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BOOK REVIEW

The Making of the Mosque: A Survey of Religious Imperatives

By ESSAM AYYAD (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2019. Islamic
History and Thought, 15), xvi + 475 pp. Price HB £122.00. EAN
978–1463207274.

Essam S. Ayyad’s The Making of the Mosque approaches, from an original angle,
one of the most highly debated issues in Islamic architectural history, evaluating
the role of Islamic religious prompts in the process that led to the emergence of
the mosque type in the first century of the Hijra. Searching for the existence of
what he calls a pure, genuine ‘Prophetic model’ (p. 43, cf. p. 210) of the mosque,
the author provides a platform for a de-Orientalized exploration of the topic.
One of the core ideas behind this ambitious work is indeed the tendency of
Western scholars to trace back the emergence of the mosque type to non-
Islamic religious buildings. This, along with some stereotypical views on early-
Islamic civilization embedded in the study area, has critically affected our ability
to evaluate adequately the factors behind the creation of the mosque as an in-
stitutionally and architecturally defined type.
In particular, Ayyad explores whether the emergence of the typifying architec-
tural features of the mosque resulted from specific prescriptions found in the
Qurjan or h: adı̄th. In other words, whether the traditional mosque type can be
considered the crystallization of the response to cogent ‘religious/devotional
imperatives’ (cf. title and p. 398 and ff.), rather than the result of cultural
prompts and external influences which mingled together over time.
The book is substantial in extent (475 pages including bibliography and
index), divided into eight chapters, including the final concluding section. The
first three chapters are introductory, setting down the theoretical and epistemic
background of the study, the research agenda, and the methodological basis the
investigation is built upon.
In the first chapter the author illustrates the aim and scope of his study, calling
the attention of the reader to a number of tropes and clichéd views rooted in
Orientalism which affected a great deal of the scientific debate on early Islamic
architecture.
The second chapter encompasses the issue of the available sources for the
study of early mosques and remarks the inter-disciplinarity of this work, which
aims to be the first monograph to systematically use h: adı̄th in connection with
architecture. In fact, the author manages to provide the reader with an exhaust-
ive picture of the textual evidence relevant to the investigation and the associated
methodological issues. Nevertheless, the general impression is that Ayyad feels
much more confident in handling written sources, whereas his approach to the
material evidence is generally approximate and, sometimes, naı̈ve.

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Such a methodological imbalance becomes evident in the third chapter, en-
tirely dedicated to the study of h: adı̄th. Here, Ayyad’s remarkable grasp of the
matter, his expertise and critical awareness of the problems connected to the use
of this delicate documentary material noticeably emerges. Overall, this chapter
provides an excellent overview of the science of h: adı̄th, with extremely practical
diagrams and charts, although perhaps it goes into too much detail on some
issues not exactly relevant to the scope of the book, which risks distracting the
reader from the main purpose of the inquiry.
In ch. 4 the investigation finally gets in medias res. The author starts by an-
nouncing his ambitious agenda: identifying the immediate origin of the mosque.
To that end, he summaries the crucial debate concerning the nature of the
building built by Muh: ammad in Madina in the aftermath of the Hijra. In
explaining the contraposed ‘House of the Prophet’ and the ‘Mosque of the
Prophet’ theories, Ayyad also engages in a textual-based discussion about the
mosque’s size, architectural form and building phases during the lifetime of
Muh: ammad. Regrettably, the bibliography this section relies upon is not up
to date; the author may have been unaware of two more recent studies on the
topic (Aila Santi, ‘Masjidu-hu wa masakinu-hu: “his mosque and his dwell-
ings”. New perspectives on the study of “the House of the Prophet” in
Madı̄na’, Mantua Humanistic Studies, 2 (2018): 97–116; and ‘The role of
Madı̄na in the emergence of the mosque–dar al-imara combination: a prelim-
inary note’, Vicino Oriente, 21 (2017): 211–23), which would have been par-
ticularly valuable for his reconstruction.
On the other hand, the discussion he engages in about the Qurjan and the
mosque of the Prophet provides illuminating insights on the genuinely Islamic gen-
esis of the mosque. Drawing on an article he published earlier (‘The “House of the
Prophet” or the “Mosque of the Prophet”?’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 24/3
[2013]), Ayyad succeeds in establishing the centrality of s: alah in the Qurjanic reve-
lation, and its obligatory nature. At the end of the chapter, he convincingly demon-
strates that the ‘origin of the mosque’ (p. 37; cf. Jeremy Johns, ‘The “House of the
Prophet” and the Concept of the Mosque’ in J. Johns [ed.], Bayt al-Maqdis.
Jerusalem and Early Islam [Oxford, 1999]: 59–112, at p. 69 and ff.; Leone
Caetani, Annali dell’Islam, vol. 1 [1905]: 432–60) should not be sought anywhere
but in the religious prompts of early Islam, radically entangled with the socio-pol-
itical urgencies of the young umma. These factors alone triggered the creation of a
universal, basic type, recognizable in the mosque of the Prophet. With this discus-
sion, Ayyad moves a step forward in the decennial debate on the nature of the
building built by Muh: ammad in Madina, demonstrating the convenience of reject-
ing the radical tendencies of the past in favour of what he calls the ‘Western revalu-
ation approach’ (p. 102).
The archetypal role of the Madinan building having been proved, the author
proceeds, in chapters 5 and 6, to investigate the design and form of the mosque
type according to what he calls the ‘Prophetic model’ (p. 43, cf. p. 210). In ch. 5,
he therefore engages in a discussion about the layout and architectural compo-
nents of the mosque in order to prove that, although lacking the main features of
mosque architecture, the mosque of the Prophet included the formal and
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conceptual rudiments of them. After demonstrating the central significance of
building mosques in early Islam as one of the main religious obligations for the
head of the umma, he addresses the issue of whether or not the Prophet estab-
lished clear guidelines concerning the proposed sites of new mosques. In the
central part of the chapter, Ayyad seeks to prove that each one of the typifying
architectural elements of the mosque—mih: rab, minaret, minbar and maqs: u ra—
although n introduced after Muh: ammad’s death, were either contained in em-
bryo in the mosque of the Prophet, or can be traced back to Prophetic practices.
Even though this section provides interesting insights about the origin of these
architectural components, the author’s naı̈ve approach to material evidence, not
distinguishing between concept and practice on the one hand, and architectural
elaboration and form on the other, impacts the effectiveness of the conclusions he
reaches.
The same analysis continues in ch. 6, shifting to the matter of elaboration and
decoration of mosques in early Islam. Ayyad convincingly demonstrates the
Prophet’s awareness of building and receptivity to architectural beauty, over-
turning one of the most entrenched stereotypes about early Islamic architecture,
namely Muh: ammad’s aversion to building activities. This discussion, persuasive-
ly attributing the most austere addresses found in the traditions to later ascetical
anti-Umayyad and anti-iAbbasid tendencies, definitively rehabilitates the import-
ance of building practices and aesthetics in pre-Umayyad Islam.
In ch. 7, the author tries to answer the question of how influential and cogent
the ‘Prophetic model’ (p. 43, cf. p. 210) of the mosque was in the evolution of the
mosque type in the first century AH. Starting with the Rashid un period, Ayyad
considers the respective rebuilding of the mosque of the Prophet by iUmar and
iUthman as prototypes of two different attitudes toward the religious regulations
pertaining to mosque architecture: the conservative one, represented by iUmar,
and the ‘liberal’ one, represented by iUthman. Despite the many and significant
differences, the two buildings represent two opposite, but still orthodox, ways of
interpreting the Prophet’s model. According to the author, due to its straightfor-
wardness and its being capable of extensive adaptations, this model also pro-
vided the platform upon which Umayyad religious architecture developed and
flourished. In this regard, Ayyad quotes a number of extremely interesting sour-
ces demonstrating the direct involvement of early Islamic religious authorities,
either s: ah: aba or h: adı̄th scholars, in the work at Umayyad mosques. This is proof
that the whole range of innovations introduced by the Umayyads—even those
looking most deviant from the austere model of the origins—were thought to
have retained a certain degree of appropriateness and adherence to the Sunna of
the Prophet. Unfortunately, this significant discussion is depreciated by the lim-
ited and sometimes inaccurate evaluation of the material evidence. In particular,
it is worth noting that the assumption that the Umayyads abandoned the hyp-
aethral design by replacing the s: ah: n with the transept, which the author infers
from the case of al-Aqs: a II, is not supported by material evidence, and denotes a
limited awareness of the latest literature on the topic (in particular M. Di Cesare,
‘A qibla musarriqa for the first al-Aqs: à mosque? A new stratigraphic, planimet-
ric, and chronological reading of Hamilton’s excavation, and some
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considerations on the introduction of the concave mihrab’, Annali Istituto
Orientale di Napoli, 77 [2017]: 66–96).
Such criticism notwithstanding, Ayyad’s book stands as a courageous and
impressive endeavour, which holds the merit of having de-Orientalized the dis-
cussion about the origin of the mosque once and for all, by re-contextualizing it
as an independent and original Islamic phenomenon.
Aila Santi
American University of Beirut, Lebanon
E-mail: aila.santi90@gmail.com
doi:10.1093/jis/etab028