Description:

This course introduces the history of Islamic cultures through their most vibrant material and spatial signs: their religious architecture that spans fourteen centuries and three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe. It reviews a number of representative examples (mosques, madrasas, mausolea, etc.) from various periods and locations and discusses their architectural, urban, and stylistic characteristics in conjunction with their historical, political, and intellectual environments.

In addition, the course analyzes the development of the sacred, commemorative, pious, and educational architecture in the Islamic world in light of a changing Islam from a religious revolution in 7th-century Arabia to a global power straddling three continents in the medieval period to a world religion professed by one-sixth of humanity in the present. Films and discussions are used to elucidate the artistic/cultural varieties and historical developments of this architectural vision within both the Islamic and the larger, universal, and cross-cultural contexts.

Throughout the course, a number of critical issues will be considered: How do we define and/or qualify architecture? What is the relationship between architecture and culture? Architecture and the sacred? Architecture and society? How do we study an architectural tradition that covers several regions and encompasses a variety of cultures and national and ethnic identities? And, what, if anything, is Islamic about this architecture, and how do we understand and describe Islamic architecture vis-à-vis the global history of architecture?

Class web site: http://web.mit.edu/4.614/www/

Requirements:

4 short papers (6 pp. each) and a final exam.