2022 Calendar: Muqarnas
- Arts & Culture
- Architecture
Introduction by Jonathan Bloom
Dazzling, prismatic and intricately symmetrical, muqarnas is a stunning three-dimensional decoration unique to Islamic architecture.
Made of plaster, brick, glazed tile, wood or stone, muqarnas (moo-KAR-nas) is characterized by sloping tiers of niche-like cells that alternate with brackets and stalactite-like pendants projecting and hanging over those below. Although scholars generally believe that the word in Arabic derives from the Greek koronis and Latin coronis, no Arabic dictionary explains the way it is used in Islamic architecture, suggesting that it is a popular or technical term rather than a literary one. Medieval chroniclers rarely mentioned the term; one exception was the 12th-century-CE Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr, who wrote of a minaret he saw in Makkah: “It has carvings in the plaster of elongated form as if they were mihrabs. It is surrounded by qarnasa of exquisite workmanship.” Despite muqarnas’s scant presence in the literary record, it is one of the few architectural forms that became popular in a variety of materials across the Islamic lands from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
Muqarnas was used in different ways: It could separate parts of a building, fill corner squinches and pendentives that support domes, and cover the inner surfaces of domes or vaults. While muqarnas appears to be a structural element, muqarnas vaults made of wood, plaster and tile are usually ornamental, attached to load-bearing structures hidden behind them. Stone muqarnas has to be self-supporting due to its great weight, but it is often embellished with dangling, even delicate stone pendants. Plaster and brick muqarnas were often colored with paint or glazed tile. In all cases, muqarnas presents a stunning visual effect as light sparkles over its variegated convex and concave surfaces.
In stone, wood and plaster, muqarnas was popular from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans.
The origins of the muqarnas itself are no clearer than those of the name. The earliest surviving example found to date in situ is the squinch over the corner of a 10th-century-CE monument at Tim, located in southern Uzbekistan. It was in the 11th century that muqarnas spread throughout the lands of Islam, and it seems likely that it radiated from a central location—presumably Baghdad in Iraq, then capital of the Abbasid empire. Iraqi examples of muqarnas vaults from the 11th and 12th centuries are notable for their exteriors that resemble pinecones, with protrusions that mirror the niches inside. In Syria, builders followed Iraqi examples in plaster and translated them into cut stone. In Egypt, builders used brick and particularly stone muqarnas to separate or crown the stories of buildings and to embellish the interiors of vaults over doorways and rooms.
By the 12th century, muqarnas appeared farther west in Algeria, Morocco and al-Andalus (now southern Spain). Initially it was used sparingly, but renovations in 1134 to the Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez, Morocco, introduced a series of extraordinary muqarnas vaults in painted plaster over the bays leading up to the mihrab, or niche indicating the direction of prayer. This prime location shows the high prestige this type of decoration carried. At almost the same time, a muqarnas vault was crafted in the 1140’s over the nave of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily. This was the royal chapel of the Christian Norman King Roger II, monarch of a realm recently conquered from Muslims and inhabited by a mixed population, and the ceiling is a rare example of muqar-nas in Christian architecture. Its tiers of wooden muqarnas are painted with a variety of figural and non-figural ornament organized around two rows of eight-pointed stars. The western muqarnas tradition culminated in Granada, Spain, with two spectacular plaster vaults added to the Alhambra palace in the mid-14th century: the star-shaped vault over the Hall of the Abencerrajes, and the celestial octagonal muqarnas vault over the Hall of the Two Sisters. Muqarnas vaults also appear in the contemporary Alcázar of Seville, as remodeled by Pedro, king of Castile and Leon, another Christian patron who appreciated the form.
FEZ, MOROCCO: QARAWIYYIN MOSQUE This mosque, founded in the ninth century CE, was repeatedly enlarged and restored, most notably under the Almoravid ruler ‘Ali ibn Yusuf between 1134 and 1143 CE. He ordered a series of splendid plaster muqarnas vaults for the main part of the mosque, but this one covers a funerary chapel behind the mosque’s mihrab, where prayers could be said over the bodies of the deceased without bringing them into the mosque itself.
BUKHARA, UZBEKISTAN: ABDUL AZIZ KHAN MADRASA In 1651-52 the Shaybanid ruler ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Khan constructed the largest madrasa (theological college) on Bukhara’s Registan square opposite the 15th-century madrasa built by the Timurid prince Ulughbeg. The brightly painted muqarnas semidome at the top of the arched iwan has been restored to reflect the glitter of the original decoration.
PALERMO, SICILY: CAPPELLA PALATINA In 1132 Roger II, Norman king of Sicily, began building an audience hall and chapel for his palace in Palermo. A painted wooden muqarnas vault, similar to the contemporary plaster vaults in Fez, covered its nave. Decorated with an astounding variety of images of people and animals as well as Arabic inscriptions offering good wishes, the ceiling demonstrates how Christian patrons also appreciated the wonders of muqarnas.
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY: BAHRAM PASHA MOSQUE Commissioned by Ottoman provincial governor Bahram Pasha, this mosque was completed in 1572–73 according to designs by Sinan, the chief architect to the Ottoman sultans renowned for his mosques in Istanbul and Edirne. The hanging stone pendants over the elaborate portal, themselves decorated with miniature muqarnas, appear to defy gravity.
CAIRO, EGYPT: SULTAN HASAN MOSQUE The funerary complex of Sultan Hasan (r. 1356-61 CE) is the largest and most elaborate of those built in Cairo by the Mamluk sultans. The magnificent entrance vestibule is covered by a bicolored stone dome pierced by eight small windows that rests on a ring of stone muqarnas, itself supported by muqarnas pendentives and flanked by muqarnas semidomes.
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NEAR SAMARRA, IRAQ: IMAM DUR This muqarnas dome was built in the second half of the 11th century by the local ‘Uqaylid ruler Sharaf al-Dawla Muslim ibn Quraysh, who died in 1085. Although originally attached to a mosque and courtyard, the domed structure was all that survived into modern times, when it was first photographed and studied as one of the earliest examples—and possibly the earliest example—of a freestanding muqarnas dome. In 2014 it was destroyed by ISIS.
DELHI, INDIA: QUTB MINAR Begun in 1199 CE and rising 72 meters over the Quwwat al-Islam mosque, the Qutb Minar was built by Delhi’s first Muslim rulers. They modeled this minaret on earlier examples built of brick in Afghanistan, here translated into the local red sandstone. The exquisitely detailed muqarnas supporting the first of the minaret’s four balconies combines a traditional Islamic form with Indian styles of masonry.
TRIPOLI, LEBANON: AMIR TAYNAL MOSQUE Built by the Mamluk governor of Tripoli in 1336 CE, this large and elegant mosque attracted attention for its lavish decoration and unusual architecture. This gateway between the two main areas is constructed using ablaq, or alternating courses of fine black and white masonry that here also includes brown.
SAMARKAND, UZBEKISTAN: SHAH-I-ZINDA Built in the 1370s CE in honor of Seljuk ruler Amir Timur’s niece, this small structure is decorated with an astonishing variety of brilliantly glazed tiles, both flat and three-dimensional, in both dark and light blue and white. Unusually, two inscriptions name the builders. Another, below the muqarnas, declares: “This ceiling, full of muqarnas, and this gilded vault remind one that every design and every craft you see in this world is by the grace of the Creator.”
TELOUET, MOROCCO: KASBAH Built from 1860 on, the kasbah was the fortress of the powerful Glaoui clan, located at a strategic point on the route from Marrakesh that crossed the High Atlas mountains to the Saharan trade gateway town of Ouarzazate. The patron brought craftsmen from all over Morocco to this remote location to work on the decoration of his palace.
SAMARKAND, UZBEKISTAN: GUR-I-MIR Built as a madrasa in the late 1300s CE, this complex became the burial site of Amir Timur and many of his male successors. The interior decoration is brilliant to the point of overwhelming, particularly the muqarnas, which was made of pressed and molded paper painted in blue and gold and fastened to the surfaces with small iron nails. Over time, the paper hung in shreds until recent restoration.
GRANADA, SPAIN: ALHAMBRA, HALL OF THE TWO SISTERS This octagonal muqarnas ceiling contains 5,416 plaster elements, many of which bear traces of their original paint, gold and silver decoration. A poem in Arabic by the 14th-century Nasrid court poet Ibn Zamrak inscribed on the walls below translates: “In the cupola such splendor does the chamber acquire that the palace competes with the very firmament.”
To the east, Seljuq sultans introduced muqarnas to Anatolia (modern Turkey) from neighboring lands, where portals were crowned with muqarnas hoods, and minarets were built with muqarnas supporting the balconies between stories. Under the Ilkhans and Timurids in the 14th and 15th centuries, builders systematized the muqarnas by creating drawings showing how the individual elements were to be combined. Under the Ottomans (1281 – 1924), muqarnas continued to be used, largely in stone, until the 18th century. In Jam, Afghanistan, builders in 1194 CE used muqarnas to support the balconies of the exquisite brick minaret there. Ghurid builders introduced muqarnas to northern India when they conquered the region in the late 12th century. As a result, the minaret of the Quwwat al-Islam mosque in Delhi, built between 1199 and 1220 CE, uses tiers of muqarnas to support its balconies.
Non-Muslims continued to occasionally incorporate muqarnas decoration, too, in buildings ranging from palaces in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Palermo and Seville to churches in Armenia and 19th-century Orientalist architecture in Europe and the Americas. Contemporary international architects have experimented with new forms and interpretations including I.M. Pei in the Museum of Islamic Art, in Doha, Qatar, and Angelo Candalepas in the mosque in Punchbowl, Australia.
Scholars have long debated whether muqarnas carried symbolic meaning. The form’s range over continents, cultures and centuries makes such interpretation risky, but for an architectural allegory of the celestial vault—the infinity of the heavens—one could hardly find a technique more inspiring to the imagination.
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