Architectural Of Mosques
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Throughout history, a place of worship has been significant to religious cultures. There has been shrines, alters, basilicas, churches, temples, synagogues and mosques used to worship a form of Supreme Being. In this paper, I would talk more about the significance of mosques. Mosques are used heavily from the Islamic people. Islam means submission to God, or in this case, Allah. All mosques has a similar trait, they are architected to guide believers to Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.
Before I go in too deep exploring the mosques, we need to revitalize a little history of the Islamic so that we would know why they view mosques as a useful complex to their culture. Islam is one of the oldest religions in history dating back to about 600 AD. It began when a man named Muhammad heard a voice from the heavens instructing him to proclaim the word of god. Currently there are over 800 million followers of the Muslim religion. The main text of the religion is the Koran which is said to be the word of God, or Allah as called in Muslim. Within the Koran, The five pillars of Islam are proclaimed along with many other concepts very unique to the Muslim religion. Prayer is a very important aspect of Islam as well.
“Prayer is one of the five pillars of Islam – the other four are alms-giving, fasting, pilgrimage, and the remembrance of God. The devout Muslim will pray five times a day, and in general the prayer can be performed at home or wherever one finds oneself, but once a week at noon on Friday, all adults males are bound to assemble together in their communitys main mosque – the so-called Friday Mosque, or masjid al-jami – to pray together and hear a sermon.” (Irwin pg. 57)
Now we know what mosques are used for, but we have to go into what makes mosques the way they are. Most religious place that are not a mosques, in general churches, they have seating or art figures. Mosques are unique in the way that they dont contain figurative images. The only art they have are the uniqueness of the architect, for examples the archers, poles, columns, and domes. They dont contain any images of Allah or even pictures of Muhammad. General mosques will have minarets, qiblas, mirahs, and a sahns. A minaret is a tower where the muezzin will stand and call the people to come to prayer. Having a muezzin there makes mosques more remarkable then having bells. The most important object that all mosques should have is a qibla wall. The qibla wall would usually contain a mirah, and opening slot in the wall that will direct the people to the Kaba, which is located in Mecca. It is important to be facing Mecca when one is praying to Allah. And then most mosques will contain a sahn, which is the ritual pool in the courtyard. There are thousands of prayers who would gather in their community mosque. It is interesting that even these mosques cannot hold the amount of prayer that they will have to pray outside either under the sun or rain.
When a prayer enters the mosque, that prayer should take off