Architecture of Anxiety, Body Politics and the Formation of Islamic Architecture (Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World, 20)

Structured as five microhistories c. 632-705, this book offers a counternarrative for the formation of Islamic architecture and the Islamic state. It adopts a novel periodization informed by moments of historical violence and anxiety around caliphal identities in flux, animating histories of the minbar, throne, and maqsura as a principal nexus for navigating this anxiety. It expands outward to re-assess the mosque and palace with a focus on the Qubbat al-Khadraʾ and the Dar al-Imara in Kufa. It culminates in a reading of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem as a site where eschatological anxieties and political survival converge. Contents Contents 8 Acknowledgements 10 Figures and Plates 13 Note on Transliteration 16 Plates 17 Chapter 1 Introduction 20 1 An Architecture of Anxiety 20 2 Body Politics and Chimeric Caliphs 26 3 Histories of the Formation of Islamic Architecture 29 4 Book Structure 34 Chapter 2 The Caliph’s Multivalent Body 36 The Minbar and Seat of Rule 36 1 The Caliph’s Multivalent Body 36 2 Muhammad in the Mosque: The Minbar and Throne 37 3 In the Shadow of Muhammad’s Minbar 43 4 The Kursī and Sarīr 48 Chapter 3 Death of a Caliph 54 Modalities of Existential Safety at the Mosque and Dar al-Imara 54 1 Death of a Caliph 54 2 Authority, Public Audience, and Sanctuaries in Early Islam 55 3 The Maqsura 57 4 The Mosque and Dar al-Imara in Early Islam 60 Chapter 4 United under the Dome of Heaven 69 1 The Qubbat al-Khadraʾ and Civil Strife in Early Islam 69 2 Retrieving the Lost History of an Islamic Heavenly Dome 72 3 What is this Khadraʾ? 80 4 Fit for a Caliph: The Khadraʾ of Muʿawiya 89 Chapter 5 Sedition Is Worse Than Murder 92 The Mosque and Dar al-Imara in Iraq 92 1 Ziyad in Iraq 92 2 Portrait of a Caliphal Protégé 94 3 Early Islamic Urbanism in Iraq 98 4 The Mosque and Dar al-Imara in Iraq 101 5 The Mosque and Dar al-Imara in Iraq Reconsidered 109 Chapter 6 Existential Anxiety, Temporality, and the End of Days in Islamic Jerusalem 114 1 Jerusalem under the Umayyads 114 2 The Appointed Time and the Divine Encounter 116 3 The Dome of the Rock in the Shadow of God’s Celestial Court 120 4 Ritual Practice and Embodied Sanctity at the Dome of the Rock 128 5 Architecture for an Otherworld 132 Epilogue 140 1 Architecture of Anxiety Redux 140 2 Body Politics and the Formation of Islamic Architecture 148 Bibliography 152 Index 168 "Structured as five microhistories c. 632-705, this book offers a counternarrative for the formation of Islamic architecture and the Islamic state. It adopts a novel periodization informed by moments of historical violence and anxiety around caliphal identities in flux, animating histories of the minbar, throne, and maqsura as a principal nexus for navigating this anxiety. It expands outward to re-assess the mosque and palace with a focus on the Qubbat al-Khadra' and the Dar al-Imara in Kufa. It culminates in a reading of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem as a site where eschatological anxieties and political survival converge"-- Provided by publisher This book offers a counternarrative for the formation of Islamic architecture presented as five microhistories c. 632-705. Structured around phenomena of embodied audience, it offers a reinterpretation of the history of the mosque, palace, and shrine.