provided with four minarets in the style of the four towers that were used as minarets in the Damascus Temple. The mosque was also provided with a heavenly courtyard. This was implemented by his governor, Maslama bin Mukhlid, in the year 673 (553) AH.