Tuesday, June 24, 2008

HISTORY OF ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE

History
In 630C.E. the Prophet Muhammad's army reconquered the city of Mecca from the tribe. The sanctuary of Ka'ba was rebuilt and re-dedicated to Islam, the reconstruction being carried out before the prophet Muhammad's death in 632C.E. by a shipwrecked Abyssinian carpenter in his native style. This sanctuary was amongst the first major works of Islamic architecture. Later doctrines of Islam dating from the eighth century and originating from the Hadith, forbade the use of humans and animals. in architectural design,in order to obey God's command (and thou shalt not make for thyself an image or idol of God..)and also (thou shalt have no god before me)From ten commandments and similar Islamic teachings.For jews and muslims veneration violates these commandments.They read these commandments as prohibiting the use of idols and images during worship in any way.
In the 7th century, Muslim armies conquered a huge expanse of land. Once the Muslims had taken control of a region, their first need was for somewhere to worship - a mosque. The simple layout provided elements that were to be incorporated into all mosques and the early Muslims put up simple buildings based on the model of the Prophet's house or adapted existing buildings for their own use.
Recently discoveries have shown that quasicrystal patterns were first employed in the girih tiles found in medieval Islamic architecture dating back over five centuries ago. In 2007, Professor Peter Lu of Harvard University and Professor Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University published a paper in the journal Science suggesting that girih tilings possessed properties consistent with self-similar fractal quasicrystalline tilings such as the Penrose tilings, predating them by five centuries.

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