164202

The Mihrab: From Text to Form
Author(s): Nuha N. N. Khoury

Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 1-27
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 30
(1998),
1-27. Printed in the United States
of
America
Nuha N. N.
Khoury
THE MIHRAB: FROM TEXT TO FORM
Discovering
the mechanisms that invested
particular
forms with
meaning
and created
Islamic
systems
of
signification
is of
major
concern in the
study
of Islamic architec-
ture.
Although
we know that these mechanisms
exist,
and that
they produce
mean-
ings
as
complex
as those of other cultural
traditions,
we do not
yet
know how
they
operate
or even how
they
were
manipulated
at
specific
moments in
response
to
par-
ticular aesthetic or
practical
needs. These mechanisms were most critical at the ear-
liest
stage
of the Islamic architectural
tradition,
when forms were often taken over
from a
variety
of contexts but transformed in
ways
that altered their cultural associ-
ations and re-created them as
patently
Islamic.1 This creative
process
is
exemplified
by
that most Islamic-and
problematic-architectural feature,
the mihrab.
As a feature of
mosques,
the mihrab is
usually
a concave
niche,
a form
already prev-
alent in a
variety
of classical and
post-classical
architectural traditions.2
Deposited
in the new Islamic architectural and cultural
context,
it
acquired
new functions and
became "the niche mihrab."
Today,
Muslims and scholars alike define the mihrab as
"the concave niche in the
qibla
wall of a
mosque
that is
expressly
for the imam's use
in
group prayer,"
and as a marker or "idiom for the
qibla."3
This
contemporary
defini-
tion reflects the consensus of a
community
of users about a form it uses. But it starts
with the form
(the
concave
niche) already present
in the Islamic context. In
contrast,
an
understanding
of the historical
process
that created the niche mihrab must reflect
the decision to
adopt
the form in the first
place,
to
place
it in a
particular setting,
and
to name it "mihrab." This
process
establishes a
particular relationship among form,
function,
and term that is
specific
to the
community
that
put
them
together
in a cul-
turally meaningful way.
The
"Islamicity"
of the mihrab-and of
any
other
sign
in the
system-is
then not a factor of
form, function,
or
terminology individually,
but a
result of a
specific
combination of all three.
It is this
process
of combination that concerns us. Our
goal
is to understand how
the niche mihrab came into
being
as a
meaningful
element of the
mosque
and so to
determine those factors of the historical
process
that make its
contemporary
defini-
tions
possible.
In order to do
this,
we will
approach
the mihrab not as an architectural
element but as a
sign-set
of indeterminate
meaning.
The set is
composed
of the three
units of
form, function,
and
terminology
that interact
dynamically
to
produce
mean-
ing.
As we will
see,
this interactive mechanism is dominated
by
the essential cultural
Nuha N. N.
Khoury
is Assistant
Professor, Department
of the
History
of Art &
Architecture,
University
of California at Santa
Barbara,
Santa
Barbara,
Calif.
93106,
USA.
? 1998
Cambridge University
Press 0020-7438/98 $9.50
2 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
values of the word mihrab
itself,
thereby resulting
in mihrab-sets with different forms
and
functions,
of which the niche mihrab is an
important
variant.4
Detaching
the
different units from one another will
help
us discover what those values were and
how
they
were
manipulated
in the construction of
mihrab-sets,
eventually bringing
the niche mihrab of
mosques
into
being.
THE NICHE MIHRAB PROBLEM
Few clues exist that can
help
us reconstruct the
process
that created the niche mihrab
and the
meanings
that it originally carried.
Archeological
evidence confirms the ex-
istence of a
form,
the concave niche
(tdq, haniyya),
in
early
Islamic and
pre-Islamic
architectural contexts.5 This form makes its first notable Islamic
appearance
not in
a
building,
but in a
representation
on a late
7th-century Umayyad
coin,
where it has
been
interpreted
as a
prayer
niche.6 The word mihrab itself
appears
in the
Qur'an
and
in a
variety
of
early Umayyad
texts,
but its earliest uses are related neither to concave
niches nor to the Islamic functions that came into
being during
the
Prophet's
lifetime
(scil.,
the establishment of
prayer
ritual and the formalization of
prayer orientation).7
Despite
this lack of coincidence
among
word, form,
and
function,
the concave
niche,
as the mihrab's most
tangible
unit,
has had a life of its own as the
supposed
progenitor
of the mihrab's function and
meaning. Working
with the evidence of
Umayyad
contact with various Mediterranean cultural and architectural
traditions,
a
number of studies have
attempted
to reduce the niche mihrab to a source within these
traditions. The result of this method are linear histories
projected
back to a number
of functional and cultural sources. The
apse
of
churches,
the ark of
synagogues,
and
the throne niche of
palaces-among
others-have all been
put
forward as
possible
origins
of the mihrab's form and
primary
factors in its
interpretations.8
As these man-
ifold,
equally
tenable
(or
equally
untenable) suggestions
indicate,
the concave niche
is both too common and too neutral a form to
yield precise,
incontrovertible sources
of
origin,
let alone
meaning.9
According
to medieval
historians,
the first niche mihrab
appeared
in
707-9,
dur-
ing
the reconstruction of the
Prophet's Mosque
at Medina
by
the
Umayyad Caliph
al-Walid
(705-15).10
This
reconstruction,
which was
part
of a wider architectural
campaign important
for the
development
of
mosque
architecture in
general,1I
is our
principal
source of information on the creation of the niche mihrab. In
it,
the concave
niche was a
newly
introduced form that
subsequently
became a normative feature of
mosques everywhere;'2
form
(concave niche)
and term
(mihrab)
are
presented
as
coming together
there for the first time to construct a new element
signifying
new
functions.
However,
the earliest extant accounts of this reconstruction-all of which
post-date
it
by
more than a
century-do
not articulate the exact nature of the func-
tions that the niche mihrab was created to fulfill.'3
Consequently, they
obscure the
decision
underlying
its creation and draw further attention to the niche. The decision
that led to the niche mihrab's creation and
adoption
thus becomes a factor of how
one
interprets
the 707-9 event in relation to the form.
Focusing
on this
event,
Jean
Sauvaget,
the
premier
historian of the
Prophet's Mosque
in its
Umayyad phase, approached
the niche mihrab from an
Umayyad
cultural
per-
spective
and came to the conclusion that it was not
originally
created to serve Islamic
The Mihrab: From Text to Form 3
prayer
but was
part
of a
palatine
architectural and functional framework that served
Umayyad
ceremonies;14
it was then a
practical response
to the needs of a
specific
cultural and social
group
that
happened
to be Muslim.
Criticizing Sauvaget's
inter-
pretation,
Henri Stern
charged
that it
disregarded
the niche mihrab's
ubiquity
and
consistency,
characteristics that
point
to a universal
religious
or
liturgical
value and
ground
it in more
purely
Islamic needs.15
Although
these alternatives
recognize
the
niche mihrab's creation and
adoption
as a
culturally
directed and conscious act rather
than as
evolutionary happenstance, they
still focus on the form as the
primary
unit
of the mihrab-set and the carrier of its
meanings.
However,
as
Sauvaget's
own anal-
ysis
of the historical accounts
pertinent
to "the first niche mihrab"
demonstrates,
the
form's
exaggerated importance
results from a
pre-conceived
notion of the mihrab as
a concave niche. This critical bias serves to transform all occurrences of the word
mihrab in texts into
niches,
and so distorts the intent of the accounts and the rele-
vance of the 707-9 event in relation to the mihrab's
history.
Sauvaget
based his theoretical reconstruction of the lost
Umayyad phase
of the
Prophet's Mosque
on textual
descriptions
that he examined
carefully
in order to de-
termine the value and
veracity
of individual
authors.'6
In the course of this textual
analysis,
he isolated two discrete traditions-an
Egyptian
one and a Medinese one-
in the accounts
pertaining
to the niche mihrab of 707-9. In the
Egyptian redactions,
the new
mosque
element is
consistently
called "niche mihrab," mihrab
mujawwaf
In
contrast, the Medinese versions mention the mihrab but omit the
specification
mu-
jawwaf.
Sauvaget regarded
this difference as
insignificant, allotting
it to a note and
stating,
"I1 ne
s'agit plus
la
[the Medinese
texts]
de 'mihrab en forme de niche' mais
seulement de 'mihrab' tout court. C'est
que
ces auteurs
n'envisagent que
la seule
mosquee
de Medine. Mais l'histoire du monument montre bien
que
cela revient au
meme."17
Though
the
discrepancy may
seem
insignificant, Sauvaget
dismissed it too
readily,
for the historians
speak
not of a mihrab, nor of a concave niche, but of the
mihrab (al-mihrdb; al-mihrdb
al-mujawwaf),
a
fully
formed and functional
mosque
element in which the units of form, function, and
terminology
are
effectively
inte-
grated
into a
complete
mihrab-set. The
relationship
of the three units of this mihrab
suggests
that when the concave niche was introduced to the
Prophet's Mosque,
it was
already part
of a formula
whereby
mihrab was
equated
to concave
niche,
and vice
versa.
However,
this
equation
could exist
only
after the
appearance
of the first niche
mihrab in
mosques,
an event that, according
to
Sauvaget's reading
of the sources,
occurred at
precisely
this moment. How then to resolve this
incongruity?
To consider the historical
incongruity apparent
in the sources a
simple
reflection
of the times at which the accounts were written (i.e.,
when the niche was
already
a
common feature of
mosques)
should cause us to
question
their
accuracy
at a broader
level, thereby diminishing
their value as internal evidence on the mihrab's
history.18
Alternatively,
the
discrepancy
itself
may
be read
differently:
the
Egyptian
insistence
on a word that
specifies
form
(mujawwaf) questions
the term mihrdb's formal con-
tent
(because no further
specification
would have been
necessary
if
concavity
was
understood as inherent to mihrab), while at the same time the Medinese omission of
such
qualification similarly suggests
that mihrab
may
well have had
meanings
or val-
ues other than that of the concave niche.19 Therefore, an
ostensibly insignificant
discrepancy suggests
two new directions for
investigating
the mihrab's
history
and
4 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
meaning.
The first of these
requires
an
explanation
of the
applicability
of the term
mihrab to
niches,
while the second demands a fresh
reading
of the texts
recounting
the
history
of the niche mihrab. Our examination of these issues will reveal that
mihrabs and niche mihrabs are different entities with distinct
histories,
and that
707-9 is not the date at which "the first niche mihrab" was created but the moment
that
provided
niche mihrabs with their Islamic
identity.
THE WORD MIHRAB
Like studies of the mihrab's
form,
studies of the term mihrab
attempt
to determine
its
meaning by looking
for its
origins
in
pre-Islamic
and non-Arabic sources. These
studies are driven
partly by
mihrab's
open-ended
definitions in the medieval dictio-
naries that
they
use for evidence and that do not reconcile the word with its known
Islamic form and
function,
and
partly by
the word's own
complicated morphology
and obscure
etymology.
Medieval
grammarians acknowledged
mihrab's
complexity
but considered it of
purely
Arabic
origin.20
The tri-lateral root
organizational principles
of medieval dic-
tionaries dictate
listing
the word under the root harb and the radicals HRB.21
Together,
these factors
suggest
mihrab "definitions" on the basis of Arabic rules that would
break it down into a harb-derivative with a mi
prefix.
Thus,
in
al-Raghib
al-Isfahani's
12th-century
collection of
complex Qur'anic
words and
constructions,
mihrab is the
appropriate designation
for the
place
of
prayer
because it is the location where "war
is
waged (muhiraba) against
evil and
worldly
desires."22 This
pietistic interpretation
relates mihrab to an action derived from the basic noun (harb) and assumes a familial
relationship
between harb (war)
and mihrab
(place
of war). More
recently,
scholar-
ship
has
attempted
to understand mihrab
through
another
presumed relative, harba
(spear).
In this case, the evidence of the
dictionary placement
and word derivation
is
supplemented by
that of historical
reports mentioning
the
Prophet's
use of a
spear
as a
marking
device
during prayers
at the musalla of Medina.23 Mihrab then becomes
"the
place
of the
spear" and, by analogy
to the
Prophet's actions, "the
place
of
prayer"-one
of the functional definitions for the Islamic niche mihrab.
Both of these
interpretations
reverse the order of
meaning by proceeding
from
known functions or actions related to
mosque
mihrabs to
give grammatical
causes
and
justifications
for the term's
applicability
to a
specific
architectural form or
space
in a
particular
context. The first endows mihrab with
pietistic
values
through
its
pre-
sumed associates,
while the second
attempts
to add a historical dimension to these
values. The word mihrab itself, however, does not
support
these
interpretations.
It
corresponds
neither to the
category
of nouns of
place (maf 'al, maf 'il)
in
structure,
nor to the
category
of nouns of instrument
(mif 'cal,
whose
morphology
it
follows)
in
meaning.24 Indeed, despite
their insistence on its Arabic
origins,
medieval
linguists
omit the word mihrab from lists of nouns of
place
and of instrument and include it
instead in
gharib
lists of words with frozen or unusual structure.25
Mihrab's
morphological
and semantic
complexity
has led modern
linguists
and et-
ymologists
to
reject
its Arabic
pedigree
and to
suggest
a
variety
of other
languages-
Syriac, Hebrew, Ethiopic,
and Pahlavi
among
them-as the
possible original
sources
from which the word
migrated
into Arabic and froze into its
present
form.26 This
view
suggests
that mihrab's Islamic
meanings
reside in, and can be
explained through,
whatever
applications
it had in its
original
culture and
language. Paradoxically,
the
same studies that
propound
this view often
rely
on later medieval dictionaries for
supporting
evidence.
R. B.
Serjeant
resorted to the
18th-century Taj
al-CAriis
and to
ethno-linguistic
re-
search in
Hadramawt,
where mihrab is used to
designate
the
portico
or arcaded and
covered
portion
of a
mosque,
to link the term with the
Umayyad maqsuiira
and with
the arched niche mihrab.27 Mahmud Ali Ghul
suggested mdqnt,
which occurs in South
Arabian
inscriptions
in connection with
places
of
prayer,
as a
synonym
for mihrab
in its Hadrami
sense,
and
thereby provided
an
appropriate
historical function for Ser-
jeant's
form.28 Other
terms,
such as the
Ethiopic
mekuerab and
mehram,
have also
been
proposed
as
etymologies
for mihrdb because of the
functional, ritualistic,
or
religious significations they carry
in the
original language.29
The most recent of these
studies,
Gerard
Troupeau's important
revival of the
Ethiopic
source
theory
with the
synonym
mehram,
demonstrates a
complicated process
of
etymological reasoning
that
revolves around a word chosen
specifically
on the basis of the
meanings
of its
pre-
sumed derivative.
Because
Ethiopic
uses the two forms
mef
al and
mef
'al but does not contain the
HRB radicals and
root,
Troupeau
resorted to the
Ethiopic
HRM
("defendre
l'access
a
quelque
chose de sacre") and its derivative mehram ("lieu sacree defendu
par
une
enceinte, temple")
to arrive-via a consonantal shift from
(m) to
(b)-at mehrdb/
mihrdb.30 The transfer
process
from
Ethiopic
to Arabic created mihrdb as a "doublet"
of the little-used Arabic mahram ("lieu sacre") whose relatives are
haram, hardm
and harlm.31 Echoes of the
Ethiopic origin
are retained in one of mihrdb's
principle
significations
in the dictionaries as "lieu d'access difficile," and in a verse
by
the tran-
sitional Arab
poet
al-A'sha (d. 629) that mentions Hubuish
(Ethiopians/Abyssinians)
chanting
in their mihrab, or, following Troupeau,
their
place
of
prayer.32
The verse
underlines the
Ethiopic-Arabic connection, provides
a
general temporal
framework
for the word mihrdb's
migration
into
Arabic,
and exhibits a functional content for the
term that
corresponds
to its later Islamic use, which is further linked to and
supported
by
the mihrdb
entry
in Firuzabadi's (1329-1414) al-Qdmuis
al-Muhlt.
Although Troupeau's hypothesis attempts
to link mihrdb's
origins
with an Arabic
cultural and
linguistic
frame of reference, it
presents
a number of
problems.
The
Ethiopic-Arabic interpretation
of mihrdb as
"place
of
prayer"
does not
explain
all the
definitions
provided
for it in the dictionaries, and the
proposed
shift from
Ethiopic
HRM to Arabic HRB leaves
unexplained
the occurrence of HRM words in South
Arabian
inscriptions
before the
Abyssinian
invasion of Arabia.33 HRM, then, could
as
easily
have
migrated
northward from Sabaic, the
prestige
and
epigraphic language
of the south,34 and the
language
of
inscriptions recently
discovered at
Qaryat
al-Faw
in
present-day
Saudi Arabia, characterized as
closely resembling
"classical" Ara-
bic.35 South Arabia also
provides
an
appropriate linguistic
climate for
mihrdb,
as is
illustrated
by epigraphic
instances of nouns of
place
that include the
problematic
"mi"
prefix.
Ghul
highlighted
the word
mdqnt,
a
place
of
prayer.
Mhrm
(a tomb) and
mhgl (a room or
chamber), both of which exhibit basic word forms similar to
mhrb,
also
appear
in
5th-century
South Arabian
inscriptions.36
Mhrb itself occurs in a small number of 4th- and
5th-century inscriptions
from the
southern
regions
of the Arabian Peninsula.
Although
the exact
geographical
and ar-
chitectural context of these
inscriptions
is no
longer known, one of them mentions
6 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
"laying
the foundations and
completing
the mihrab of
Kawkaban";
Serjeant
trans-
lated the word here as "fortress" (as
opposed
to
temple)
because of Kawkaban's fame
as a fortified
city.37
Another
inscription provides
the construct
dhmhrb/mlkn,
which
the
compilers
of the Dictionnaire Sabeen translated as
"palace/royal
court/chieftains"
while,
at the same
time,
retaining
a more
general
meaning
for mhrb alone as "feature
of a
building,"38 thereby indicating
that additional
precision
is conditional
upon spe-
cific
epigraphical
content and context.
As to the
poetic
evidence,
despite
his critical
dates,
al-A'sha cannot be used as a
connective
bridge
between Arabic and
Ethiopic.39
Al-A'sha uses mihrab in reference
to other cultures elsewhere in his
poetry,
as when he mentions Mihrab Tadmur
(Pal-
myra's Mihrab).40
A
near-contemporary, 'Ubayd
Allah ibn
Qays al-Ruqayyat,
ex-
pands
mihrdb's cultural referential
possibilities infinitely
further when he
speaks
of
the mihrabs of various
perished (but
unspecified)
nations.41
Further,
in these and other
occurrences in Arabic
poetry,
the term
belongs
to the cultural
sphere
of the
poets,
not
of their
subject.42
It also
belongs
to
philologists,
such as
al-AsmaCi (740-828),
who
gathered early
and
pre-Islamic poetry
in the first two Islamic centuries.43 Verses col-
lected
by
al-AsmaCi
figure prominently
in
Qur'anic tafsirs
and medieval dictionaries
to illustrate mihrab's
operation and,
as is noted
by Troupeau,44
often include refer-
ences to South Arabian
cultures,
the
Himyarites,
and Maharib Ghumdan in
Yemen,
where mihrab makes its earliest documented
appearances.
These same cultural ref-
erences occur
repeatedly
in
Umayyad historiographical
accounts,
where
they present
the first
non-Qur'anic
Arabic uses of the word mihrab and reflect a
specific
under-
standing
of mihrabs as
culturally
and
historically important
monuments.4
The material and
linguistic
evidence
(context, morphology,
and use) favors mih-
rab's
migration
into Arabic from Sabaic. The word occurs
frequently
in
early
Arabic
writings
in reference to South Arabian cultures, which cannot be accidental. Mihrab
inscriptions
lend historical
weight
to statements
by
such
figures
as Abu 'Amru b.
al-cAlad' (d. ca. 770), who is
quoted by
al-Asmai as
saying,
"I entered one of the
mihrabs of
Himyar
and the scent of musk blew in
my
face."46 And Mihrab Kawkaban
forms an
archeological
link with the Arabian mihrabs mentioned
by early
historians
and Arab
poets
and
incorporated
into
interpretations
and
dictionary
illustrations of
mihrab's earliest
meanings.
South Arabia thus
provides
the material
backdrop
for the
term mihrab, a context that
justifies
the medieval
linguists'
insistence on its
origins.
Nevertheless, mihrab's later Arabic
significations
are
produced through
the
agree-
ment of its
interpreters
and users, not
through
its
pre-Islamic
sources. This cultural
agreement
is
necessarily
embedded in
dictionary
entries that reflect the word's use
over time and illustrate its
meanings.
The entries, which
begin
to
appear
at the
end of the
Umayyad period,
reflect mihrab's
early significations
and the
process
through
which the term was
adapted
to its Islamic uses. The
early
entries thus
repre-
sent
important "community
records" for mihrdb's cultural
applications, meanings,
and transformations, though
their value as such has neither been
fully exploited
nor
recognized.
MIHRAB IN THE MEDIEVAL LEXICONS
Whether
focusing
on the form or the
term,
mihrab
investigations
tend to be reductive
and
equational, searching
for absolute
meanings
and definitions.47 This
approach
is
frustrated
by
mihrab's
compound
and
open-ended
entries in medieval
dictionaries,
which list a
variety
of
meanings
and uses. As a
result,
mihrab studies
approach
these
entries both as
conglomerates
of unrelated
meanings
that can be detached from one
another in order to
support specific
source
(hence
meaning)
theories and as incom-
plete
records of the
process through
which the term was
incorporated
into the Islamic
architectural text
that, therefore,
require supplementation
from other
cultural,
func-
tional,
and
linguistic
sources. This
scholarly
model
supposes
that Arab
lexicogra-
phers consistently catalogued
words' definitions without
regard
to referential
history
or
conceptual
associations.48
Although
this
may
be true of the later medieval dictio-
naries that have been
consistently,
and
anachronistically,
used to determine mihrab's
early meanings,
it does not hold for the
earliest,
though rarely used,
lexicons.
The word mihrab entered the Islamic
(con)text through
its five occurrences in
the
Qur'an
(one
of which is the
plural maharib)
and thus elicited comments from
Qur'anic
scholars and
exegetes
that were then assimilated into
non-specialized
dic-
tionaries. Medieval
lexicographers
include a number of
Qur'anic, poetic,
and archi-
tectural illustrations of mihrab's
applications
and uses. The
variety
of the word's
illustrations and
uses,
as well as the diverse textual and functional sources from
which
they
derive,
expanded
over time to
produce compound
entries that obscure the
word's
history
and the mechanisms
through
which it was first
incorporated
into the
Islamic functional and architectural texts. As a
result,
later medieval lexicons
clearly
incorporate
entries from earlier ones as well as from a
variety
of other sources, and
so cannot be treated as of
equal
informative value as their
predecessors.
The follow-
ing analysis
of one such mihrab
entry
serves to demonstrate how it leads us
away
from
discovering
the word's referential
history while, at the same time, it
compels
us
to revert to earlier dictionaries in order to recover this
history.
Ibn Manzuir's (1240-
1311) venerable and
frequently
cited Lisdn al-'Arab
provides
an
example
of this
process
with the
following entry:49
The mihrab is the central-most location of the main room (or residence; bayt),50
and the most
honored (akramu) area in it. Its
plural
is mahiirib. It is also the elevated chamber
(ghurfa).
Waddah al-Yaman said,
A
lady
of a mihrab-whenever I come to her
I cannot reach her without
ascending
a staircase.
And al-Azhari recited Imru'
al-Qays's words, "like desert
gazelles
in the mihrabs of Yemeni
kings" (aqydl).
He said
(qaila):
and
today
the mihrab is
popularly
understood as the station
of the imam in the
mosque.
Al-Zajjaj said, regarding
the
Almighty's words, "Has the
story
of the
Disputants
reached
you,
behold
they
climbed over the mihrab"
[Qur'an 38:21]; the mihrab is the most elevated (or
honored, arfa'u)
room
(bayt)
in the house (ddr), and the most elevated (or honored, arfa'u)
location in the
place
of
prayer
(masjid).
He said, the mihrab here is like the
ghurfa,
and then
he recited the two verses
by
Waddah al-Yaman.
It is written in the Hadith that the
Prophet
sent 'Urwa ibn Mas'ud to his
people
in Ta'if,
so he went to them and entered a mihrab of his. Then he looked down onto them at dawn and
pronounced
the call to
prayer.
He said, this indicates that it is a
ghurfa
to which one ascends.
And the mihrabs (al-mahidrib) are the central locations of
gatherings
and
seating places
(majalis; sing.
majlis),
and like this (minhu)
is the mihrab of the
masjid
so named. And like
this also is the Maharib Ghumdan in Yemen.
And the mihrab
[is the] qibla (al-mihrdib al-qibla).
And the mihrab of the
masjid
is also
its central-most (sadruhu) and the most honored (or elevated; ashrafu)
location in it.
8 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
The mihrabs of Bani Isra'il are the
majalis
where
they
used to sit. In the
Tahdhib,
these
are the
masdjid
where
they
used to
gather
for
prayer.
Ibn Manzur offers a number of other mihrab
applications
and
illustrations,
in
addition to those in this
quotation.
The
entry
includes definitions and
synonyms,
Qur'anic
citations and
interpretations,
"hadith" instances and
commentaries,51
poetic
illustrations,
and
examples
of
specialized applications
and uses. Information is ex-
tracted from its
original
context and
gathered together
in this
entry,
often
incorpo-
rating
and
interweaving
material from earlier dictionaries. Two earlier authorities Ibn
Manzur cites
by
name are al-Azhari
(895-980),
the author of Tahdhib
al-Lugha,
the
dictionary
mentioned at the end of the
quotation,52
and
al-Zajjaj
(d. 928)
to whom is
attributed Icrab
al-Qur'dn,
a work that deals
specifically
with the
exposition
and
explanation
of the
grammatical
minutiae of
Qur'anic
constructions.53
Although
it is
not
immediately
clear from Ibn Manzur's
entry,
both of these authorities had in turn
collected information from earlier works. The item on the
masjid-majlis
(in which
mihrab
al-masjid
is named after mihrab
al-majlis)
that Ibn Manzur associates with
al-Zajjaj through
its
positioning
in fact
appears
in the
Tahdhib,
where it is attributed
to Abu
'Ubayda (d. 825),
author of another work concerned
primarily
with
Qur2anic
usage
and called
Majaz
al-Qurdan.54
The
Majdz
al-Qur'dn also offers the same
definition of mihrab in verse 38:21 that is
given by
Lisdn
al-CArab,
though
Ibn Man-
zur's most
likely
source is al-Azhari-who
quotes
both
al-Zajjaj
and Abu
'Ubayda-
rather than the
original authority.55
The Lisan thus obscures the informational
exchange
between earlier
lexicographers
and
exegetes,
and so leaves the
majlis-masjid
issue,
as
well as the nature of Qur'anic mihrabs, unresolved, thereby fueling
the
controversy
over the mihrab's
origins
in secular as
opposed
to
religious
architecture.56
The
portion
of the
mihrdb-ghurfa
information for which Ibn Manzur credits al-
Azhari
appears
in the Tahdhib. From there it
can-along
with its
poetic
illustration-
be traced back to the Kitiib
al-'Ayn,
attributed to al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi
(ca. 718-ca. 786) but sometimes cited
by
the
lexicographers through
his student al-
Layth,
who
reputedly gathered, expanded,
and
published
his master's work.57 The
Kitdb
al-cAyn,
the earliest extant non-technical and
non-Qur'anic
Arabic
dictionary,
includes the statement that "the mihrab is the elevated chamber
(ghurfa),"
followed
by
Imru'
al-Qays's
verse. The Kitdb
al-'Ayn, therefore, provides
the terminus ante
quem
for this definition in the dictionaries, but if it is
supported by
a verse from
ImruD
al-Qays,
who died around 540, is it also valid for the late 8th
century?
And was
it still current in Ibn Manzur's 13th
century?
Similarly,
Lisan al-CArab introduces the
temporally specific definition, "today,
the
mihrab is
popularly
understood
as...,"
with
qala ("he said"), thus
connecting
it
with the
authority
who
immediately precedes it, again
al-Azhari. Al-Azhari indeed
includes this definition in his
dictionary,
where he also uses
qala
to attribute it to al-
Farahidi in Kitib
al-Ayn.5
The definition indicates a critical shift in the
meaning
of
the word
mihrab,
a shift that
places
it in a new cultural and functional context and
endows it with some of its still-current Islamic
applications.
The
temporal
dimension
of this shift
is, however, obscured
by
the
incorporation
of the
8th-century
statement
into a
13th-century entry
that takes it
only
as far back as the 10th.59
Whether the reason for this manner of
presentation
lies in the
lexicographer's
as-
sumption
that his audience has
specialized knowledge
and needs no additional in-
formation or
simply
in the method
practiced
at the
time,
the lack of a clear
temporal
framework results in
obscuring
the term's
history
of use.60 The value of later medi-
eval entries in
revealing
mihrab's
history
is then
inversely proportional
to the amount
of textual
archeology they require.
In
contrast,
because mihrab
predates
its Islamic
uses,
the dictionaries closest in time to the moment at which it entered the Islamic
context
are,
logically,
clearest on the
techniques
used to
position
it in this new con-
text and
adapt
it to its
new,
mosque-related meanings.61
In addition to
providing
a more
appropriate
contextual index for mihrab's
migra-
tion into Islamic
texts,
the earlier dictionaries differ from their later
counterparts
in
exhibiting
a
clear,
associative structure that allows the word's
meanings
to unfold
grad-
ually.
This
gradual unfolding
reveals the factors that bound
together
mihrab's various
applications
and uses and allowed it to be absorbed into the
language
of
mosques.
The earliest of these
entries,
in al-Khalil's Kitab
al-'Ayn, provides
the
following:62
Today,
the mihrab is
popularly
understood as the station of the imam
(maqdm al-imam)
in the
masjid.
The mihrabs of the Bani Isra'il are the
places
where
they
used to
gather
for
prayer.
And the mihrab is the
ghurfa.
Imru'
al-Qays
said,
Like desert
gazelles
in the mihrabs of Yemeni
kings.
And the mihrab is the mount's neck
(Cunuqu al-ddbba).
As was evident from the Lisdn
al-'Arab,
portions
of this
entry
were
imported
into
later dictionaries without
regard
to its
temporal specificity.
The
entry
itself,
how-
ever, is
clearly organized
to
provide
a current
8th-century meaning first,63 followed
by meanings
related to occurrences in
early
Islamic and
"pre-Islamic"
texts. The
first item is followed
by
a definition of the mihrabs of the Bani Isra'il. Phrased in the
past tense, this definition
pertains
to the mihrabs of
Qur'anic prophets
and
person-
ages (David, Solomon, Mary, Zachariah); later dictionaries
place
a
Qur'anic
verse
in this location and
rely
on
exegetical interpretations
for
connecting
these
particular
mihrabs with
prayer.64
The
prayer
action
specified
for the mihrabs of the Bani Isra'il
establishes a functional and denotative value for mihrab that is derived from its nar-
rative context and links it with the first, mosque-related, meaning,
but does not
spec-
ify
its form.
The
entry
then moves to a
particular
architectural definition of mihrab as
ghurfa,
and follows this definition with a
poetic
reference to the mihrabs of Yemeni
kings
that also
corresponds
to the Maharib Ghumdan of later entries.65 No further
expla-
nation is
given
for either
component, though
the
placement
of the verse indicates that
it is meant to illustrate the
mihrdb-ghurfa equation. Indeed, both formula and verse
appear
in
explanations by al-Asmai, who insisted on a referential
equality
between
mihrab and
ghurfa
on the basis of
physical
elevation and
implied height.66
The
connection between the two words (and the
interpretive source)
is
expanded
in later
dictionaries that use an illustrative
approach
similar to al-Khalil's. Ibn
Durayd's (837-
933) Jamharat
al-Lugha,
for instance, defines mihrab as follows,67
The mihrab of the
bayt
is the central-most (sadr) and most honored (akramu) location in it,
and the mihrab of the
masjid
was named
accordingly (bihi summiya).68
The mihrab is also
the
ghurfa,
from the
expression,
"Maharib Ghumdan," in reference to its
ghuraf69
Abu Hatim
quoted
al-Asma'is recital of Waddah al-Yaman's verse,
A
lady
of a mihrab-whenever I come to her
I cannot reach her without
ascending
a staircase70
10 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
Ibn
Durayd
illustrates each
meaning
of mihrab with
examples
in a
sequence
that
ends with the verse. The mihrab of a room is identified as its most central and hon-
ored
location,
a characterization that leads to the use of the same term in the
place
of
prayer.
This is followed
by
the
mihrab-ghurfa
formula that is illustrated
by
"Ma-
harib
Ghumdan,"
a
primary example
that is in turn followed
by
a
poetic quotation.
Waddah al-Yaman's
verse,
as
preserved by
al-AsmaCi
and
quoted by
Ibn
Durayd
through
Abu Hatim
(d.
ca.
862-69),71
is used to
explicate
the
preceding portion
of
the
entry
and mihrab's
relationship
to
ghurfa.
The
poet
cannot reach his
lady
without
ascending
a staircase. The
lady
is otherwise unattainable because she is in a
high,
in-
accessible location called "mihrab." The
height implied
in
mihrab's
poetic
use then
leads to the
designation
Maharib
Ghumdan,
so named because of its
height
as ex-
pressed
in the word
maharib.72 Mihrab/mahdrib
is then
equivalent
to
ghurfa/ghuraf,
the normative term for raised and elevated architectural units.73
Ibn
Durayd's
choice of
poetic
illustration
(with
its
implied
reliance on
al-Asma'i's
interpretation)
clarifies the
relationship
between mihrab and
ghurfa
as it
appears
in
his and al-Khalil's
entry.
Al-Khalil assumes the condition of
height
for the mihrabs
of Yemeni
kings,
which he uses to illustrate the
mihrab-ghurfa equation
without fur-
ther
explanation.
This condition is carried over into the fourth and final
portion
of his
entry,
where the mihrab is "the mount's neck." This "definition" becomes clear
only
when mihrab's
height significations
are connected to the
architecturally
based
imagery
of such
poets
as Imru'
al-Qays
and
al-A'sha,
who
frequently compare
their mounts
to monumental structures
(haykal, qasr).74
This
item, therefore,
does not constitute
an
independent definition, but
presents
an additional
complementary
and heuristic il-
lustration of mihrCb's use to
designate
elevated structures or the
highest
units within
these structures. The structures themselves are illustrated
through
a number of ex-
amples, including
the mihrabs of Yemeni
kings/Ghumdan
and the
Qur'anic
mihrabs
of Bani Isra'il.
Ibn
Durayd's explanation,
as derived from al-Asmai,
also evokes
Qur'anic
mih-
rabs (the mihrabs of Bani Isra'il), though
he does not mention them
directly.
In
al-Asma'i's discussion,
the
height
factor and referential
equivalency
between mihrab
and
ghurfa
are
supported by
the verb tasawwaru in verse 38:21 of the
Qur'an.75
This
verb, which
exegetes emphasize
is conditional
upon
the
presence
of
height,
is used
by
al-Asmai to underline the elevated nature of David's Mihrab
(otherwise
known
as
qasr
and
dar).76
The mihrab in the
Qur'anic
verse is thus connected
by
association
to the elevated mihrab of the
poetic
verse
quoted by
Ibn
Durayd
and used to
explain
the
height
factor of Maharib Ghumdan
(also
called
qasr
or hisn).77 The same formula
appears
in al-Khalil's
entry, where,
not
coincidentally,
the referential
equivalency
be-
tween mihraib and
ghurfa
is
positioned
between the
Qur'anic
mihrabs of the Bani Is-
ra'il and the
poetic
mihrabs of the Yemeni
kings.
Both entries,
whether
individually
or in
combination,
use an interconnected network of sources to
identify
a
particular
typological category
whose
major identifying
characteristic is
height
as
signaled by
the term mihrab. The
group
includes Islamic
(Qur'anic)
and
"pre-Islamic" (poetic)
mihrabs and extends to other lexical
examples
such as 'Urwa ibn Mas'ud's
mihrab,
a structure that he had to ascend in order to "overlook" the
people
of TaDif.78 Mihrab
then refers not to the forms or functions of these structures but to their
height.
Reading
back from the
lexicographers' poetic
illustrations and
explanations,
the
emphasis
of the entries
appears
to shift as
they
become involved with mihrabs as
spaces
in
larger
functional areas
(masjid, bayt),
but with no references to actual
phys-
ical
height.
However,
the
sequence
of the entries
implies height
for these
applications
as well: it is the
quality
that "raises" a
particular space
above all others in its
larger
area,
making
it the "central-most and most honored location" in a
variety
of
spatial
contexts
and,
correspondingly,
the "imam's station in the
mosque."
This
qualitatively
"raised" and "elevated" location is referred to as a mihrab and is described in terms
(ashraf, arfac)
that are
equally applicable
to actual and
metaphorical height.79
The associative
logic
and
language
of the entries indicate that mihrdb's
application
to
spaces
that are not
physically
elevated arises from a
conceptual
extension between
height
as a
physical phenomenon
and
"height"
as a
qualitative
and
distinguishing
phenomenon.
The
lexicographers
construct their entries in such a
way
as to demon-
strate that
mihraib's
connotations of honor and
centrality
flow from its references to
height
and
monumentality. Height, physical
or
metaphorical,
unifies
mihrab's
vari-
ous
applications
and uses and allows its
early dictionary
entries to be read as infor-
mative
compositions
rather than as mere collections of
disjointed
and
incomplete
definitions.
MIHRAB AS CONCEPT
The
sequence
of the entries
suggests
a referential
history
in which mihrab is trans-
formed from a term that
designates
elevated structures to one that
signifies
honored
locations,
or from one that functions
denotatively
to one that functions connota-
tively.80 Whether
denoting height
or
connoting
it, however,
the term mihrab con-
tains no references to
specific
forms or functions.
Rather,
it
operates primarily
as a
metaphorical
and
emphatic
device that receives its functional and formal identities
from its context. This
operation
is underlined
by
the lack of
synonymity
between it
and the term
ghurfa
and
by
the
poetic examples
that the
lexicographers employ
to
illustrate its uses.
Despite
al-AsmaCi's
mihrdb-ghurfa equation,
the
lexicographers
do not
present
the
two terms as
synonyms; they
neither use mihrab to
explain ghurfa
nor use
ghurfa
to
encompass
all of mihrab's
applications
and
significations.81 Ghurfa,
which is
explained
as a dialectical variant of the
Hijazi 'illiyya,
is used
simply
to
convey
mihrdb's
significations
of
height
in a
variety
of
Qur'anic, poetic,
and
literary
illus-
trations.
Consequently,
mihrab can mean
ghurfa (or qasr, dair, haykal,
hisn), but the
reverse does not hold true. Unlike
ghurfa,
which is restricted to
physical height,
mihrab
appears
in a
variety
of
architectural, non-architectural,
and functional situa-
tions to
signify
the
quality
of
height, announcing
that its
conceptual
content and met-
aphorical operation-as opposed
to concrete architectural
applications-dominate
its various uses.82
The
lexicographers
affirm mihrab's
emphatic, metaphorical operation by using
su-
perlatives
to
qualify
mihrab
spaces,
such as
ashraf (most eminent,
highest)
and akram
(most honored, noblest).
Ibn al-Anbari
(d. 939)
lists a number of situations in which
mihrab is
properly applied
to
express
the
superlative quality
or
"height"
of
anything
12 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
that is the "best of its
kind";
a
qasr
is
appropriately
called a
mihrab,
for
example,
because it is
ashrafu
al-manazil (the "noblest/'highest'
of
residences").83 Where,
as
in a verse or other
illustration,
mihrab
replaces
a more
explicit
architectural term
(which,
in
fact,
it
always does),84
it can be
interpreted
in a number of
ways
as
long
as its
are maintained. In the Waddah al-Yaman verse
quoted by
Ibn
Durayd,
in which the
required
staircase leaves no doubt as to the
height
of the
lady's
mihrab,85
mihrab can be understood as either a
qasr
or an elevated unit
(ghurfa)
within it. The two
possibilities
do not
suggest
a
specific,
lost
meaning,
but underline
the continuous
operation
of the term's
primary
action as a
signifier
of the
quality
of
height regardless
of exact architectural
configuration.
Further,
mihrab is here
part
of the
poetic imagery
of
height necessary
to
express
the
lady's
elevated status
and,
hence,
her
unattainability.86
The
implied
distance between her and the
poet
is built
upon
the idea of her
being
a
"lady
of a
mihrab,"
an
image
that need not
place
her
physically
and
literally
in an elevated
location,
but one that
signifies
her
superiority.
As an
image
or
metaphor
for
height,
the mihrab in this verse becomes the
lady's
attri-
bute of honor and
ascendancy.87
This verse illustrates an
operation
in which mihrab
is
consistently
used to create textual hierarchies
regardless
of formal or functional
identity.
As a
signifier
of
abstract,
superlative qualities,
the word mihrab reflects the formal
and functional identities of its associates without itself
changing
value. This mech-
anism
expands
the term's
interpretive possibilities indefinitely
and accounts for its
multiple meanings:
it can be understood as
palace
or
temple,
as throne niche or or-
atory,
as seat of honor or
maqdm al-imdm, but none of these
meanings
is transfer-
able from one context to the next. The
poetic samples
often used to
argue
that the
mihrab
originally corresponded
to this or that function or form all have in common
the word mihrab, which alone shifts from text to text, leaving
behind all the formal
and functional
specifications
it had in one
example
to take on new ones in the next.
'Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a
(644-711) provides
the verse,
Dumyatun
c'inda rahibin
dhi-jtihadi
An
image/icon belonging
to a zealous monk
$awwarhiihd
fi janibi
al-mihrabi which
they
fashioned on the side of the mihrab
This verse calls for an
interpretation
of the word that coincides with the
prescribed
setting,
such as an
apse
or
altar,
which led to Horovitz's translation as
"oratory."88
In
a
slightly
earlier verse from
al-Mufaddaliyydt,
mihrab occurs in a
palatine setting
and so demands a different
reading:
ka-'aqllati
al-durri istada'a bihd She is like the choicest of
pearls
wherewith
mihraba 'arshi 'azlzihd al-'ujmu
the Persians
light up
the mihrab of the
king's
throne
Horovitz translated this mihrab as "throne niche," while
Serjeant gave
it a more
neutral
meaning
as "arch" but linked it with the
great palace
at
Ctesiphon.89
These
interpretations
are in
harmony
with mihrdb's context here, but conflict with its mean-
ing
in the
previous verse, where it is a
place
of
prayer.
The conflict can be resolved
only
if mihrdb's architectural, formal, and functional
meaning
is understood as
being
derived from its individual context. In each verse, a
particular
location
(apse
or or-
atory,
throne niche or throne
hall)
can be surmised from its connection to a
person
(monk, king)
in a
larger
functional environment
befitting
a
particular object (icon/
"temple," pearl/"palace").
The word mihrab itself does not denote the functional lo-
cations,
which are
pre-set by
other contextual
information,
but
simply qualifies
them
or identifies the best
spaces
within them. The verses seek to
exaggerate
the
superior
qualities
of the icon and
pearl
in order to accentuate the values of the
subjects they
represent. By qualifying
the
space
where each
object
is located
(achieved by replac-
ing
the denotative noun with
mihrab),
mihrab identifies this
space
as
superior
to its
surroundings,
and so
reflexively
intensifies the value of the
subjects
in the same
way
that it
signaled
the
superiority
of Waddah al-Yaman's
"lady
of a mihrab" or Imru' al-
Qays's
"desert
gazelles."90
Likewise,
in al-A'sha's
verse,
wa hattat bi-asbabin lahd mustamirratin With its
perpetual ropes
it
[al-mandya]
lowered
Udhaynata fi
mihrdbi Tadmura
thdwiya Udhayna, (who is)
forever in Mihrab Tadmur
mihrab has been understood as
"palace"
and as "tomb"/"tomb
tower,"91
but is
pri-
marily
a
signal
and reminder of
Udhayna's (Palmyra's king Odeinat)
power
and as-
cendancy
that serves to underscore the even
greater power
of his
destroyer.92
As is
the case with Maharib
Sulayman
and Maharib
Ghumdan,
mihrab here enters into
partnership
with a
proper
noun to become a cultural and historical referent and car-
rier of
memory.93
Al-A'sha thus uses the construct Mihrab Tadmur as a monumental
architectural
symbol
of
Palmyrene
civilization that acts as
Udhayna's
eternal attri-
bute.
Consequently, Udhayna's (and Palmyra's)
destruction is
expressed through
the
image
of his
being
reduced from the
"highest heights"
to the lowest lows of extinc-
tion, though
the
memory
of his
greatness
lives on.94
Applying
mihrdb's action as it
occurs in this verse to Ibn
Qays al-Ruqayyat's aqwat
mahidriba ddrisi al-umami ("it
has
destroyed
the mihrabs of
past nations/cultures"), where mihrab has been under-
stood as "stelae,"95 again provides
the
necessary
force to activate the intended mean-
ing
of "it has
destroyed great
cultures."
The
poetic, literary,
and
"spoken" examples quoted by
the
lexicographers
reveal
mihrdb's
operational
mechanism.96 Mihrab acts as a
metaphor
for
height
that
imparts
this
quality
to a
variety
of
subjects.
It thus constructs
relationships
of
height
between
these
subjects,
but not between the words that denote them or between these words
and mihrab itself; the mihrab mechanism is based on
analogy,
not
synonymy.
Fur-
ther, in each instance, mihrab
replaces
the
subject
it
qualifies
and assumes its
identity.
As a
result,
it
occupies
the
position
of a first
subject/noun
and becomes an attribute
for (and hence a reminder of) a second one. Mihrab's first
subjects
are
always spaces
that can be
architecturally
translated into the various formal and architectonic de-
vices demanded
by context; emphatic
niches or arches, baldachins, and
cupolas
are
some of the
possible
visual frames for mihrab
spaces.
Mihrdb's second
subjects
are
the
people, objects
or ideas that
"occupy"
these
spaces
and that
provide
their frames
(physical
or
metaphorical)
with functional
meaning.
Mihrab thus interacts
synergis-
tically
with its
ever-changing subjects, deriving meaning
from these subjects while
consistently providing emphasis
and
quality
content in return.
This
dynamic
mechanism results in mihrab-sets of different forms and functions
in which the
only
constant is the word mihrab itself. The
operation
of this mecha-
nism
depends
on two essential conditions. First, mihrab has no
synonyms.
Its "defi-
nitions" are the
subjects
it
replaces
as it moves across texts (hence across
time/space
14 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
contexts)
and without which it is
no/thing.
The second condition is a
corollary
of the
first: as a variable
qualifier
with no absolute
meaning
of its
own,
mihrab itself cannot
be
qualified. Qualification
inhibits the mihrab mechanism
by interrupting
the word's
migratory
movement and
freezing
it in a
specific
context. The
expression
al-mihrab
al-mujawwaf
that is exclusive to
mosques
is, therefore,
an
anomaly.
Its construction
requires
the concomitant
availability
of a
contextually
defined functional
entity (al-
mihradb)
and a niche that could be chosen to act as its formal unit.
Indeed,
the medieval
accounts demonstrate that mihrab
acquired layers
of
meaning pertinent
to
mosques
before these
meanings,
and the word
itself,
were
implanted
in a coexistent niche. The
process
created al-mihrab
al-mujawwaf
as an
expression
that was
instantly
attached
to,
and so
expressive
of,
its functional context. This creative
process
is
clearly
de-
lineated in the lexical and historical
sources,
but
only
if mihrab is not read as "con-
cave niche" or as
any
of its other
possible
formal or architectural translations.
THE
MOSQUE
MIHRAB
When read
sequentially, early dictionary
entries reinstate mihrdb's
proper
referential
history
and demonstrate that it entered the Islamic context as a term that drew
upon
older uses and cultural memories to define and refine new
meanings
and
applications.
Accordingly, lexicographers
such as Ibn
Durayd
have no
problem
with
positioning
mihrdb
al-masjid
as a "successor" to
mihradb
al-majlis (bihi summiya
or
minhu),
be-
cause
they present
the last of a series of
analogical
uses and
linguistic
constructions,
not formal or functional derivations,
in the
process
of
reviewing
mihrdb's "pre-,"
"non-," and Islamic uses.97 Mihrdb thus enters the
mosque
text as a
"high space"
whose
history
can be
projected
back to the
inception
of
mosques
and
prayer-related
functions.
According
to al-Khalil, popular
use had
already placed
the term mihrdb in the
mosque
context
by
the latter
part
of the 8th
century,
when it was understood as the
maqdm
or the
space
where the imam stood in the
place
of
prayer.
The
maqdm
oc-
cupies
a central and frontal location (sadr)
and a
metaphorically "high space"
that
reflects the
prayer
leader's status and function.98 This use locates the mihrab
space
in a
position
that is
logically
associated with the
qibla,
itself the "front and center"
of
any prayer area, including
the
maqdm.99
Location establishes a link between
qibla
and mihrdb that Ibn al-Anbari
(d. 939) explains through
the latter's
height significa-
tions. He first
quotes
the
Qur'anic
scholar Abu
'Ubayda's (d. 825)
definition of the
mihrab as the most honored location in the secular
majlis,
then follows with the
statement, "The
qibla
was
only
called mihrib because it is the most honored/'ele-
vated' location
(ashrafu mawdi'in)
in the
masjid."100
The
qibla
can be understood
here as a
physical space (the
front of the
prayer
area and the sadr that
overlays
the
maqdm, which, in
turn,
can be delineated
by
a
maqsuira
or demarcated
by
a
wall),
as
well as a
metaphysical space (the spiritual
orientation that
produces
a canonical fron-
tal
direction)
whose own
importance
makes the
superlative
mihrab an
appropriate
expression
for it. The concentration of these values in a
particular
location within
the
masjid
leads to
superimposed layers
of
meaning
and to further connections be-
tween mihrdb as
space
and mihrdb as orientation that are most
concisely expressed
in such definitions as the Lisdn's al-mihrdb
al-qibla ("the
mihrab is the
qibla").
As is the case with the
majlis
and
elsewhere,
these definitions of the
mosque
mihrab contain the
potentiality
of
form,
whether this form is the lateral extension of
the
qibla
wall,
a frontal marker within
it,
or a vertical
projection
of the
maqsura.
The
possibility
of
integrating
formal or
marking
devices with the
mosque
mihrab
occurs
repeatedly
in the lexicons. In
Kurac's (d. 922) al-Munjidfi al-Lugha,
for in-
stance,
the mihrab
is,
"That toward which
prayers
are said."'0' This definition allows
the mihrab to be understood as
spiritual
orientation
(qibla),
as the direction and lo-
cation in which it falls
(sadr, front),
and as
any object
or marker that is
placed
in
this location
(qibla
wall,
maqsuira
enclosure,
and the
frequently
adduced harba and
Canaza).l02
The
designation
can be
easily
extended to the concave niche that had be-
come a
regular
feature of
mosques by
the time this definition was
written,
yet
nei-
ther Kura' nor
any
other
early
medieval
lexicographer
mentions niches or identifies
mosque
mihrabs with them.
Rather,
they
continue to reflect mihrab's
metaphorical
operation by defining
the
mosque
mihrab in relation to an
amorphous masjid,
thus
allowing
it to come into
being
with its contextual functions and to
operate
in the
large open
air
musalld,
in the musalld as a more limited
prayer
area,
and in the
early
amsdr
(garrison) mosques.
These definitions absorb mihrab into
mosque vocabulary
and create mihrab
al-masjid
as a functional and
context-specific
but form-free
"high
space"
whose
history
coalesces with the
history
of
mosques.
Medieval historians echo the
lexicographers' understanding
of
mosque
mihrabs as
unarticulated but honored
spaces.
In the 10th
century,
both
al-Muqaddasi
and Ibn
'Abd Rabbih use mihrab to refer to the
qibla
of the
Prophet's Mosque
and to the
Prophet's maqdm
and musalla
respectively;
uses that were dismissed
by Sauvaget
be-
cause
they
induct the term into a time frame that
precedes
the
appearance
of the niche
it is
supposed
to denote.103 As late as the 14th
century, al-Qalqashandi
understands
the
mosque
mihrab as an oriented
space; immediately
after
asserting
that Fustat's
mosque
had no concave niche before the 8th
century,
he
goes
on to defend its erro-
neous
qibla
orientation because, "its mihrab was set
by forty
sahdba" in the 7th.'04
The numerous other references to mihrab al-sahiba (the Companions' Mihrab), used
interchangeably
with
qiblat
al-sahaba and
maqsurat al-sahdba, underline
compati-
bility
at the functional level, but
again
do not
assign
the word to the niche or
any
other
specific
form.105 These uses indicate that historians and
lexicographers
contin-
ued to understand the niche
simply
as an additive that neither determines
meaning
nor controls function but
merely complements
them.
Not
only
do the
lexicographers
and historians
emphasize
the
complementary
role
of the niche
by divorcing
it from definitions of the functional
mosque mihrab, but
also, where historical references to al-mihrib
al-mujawwaf
do
appear, they
omit late-
7th- and
early-8th-century mosques (other than
al-Walid's) that
may
have included
niches.106 Indeed, this
expression belongs exclusively
to the
group
of
mosques
recon-
structed
by
al-Walid in 705-15. This is so not because al-Walid (or his
governors)
in-
troduced the niche into
mosques,
but because these are the old amsar
mosques
whose
histories are told in accounts of the 9th and later centuries. It is in these accounts that
the niche mihrab becomes a
meaningful mosque
element with
origins
in Medina.
As
exemplified by al-Qalqashandi, regional
historians
(predominantly,
as Sau-
vaget noted, Egyptians)
mention the niche mihrab in accounts that revolve around
the amsdr
mosques,
all of which had become
major
urban
mosques by
the time their
16 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
histories were
written.'07
These accounts
begin
with the mihrab
spaces
that the his-
torians
designate
mihrab
al-sahdba.
The
designation
attributes these mihrabs to the
original
founders
(often
also the
prayer leaders)
who had
supervised
the construction
of each
mosque
and the
setting
of its
qibla
at the time of
conquest.
Ibn
CAbd
al-
Hakam
(d. 871) reproduces
three
closely
related accounts of the mihrab
space
at the
Fustat
mosque
that demonstrate its continuous association with the founders.108 On
his arrival there as al-Walid's
governor
in
709, Qurra
ibn Sharik entered the
mosque's
mihrab,
where he first
prayed
then sat
cross-legged,
with one of his aides
standing
behind him
(a description
that establishes this mihrab as a
space). During
his 710-
12
expansion
of the
mosque
on al-Walid's
orders, Qurra gilded
the
capitals
of the
columns that delineated this
original
mihrab,
an act that honored and
preserved
the
memory
of the founders and the
mosque's
own
history.
The niche he added at this
moment came to be known as Mihrab
'Amr,
Egypt's conqueror
and the
mosque's
original
founder,
because "it is
aligned
with the mihrab of the old
mosque."109
Ibn
Duqmaq (d. 1388),
who was aware that this niche was not a
physical
artifact of the
original mosque,
nevertheless recommended
kneeling
in front of it because of its
historical associations."10 This transfer
process
is
replicated
elsewhere,
as well. The
Mihrab of
'Uqba
ibn
Nafic,
conqueror
of
Qayrawan
in
670,
stands out as another
example
of a niche mihrab that is still attached to the charisma of the
founder,"1
and
one of the three niches at the Damascus
mosque
(whose
reconstruction was contem-
poraneous
with or
began
earlier than Medina's) is still known as mihrab al-sahdba.112
In each of these cases, the values of an older mihrab, an honored
space identifying
the
mosque's maqdm
and
qibla
and
embodying
its
history,
are transferred to the con-
cavity
in the
qibla
wall of al-Walid's
larger
and more monumental
mosques.
Al-
though
the niche was
positioned
in what can be identified as a "central and most
honored location" (sadr),
and
although
its traditional use as an honorific form and
framing
device makes it an
appropriate
visual translation of mihrab's
emphatic op-
eration, the historians
provide
it with
meaning by "aligning"
it with the
original
mihrab and
imprinting
it with its memories. The
memory
transfer
signaled by
this
alignment
attaches the term mihrab to the niche form and results in al-mihrdb al-
mujawwaf
as an
expression
that embodies the memorial and functional values of the
original
mihrab
space.
The historians then
proceed
to link al-mihrdb
al-mujawwaf
with the
Prophet's
Mihrab at Medina, or "the first niche mihrab."1"3 The same mem-
ory
transfer occurs at the
Prophet's Mosque,
where the
strength
of the memorial con-
nection between the
Prophet's
mihrab
space
and the later niche underlies
Sauvaget's
placement
of this niche two
bays
east of the
mosque's
new central axis.114 This shift
aligns
the niche with the
Prophet's maqdm
and musalla, otherwise known as al-
mihrab al-awwal ("the original"
or "first mihrab").115 Accordingly,
al-Walid's niche
absorbs the
significance
of the historical and moral center of the
archetypal mosque,
the mihrab as honored
space,
to become the
archetypal
niche mihrab from which all
others are descended. Location, not actual
chronological primacy,
establishes the iden-
tity
of the first niche mihrab in the historical accounts,
and so fixes the creation of
al-mihrdab
al-mujawwaf
in 707-9.
The emblematic nature of this date is confirmed
by,
and in turn
explains,
the
seemingly
anachronistic
discovery
of niches at
archeological mosque
sites
predating
707-9.116 It is also underlined
by
the
scope
of al-Walid's architectural
program,
in
which construction
projects
at all the major cities of his
empire progressed
simul-
taneously.
This
larger
framework demands that the
chronological primacy
of the
Medinese niche mihrab be the result either of a conscious decision
(one
that is not
attested in
any source)
or of a
happy
accident that later historians
capitalized
on in
writing
the Islamic
history
of the mihrab. In
writing
this
history,
however,
the histo-
rians'
primary
concern was historical
validity,
not
chronological actuality. They
there-
fore referred to the First
Mosque
to
provide
the niche mihrabs of their home towns
with a historical Islamic
identity by associating
them with the earliest memories and
with the
Prophet's
Mihrab at
Medina,
thus
leading
to the
symbolic
707-9 moment of
inception
for all niche mihrabs.
Writing
more than a
century
after the
event,
the medieval historians both effect
and reflect the Islamization of the niche as mihrab. This
process,
which involves the
mosques
reconstructed
by
al-Walid,
appropriates
the niche from within the
Umayyad
architectural context
by making
it the
repository
of universal Islamic memories and
values. It also modifies the associations and actions of the word mihrab itself.
Qual-
ified as a
form,
mihrab becomes
part
of an indivisible architectural element that
is
singularly
associated with
mosques.
In as much as the
significance
of this new
creation is clear from its
special
contextual associations and Islamic
identity,
the his-
torians omit function as a factor in the 707-9 invention of al-mihrab
al-mujawwaf-
thereby leading
to the later
conflicting interpretations
of the niche mihrab's
history
and
meaning.
The
12th-century al-Isfahani, whose
attempt
to make the mihrab the locale of
spir-
itual
struggle
we have
already encountered, wrote in his
Mufradat,
"It has been said
that the mihrab
originates [from
mihrab's
use]
in the
majlis,
and it has been said that
it
originates
in the
masjid;
the latter is more
likely."'17
Al-Isfahani's is a valid con-
sideration of the
mosque
mihrab that reveals the values and associations it had at-
tained even before his time. But his statement does not uncover the
process through
which the mihrab became a
significant
feature of
mosques
so much as reflect its ex-
istence as one. For in even
discussing
the issue of the mihrab's
"origins,"
al-Isfahani
confounds the
explanations
of the
early grammarians
and
lexicographers
for whom
mihrab was a word used in the construction of
"high spaces,"
not one that had
origins
in this or that functional
space.
As its lexical entries and historical uses demonstrate,
mihrab could
operate
in a
variety
of contexts
precisely
because it had no formal or
functional
meanings
of its own but had
significations
that went
beyond
both form and
function and that served to bind them
together
in different situations. This mecha-
nism
produces
a
variety
of
tripartite
mihrab-sets in which the
only
shared unit is
mihrab.
Changing
the central unit or functional content of a mihrab-set results in
mihrabs with different
meanings,
whereas
changing
or
deleting
its
framing
unit re-
sults in mihrabs with different formal
guises
or none at all. In the first
phase
of its
history,
the
mosque
mihrab illustrates the critical value of the
language
used
for
Islamic architecture in
creating
the
language
of
Islamic architecture and
suggests
new
ways
to understand the
history
of the
relationship
between words and their im-
ages.
The
mosque
mihrab that results from the basic combination
provided by
the
lexicographers
is a
"high space"
that marks the station of the imam and
signals
the
qibla;
it is
primarily
a function.
Medieval historians outline a second
phase
in the
history
of the
mosque
mihrab
that
exploits
mihrab's
propensity
to act as attribute. The mihrab here becomes a car-
rier of
memory
that is used to
preserve
the
early history
of a
special group
of
18 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
mosques.
The
epistemological
value of the mihrab in relation to these
mosques,
and
to the
Prophet's Mosque
in
particular,
is embedded in the accounts of historians con-
cerned with
writing
the Islamic
past.
The mihrab as niche arises from these
writings
that "Islamize" both word and form
by positioning
them
together
in an
unequivocally
Islamic historical environment. Here it is the
Prophet's Mihrab,
whether as
space
or
as
niche,
as
place
of
prayer
or of
leadership,
that inscribes all later mihrabs with
meaning
and
provides
them with their Islamic
identity.
Thus,
although
the
mosque
mihrab itself is
functionally
associated with the
qibla,
the niche mihrab is
signifi-
cantly
associated with Medina. This
phase
created al-mihrdb
al-mujawwaf
as an ex-
pression
exclusive to
mosques by associating
the form with a
contextually
defined
mihrab that
required
no further identification. In so
doing,
the historians
collapsed
history,
transformed the cultural associations of both term and
form,
and froze them
together
as a
single
element that acts as verbal and visual
signal
of the
presence
of
Islamic functions and values.118 The additive role of the form in relation to the func-
tional
mosque
mihrab continues to be reflected in the niche mihrab's
contemporary
definitions,
where it remains both the
"space"
exclusive to the imam and the "idiom"
for the
qibla.119
This second
phase
in the
history
of the
mosque
mihrab corroborates
Sauvaget's
insights
on the
place occupied by
the
Prophet's
Mihrab in relation to the niche mih-
rab's
history.
What
Sauvaget
did not account for is the time
lag
between al-Walid's
707-9 reconstruction of the
Prophet's Mosque
and the
retrojection
of the niche mih-
rab's
history
to the same moment
by
later, non-Medinese,
historians.120 This tele-
scoping
of the mihrab's
history
resulted in the
mingling
of mihrabs and niches into
one
entity
with a
single history
and a
solitary meaning.
As a manifestation of rich
and varied cultural traditions, the mihrab
concept,
that
metaphor
for
superiority
and
signal
of honored
spaces,
demands a far more nuanced
approach
that allows it to ex-
ist in
multiple meaningful
combinations with different architectural
expressions,
con-
tents, and histories. Our Medinese and
Egyptian historians, our
lexicographers
and
poets,
have thus
given
us the clues to
begin disentangling
niches from mihrabs and
niche mihrabs from
Umayyad
mihrabs.
NOTES
'This
problem,
and the
general
lack of a theoretical framework for the
study
of Islamic forms, is set
out in
Oleg Grabar, "The
Iconography
of Islamic Architecture," Content and Context
of
Visual Arts in
the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla P. Soucek
(University Park, Penn., and London, 1988): 51-60.
2Niche mihrabs
vary
in
profile
and
ground plan;
we here use "concave niche" to indicate the basic
form.
3The
specific quotations
are from Taha al-Wall,
Al-Masajidfi
al-Isldm (Beirut, 1988), 220, although
their content
appears
in
practically every
discussion of the mihrab.
4Throughout
this
study,
mihrab refers to the word
per
se
(regardless
of form or function), whereas
"the mihrab" refers to an
object, space,
or
any
functional set
(regardless
of form).
5Other terms include the diminutive
tuwayq
and mishkdt, neither of which is
strictly
connected with
the mihrab and the last of which is an
acknowledged Ethiopic borrowing; see, for
example,
Abui Hilal
al-'Askari, Kitdb al-Talkhis
fi Macrifat
Asma' al-Ashyd',
ed. 'Izzat Hasan (Damascus, 1969), 258. We
leave
taq al-imdm, which
belongs
to a different medieval discourse on mihrabs, for a
separate study.
6George
C. Miles, "Mihrab and 'Anaza: A
Study
in
Early
Islamic
Iconography," Archaeologia
Ori-
entalia in Memoriam E.
Herzfeld (Locust Valley, N.Y., 1952): 156-71, Figure 3, for the A.D. 695 dirham,
considered of
iconographic
as well as historical
importance
in relation to the
mosque
niche mihrab. The
most recent discussion of the date of this rare coin is in Michael L.
Bates,
"The
Coinage
of
Syria
under
the
Umayyads,
692-750," The Fourth International
Conference
on the
History of
Bilad al-Sham
During
the
Umayyad
Period, October 1987:
Proceedings of
the Third
Symposium, English Section,
ed. M. A.
al-Bakhit and R. Schick
(Amman, 1989),
195-228. The basic
problem
concerns the
representation
of a
"prayer
niche" on a coin that
predates
the
appearance
of this form in
mosques, although
the detail of im-
portance
is
clearly
the
object
within the niche and not the niche itself. The established
chronology
for
niche mihrabs
begins
with the controversial one discovered at the Khassaki
mosque
and attributed to al-
Mansur
(754-75) by
K. A. C.
Creswell, Early
Muslim Architecture
(Oxford, 1969), 2:34-36,
and Ernst
Herzfeld,
Geschichte der Stadt Samarra
(Hamburg, 1948), 2:140,
and to a late
Umayyad
context
by
Di-
mand,
"Studies in Islamic
Ornament,"
Ars Islamica 4
(1937):
308. The earliest
firmly
dated in situ niches
occur at the
Umayyad mosques
constructed ca.
720-50,
Richard
Ettinghausen
and
Oleg Grabar,
The Art
and Architecture
of
Islam 650-1250
(New York, 1987), 45-71, figs. 20, 21,
29.
However, archeological
discoveries of niches datable to the late 7th and
early
8th centuries
present
a different
picture;
for a sum-
mary account,
see Svend Helms et
al., Early
Islamic Architecture
of
the Desert: A Bedouin Station in
Eastern Jordan
(London
and
Oxford, 1990),
73-82. These
findings,
which seem to contradict all his-
torical
accounts,
in fact conform to these accounts when
they
are read in line with the conclusions of the
present study.
7Five
occurrences, Qur'an 3:37, 39; 19:11;
34:13
(mahiirib);
38:21. Mihrab is absent from
Prophetic
hadith; cf. A. J.
Wensinck,
Concordance de la Tradition Musulmane
(Leiden, 1936),
and from the Diwdn
attributed to Hassan ibn Thabit, whose references to locations associated with the
Prophet
are discussed
in Ghazi Izzeddin Bisheh, The
Mosque of
the
Prophet
at Madina
Throughout
the First Century A.H.
with
Special Emphasis
on the
Umayyad Mosque (Ph.D. diss., University
of
Michigan, 1979), 123. In
Umayyad poetry
and literature the term often refers to monumental structures; see
p.
10f. and Nuha N.
N.
Khoury,
"The Dome of the Rock, The Kaba and Ghumdan: Arab
Myths
and
Umayyad Monuments,"
Muqarnas
10
(1993): 57-65.
8See the articles "Mihrab" in the two editions of the
Encyclopaedia of
Islam. A
sampler
of the most
influential
suggestions
includes Creswell, EMA, 1:143 (the haykal
of
Coptic churches); Ed.
Pauty,
"L'tvo-
lution du
dispositif
en T dans les
mosquees
'a
portiques,"
Bulletin d'Etudes Orientales 2 (1932): 91-124,
esp.
98 (the Coptic
"icon niche"); Ugo
Monneret de Villard, La chiesa della
Mesopotamia (Rome, 1940),
15, a
general
Christian context; E. Lambert, "Les
origines
de la
mosquee
et l'architecture
religieuse
des
Omeiyades,"
Studia Islamica 6
(1956): 5-18; idem, "La
synagogue
de
Dura-Europos
et les
origines
de
la
mosquee,"
Semitica 3 (1950): 67-72 (the synagogue Ark); M. van Berchem, "Notes
d'archeologie
Ar-
abe," Journal
Asiatique
17
(1891): 427 (the mihrab niche as
"atrophied
basilical
apse,"
an idea
adopted
by Sauvaget).
The mihrab as a
royal
niche later connected with the
Prophet
arises
primarily
from Jean
Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee omeyyade
de Medine: Etude sur les
origines architecturales de la
mosquee
et de
la
basilique (Paris, 1947), 83-84, 120-21; and is
expanded
and refined in Miles, "Mihrab"; 0. Grabar,
The Formation
of
Islamic Art, 2nd ed. (New Haven & London, 1987), 90, 114-16. Other
suggestions
in-
clude tomb, Geza Fehervari, "Tombstone or Mihrab: A
Speculation,"
in Islamic Art in the
Metropolitan
Museum
of Art, ed. R.
Ettinghausen (New York, 1972), 241-52; idem, El, 2nd ed., s.v. "Mihrab"; and
sutra
(barrier
between
worshipper
and
qibla),
Estelle Whelan, "The
Origins
of the Mihrab
Mujawwaf:
A
Reinterpretation,"
International Journal
of
Middle East Studies 18 (1986): 205-23. A number of inter-
pretive categories
are discussed in Bisheh, The
Mosque of the Prophet, 251-59.
9Diez, El, 1st ed., s.v. "Mihrab," proposes
that the Buddhist niche is as
good as
any
other
suggestion.
l?Listed and discussed in detail in
Sauvaget,
"La
Mosquee," 24-39; see also Nur al-Din 'Ali Abu al-
Hasan al-Samhuldi (d. 1506), Wafad al-Wafd biAkhbarDdral-Mustafa (Cairo, 1326), 1:363 f.; and n. 13.
"K. A. C. Creswell, A Short Account
of Early Muslim Architecture, revised and
supplemented by
James W. Allan (Cairo, 1989), 43-88; Grabar, Formation, 104 f.; Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Archi-
tecture: Form, Function and
Meaning (New York, 1994), 68-73.
12Niche mihrabs are, however, inadmissible in certain contexts on doctrinal
grounds; see Muhammad
Mahdi al-Musawi al-Khawansari al-Isfahani al-Kazimi, Tuhfat al-Sajid fi
Ahkdm
al-Masajid (Baghdad,
1376), 16-21; Muhammad Ibrahim al-Jannati, Al-Masajid
wa
Ahkdmuhaft
al-Tashri' al-Islimi
(Nejef,
1386), 149-53; a milder
opinion
is in al-Tusi, Al-Mabsutfi Fiqh al-lmiimiyya (Tehran, 1387), 1:140.
3The earliest of these historians include
al-Waqidi (d. 823) and Ibn Zubala (who composed
his his-
tory
of Medina in
814),
known
primarily through
later historians.
Recently
discovered
fragments
of Ibn
Shabbah's
history (unavailable to
Sauvaget
or Bisheh) include no references to the mihrab; see Abu
Zayd
20 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
'Umar ibn Shabbah
al-Numayri
al-Basri
(d. 875),
Tarikh al-Madina
al-Munawwara,
ed. F. M. Shaltuit
(Jedda, 1979).
Histories of Medina are discussed in
Bisheh,
The
Prophet's Mosque,
10 f.
(including
the
earliest but lost
al-Zuhri,
d.
741);
Hamad
al-Jasir, "Mu'allafat fl
Tarikh
al-Madina," Al-CArab 4,
2-3
(1969): 97-100, 262-67;
4-5
(1970): 327-35,
385-89.
Further,
the niche mihrab is mentioned
spe-
cifically
in the context of
regional
histories:
Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee, 18,
identified Ibn
Qudayd (d. 924)
and the
Egyptian
al-Kindi
(d. 961)
as the earliest of this
group,
but
postulated
that
they
had a
common,
Medinese source.
14Sauvaget,
La
Mosque'e,
117-21,
145
f.,
understood the niche as
part
of a
palatine apsidal plan,
but
aligned
it with the
Prophet's maqdm
in
recognition
of the
mosque's special
status.
Grabar, Formation,
115,
suggests
that this connection between the
Prophet
and the niche
may
have
played
a role in the
adoption
of the niche mihrab. Our
analysis
of the historical sources will show that while this is a valid
connection,
it is not a cause but an effect.
15Henri
Stern,
"Les
origines
de
I'architecture
de la
Mosquee Omeyyade,
a l'occasion d'un livre de
J.
Sauvaget," Syria
28
(1951):
269-79. In this first
critique
of
Sauvaget's
classic
study,
Stern disassoci-
ated the niche from the "nef axiale" that
plays
a
prominent
role in the
Umayyad palatine interpretation
by listing
a number of
mosques
that have niches but no central aisles-that
is,
ones that do not
belong
to the
imperial type adopted by
al-Walid.
16Sauvaget,
La
Mosque'e, 10-39, Figure
1.
17Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee,
the
quotation
is from
pp.
18-19,
n.
9,
and
accompanies
the remark that the
tradition
ascribing
the niche mihrab to 'Umar ibn Abd al-'Aziz is to be
found,
"sous une forme
legere-
ment
differente,
chez des auteurs
qui
n'utilisent
point al-Kindi,
mais bien des sources
d'origine
me'di-
noise"
(original emphasis).
See also
p. 145,
where the author reviews several
meanings
for mihrab but
insists on "defoncement semi-circulaire, niche arrondi."
18Both the sources and their conventional reading
are in fact
rejected by
a number of
contemporary
Arab Muslim scholars (for example, Fikri) whose work is rooted in other concerns and deserves to be
examined
separately.
19This
suggestion requires
the term's
early currency
in Medina itself, a condition that is met
by
Sau-
vaget's
own endowment of
chronological primacy
to the Medinese texts.
20This
pedigree
is
upheld
even
by
mihrab
opponents
such as
al-Suyuti,
Al-Muhadhdhab f
md
Waqaca
fi al-Qur'dn
min al-Muarrab, ed. I. M. Abu Sikkin (Cairo, 1980); mihrab is also absent from Arthur
Jeffery,
The
Foreign Vocabulary of
the Quran (Baroda, 1938).
21In reference to the internal
organization
of the dictionaries, regardless
of
linguistic/grammatical
theory.
22Al-Raghib al-Isfahani,
al-Mufraddtfi
Gharib Irab al-Qur'an, ed. Muhammad
Sayyid
Kilani (Cairo,
1961), 160-61. Al-Isfahani gives
a second associative
meaning
for mihrab as the location where the
person
at
prayer
"distances" himself
(yakuiinu
hartban) from mundane concerns. Cf. 'Ali ibn Isma'il ibn
Sidah (d. 1065), Al-Muhkam wa al-Muhit al-Azam fi al-Lugha, ed. 'A'isha 'Abd al-Rahman (Cairo,
1958), where the same
explanation
is
applied
to
kings.
23The
linguistic
connection is
frequently noted, Rhodokanakis, "Zur Semitischen
Sprachwissenschaft,"
WZKM 25 (1911): 71-76; Herzfeld, Geschichte, 202; Miles, "Mihrab," 168-69, n. 47; Whelan, "The
Origins,"
214 f.
24Ibn Sidah, Al-Muhkam, defines the harb derivative mihrab as warrior, "rajulun harbun, shadidu
al-harbi, shuja'."
25Mihrdb is absent, for
example,
from the list of such nouns in Ibn
Qutayba,
Adab al-Kitib, 4th ed.,
ed. M. M. 'Abd al-Hamid (Cairo, 1963), 449-50, but
appears
in Isfahani's Gharib and
Suyuti's
Muhadh-
dhab. The term's
divergence
from Arabic rules is discussed in Gerard
Troupeau,
"Le mot mihrab chez
les
lexicographes arabes," Le Mihrab dans l'architecture et la
religion musulmane; Actes de
colloque
in-
ternational tenu a Paris en Mai 1980, ed. Alexandre
Papadopoulo (Leiden, 1988), 61-64.
26See Fehervari, EI, 2nd ed., s.v. "Mihrab"; and for Pahlavi and Persian connections, A. S. Melikian-
Chirvani, "The
Light
of Heaven and Earth: From the
Chahar-taq
to the Mihrab," Bulletin
of
the Asia
Institute 4 (1990): 95-130; Halimi, "Le Mihrab en Iran," Le Mihrab, 93-94.
27R. B.
Serjeant, "Mihrab," BSOAS 22 (1959): 439-53, esp.
444-48.
Serjeant's
use of the
Tdj
is in
fact
justified by
his
ethno-linguistic methods, themselves based on his conviction that southern regions
of the Arabian Peninsula
preserve
older Arabic
usages.
His brilliant
analysis
of mihrab differs from all
others in
allowing
the word a
history
of use, but
stops
short
by assigning
it the
meaning,
"arch."
28Mahmud Ali
Ghul,
"Was the Ancient South Arabian
Mdqnt
the Islamic Mihrab?" BSOAS 25
(1962):
331-35,
where
mdqnt (as
"place
of
prayer
for the
dead") provided
the foundation for
mihrib's
interpre-
tation as "tomb" in
Fehervdri,
"Tombstone or Mihrab."
29J.
Horovitz, "Bemerkungen
zur Geschichte und
Terminologie
des Islamischen
Kultus,"
Der Islam 16
(1927): 249-63,
esp. 261-66; Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee, 145,
n.
6; Diez, EI,
1st ed.,
s.v.
"Mihrab"; Feher-
vari, El,
2nd
ed.,
s.v.
"Mihrab";
for
mehram,
see
Troupeau,
"Le mot
mihrab,"
Le
Mihrab,
62.
30Ibid. The
problem
of the vowel shift is discussed in the
accompanying
debate,
63.
31Ibid.,
62.
32Ibid.; Troupeau
does not
quote
the verse
directly,
but a related verse that
speaks
of the
Abyssinian
defeat in Yemen mentions Ghumdan's "mihrab of the
statues";
the verse is
quoted by
Ibn
Mujawir
from
Ibn
Durayd;
see Ibn
Mujawir, Sifat
Bildd al-Yaman wa Makka wa Bacd
al-Hijdz
al-Musammdt bi Tdrikh
al-Mustabsir,
ed. Oscar
Lovegren (Leiden, 1954),
2:181-82.
33HRM
carries the
meanings
of
haram/hardm,
and mhrm
appears
in one
inscription
as tomb; see
G. Lancaster
Harding,
An Index and Concordance
of pre-Islamic
Names and
Inscriptions (Toronto, 1970),
with
many
variations under the
entry
HRM. For contacts between South Arabian and
Abyssinian
cul-
tures
during
the
6th-century
Hadramawti
migrations
and the later
Abyssinian
invasion of
Yemen,
see
Walter Miiller, "Outline of the
History
of Ancient Southern Arabia," Yemen: 3000 Years
of
Art and Civ-
ilization in Arabia
Felix,
ed. Werner Daum
(Mainz, Innsbruck,
and
Frankfurt/Main, 1988):
49-50.
34Beeston,
"Pre-Islamic
Inscriptions,"
Yemen, 100,
where the
Himyarites
(Arabic Tababica)
did not
necessarily speak
the Sabaic
language,
but
"may
have used it as a
prestige language
for
inscriptional pur-
poses,
in somewhat the same
way
that the Nabateans and
Palmyrenes
used Aramaic for their
inscriptions,
though they probably spoke
Arabic themselves."
35A. F. L. Beeston, "Nemara and Faw," BSOAS 42 (1979): 1-6; A. R.
al-Ansary, Qaryat
al-Fau
(Riyadh, 1982) for
photographic reproductions.
36For mhrm, see n. 33; for mhgl, see D. B. Doe and A. Jamme, "New Sabean
Inscriptions
from South
Arabia," Journal of
the
Royal
Asiatic
Society (1968), part 1:2-28, esp. 13, inscription
no. 2109. The
word
appears
in a
long inscription
in the form
bmhgln,
translated as "in the state chamber." For the "mi"
prefix
in a number of South Arabian
languages,
Ahmad
Husayn
Sharaf al-Din, Lahajdt
al-Yaman Qa-
diman wa Hadithan (Cairo, 1970), 13-20.
Cultural-linguistic groupings
in
pre-Islamic
South Arabia are
discussed in
Jacqueline Pirenne, "The
Chronology
of Ancient
South-Arabia-Diversity
of
Opinion,"
Yemen, 116-22.
37Serjeant, "Mihrab" 442, relays
information from Ghul who discusses two
inscriptions,
one of which
is too
fragmentary
to ascertain the nature of the mihrab it mentions.
38A. F. L. Beeston, M. A. Ghul, W. W. Miiller, J.
Ryckmans,
Dictionnaire Sabeen (Louvain-La-Neuve
et
Beyrouth, 1982), 69. "Dh"
corresponds
to the
preposition
"of."
390On al-A'sha and other
early poets,
see Abdulla
al-Tayyib, "Pre-Islamic
Poetry,"
Arabic Literature
to the End
of
the
Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston
(Cambridge, 1983): 27-113, esp. 30-33.
40To be discussed on
p. 13;
cf. also the verse mentioned in n. 32.
4'A
contemporary
of the
Umayyad Caliph
Abd al-Malik (685-705), the verse is discussed and
quoted
in N. Rhodokanakis, Der Diwan des CUbaid-Allah ibn Kais
al-Rukajjat (Vienna, 1902), 74, 222. Feher-
vari, "Tombstone or Mihrab," 251; and
p.
13.
42Other
early poets quoted
in the lexicons include the
Sth-6th-century
Imru'
al-Qays
and Rabi' ibn
Malik ibn Rabi'a, known as al-Mukhabbal al-Sa'di, a transitional Tamimi
poet
who died either
during
the
caliphate
of 'Umar (634-44) or that of 'Uthman (644-56), Al-Mufaddaliyydt (Diwdn al-'Arab:
Majmu'dtfi "Uyun al-Shi'r), 2nd ed., ed. M. A. Shakir and A. S. Haruin (Cairo, 1942), 113 f. Cf. mihrab
as used
by
the transitional Christian
poet cUdayy
ibn
Zayd al-'Ibadi, Dlwdn, ed. M. J.
al-Mu'aybid (Bagh-
dad, 1965), 84 f.; Kitdb
al-Ikhtiydrayn (san`at al-Akhfash al-Asghar 235-315), ed. F. Qabawa (Damas-
cus, 1974), 704 f.
43Abu Sacid Abd al-Malik ibn
Qurayb,
a Basran who went to
Baghdad during
the
caliphate
of al-
Rashid (786-809), is famous for his
knowledge
of Arab
genealogy, history, language,
and
poetry,
and
is the source most often cited for
early poetry
with the word mihrab in medieval dictionaries. On his
standing
as transmitter of
pre-Islamic
Arabic
poetry
and as a
poet, see Muhammad ibn Sallam al-Jumahi,
Tabaqit al-Shucard', ed.
Joseph
Hell
(Leiden, 1913-16),
9. Some of the
poetry
he collected is in his
Fuhuldt al-Shuard', ed. M. A.
Khafaji
and T. M.
al-Zayni (Cairo, 1953); cf.
Al-Asmaciyydt,
2nd ed., ed.
A. M. Shakir and A. Haruin (Cairo, 1964).
22 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
44Troupeau,
"Le mot
mihrab,"
Le
Mihrab,
62. For
Ghumdan,
see
Serjeant,
"The Church
(al-Qalis)
of
Sanca
and Ghumdan
Castle," Sanca:
An Arabian Islamic
City,
ed. R. B.
Serjeant
and Ronald Lewcock
(London, 1983),
44-48.
45Usually
considered
"folkloric," many
of these accounts
originate
from Ibn
Sharyah
al-Jurhumi
(d. 686)
and Ibn Munabbih
(d.
ca.
732)
and reflect
Umayyad historiographical intentions,
N.
Khoury,
"The Dome of the
Rock," 59,
62-63. Cf. H. T.
Norris,
"Fables and
Legends
in Pre-Islamic and
Early
Islamic
Times,"
Arabic
Literature,
384-86.
46Abu 'Amru ibn
al-CAla',
an
acknowledged early
Arabist and
linguist
in
al-Jumahi, Tabaqdt,
5
f.;
Ibn
Qutayba al-Dinawari,
Kitab
Al-Ma'arif,
ed. Tharwat cUkkasha (Beirut, 1960),
540. His statement
is
quoted by
Ibn al-Anbari
(d. 939)
from a chain that ends with
al-AsmaCi,
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn
al-Qasim al-Anbari,
Al-Zahir
ft
Ma'ani Kalimit
al-Nds,
ed. H. S. al-Damin
(Baghdad, 1399),
1:540-
41.
Serjeant,
"Mihrdb," 452,
ascribed the
frequent
association between mihrabs and
perfumes
to the fe-
male
occupants
of the
upper
stories of mihrab
palaces,
but
continued,
"It is
possible also,
if
perhaps
less
likely,
that the allusion is to the Yemenite fondness for
perfumes
and incense." The
general place-
ment of women in the raised and secluded
ghurfa/mihrab (also maqsuira) appears
in most modern dic-
tionaries
(for instance,
Dozy's), though
the
poets
themselves use this location to
express
the
superiority,
not the
cloistering,
of their
subjects.
47With the notable
exception
of
Serjeant,
"Mihrab," who
provided
the word with a
history
of use.
However,
as noted
by
Bisheh,
The
Mosque of
the
Prophet, 294,
n.
20, Serjeant
misread al-Zuhri
(d.
741
or 742) for al-Azhari (d. 980) in the statement
(originally al-Khalil's) "the mihrab is
popularly
under-
stood
today," quoted by
al-Zabidi.
48We have
already
encountered two of the most
commonly
used dictionaries, Al-Qdmuis al-Muhit
and
Tdj al-'Aruis. Lisdn al-'Arab, discussed on
pp. 7-9, is the third of this triad.
49Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Mukarram al-Ansari (Ibn Manzuiir), Lisdn al-'Arab (Cairo reprint
of
Bulaq, 1300). All mihrab citations refer to the entries under HRB.
5Bayt, dar, qasr
and other
problematic
architectural terms have been noted in the Arabic wherever
they appear. Bisheh, The
Mosque of
the
Prophet, 146-47, for bayt (pl. buyuit)
as the main room of a house
during
the
Prophet's lifetime, hujra
as front room, and makhdac as innermost room.
Ghurfa's
translation
as "elevated chamber" is confirmed on
p. 13; cf. E. W. Lane, Arabic-English
Lexicon
(Cambridge,
1984
reprint).
5'As noted, the word mihrab itself does not
appear
in
Prophetic
hadith. Ibn Manzuir
quotes
a khabar
that also
appears
in al-Azhari, see n. 52.
52Abu Mansuir Muhammad ibn Ahmad Al-Azhari, Tahdhib
al-Lugha,
ed. A. Darwish and M. A. al-
Najjar (Cairo, n.d.), 5:23-24.
53Al-Zajjaj,
Icrdb al-Qur'dn,
ed. Ibrahim
al-Abyari (Cairo, 1965).
54Abu
'Ubayda
ibn al-Muthanna
al-Taymi, Majdz al-Qur'dn,
ed. Fuad
Sezgin (Cairo, 1954).
This
scholar is
part
of the triad, including
al-Farra' (d. 822)
and
al-Zajjaj (d. 928),
of
Qur'anic
authorities
most often
quoted
in the
early
dictionaries. The
specific
information is absent from
published
editions
of
al-Zajjaj's
Frdb.
55Al-Azhari both
provides
the verses that
begin
the
entry
and includes most of the information in it,
leading
to the conclusion that he was the Lisdn's main source.
56On the
masjid-majlis controversy, Pederson, El,
2nd
ed.,
s.v.
"Masdjid." Sauvaget
based his inter-
pretation
of the niche mihrab on the
majlis argument
in H. Lammens,
"Ziad ibn Abihi vice-roi de
l'Iraq,
lieutenent de
Mo'awiya,"
Revista
degli
Studi Orientali 4
(1911): 1-45; 199-250; (1912): 653-93,
see
esp.
240 f.; cf. Horovitz, "Bemerkungen,"
259-63.
57Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Faraihidi, Kitdb
al-'Ayn,
ed. M. al-Makhzuiimi and
I. al-Samarra'!
(Iraq, 1981); al-Azhari
begins
with
qala al-Layth.
On
al-Layth,
see 'Abdallah Darwish,
Al-Ma'djim al-'Arabiyya
ma' Itind' Khiss bi
Mujam al-'Ayn
li al-Khalil ibn Ahmad
(Cairo, 1956).
58The
qala may
in fact have
migrated
from the Tahdhib into the Lisdn
along
with the definition. Ibn
Manzur's method of
transporting
information with embedded
quotations,
as is the case here, argues
against
the conventional
procedure
of
identifying
the source of a
quotation
as the
authority immediately
preceding
a
qala signal. Indeed, Ibn Manzur's lexical sources are even fewer than his
qala
markers would
suggest,
and are concentrated on al-Azhari who, in contrast, follows earlier
practice by providing
clearer
chains of transmission.
590ne
example
where this lack of
temporal specificity
contributes to
complicating
the word's
history
is M. M. Amin and L. A.
Ibrahim, Al-Mustalahidt
al-MiCmdriyya fi al-Wathd'iq al-Mamlukiyya
648-
923H;
AD1250-1517
(Cairo, 1990), 100,
where Ibn Manzur's
temporally
defined statement is taken at
face value as
belonging
to the Mamluk
period.
The three non-Mamluk dictionaries that
appear
here fur-
ther reflect the common
practice
of
treating
most medieval Arabic dictionaries as of
equal
value or uni-
versal
applicability.
60For information on Arabic
dictionaries,
J. A.
Haywood, El,
2nd
ed.,
s.v.
"Kamuis"; idem,
Arabic
Lexicography:
Its
History
and its Place in the General
History of Lexicography,
2nd ed.
(Leiden, 1965);
Darwish, Al-MaCdjim al-CArabiyya.
For
language
collection and
preservation
under the
Umayyads, par-
ticularly
after
CAbd
al-Malik's
reforms,
see Muhammad CAbd al-MunCim Khafaji, Al-Haydt al-Adabiyya:
cAsr
Bani
Umayya
41-132H
(Cairo, n.d.), 19 f.; G. R.
Hawting,
The First
Dynasty of
Islam: The
Umay-
yad Caliphate
AD 661-750
(Carbondale, Ill., 1987),
9-11.
61This
clarity
is demanded
by
the lack of a
pre-established
lexical tradition that the
early lexicogra-
phers
could draw
upon
in
creating
their own
entries,
and
by
their concerns with
language,
thus
leading
to a more
systematic presentation
than later
counterparts.
62Al-Farahidi,
Kitab
al-'Ayn,
3:214.
63As is also
signaled by
Cdmma,
in al-mihribu Cinda
al-cdmmati al-yawma;
trans.
Serjeant,
"Mih-
rab," 441,
as the mihrab
according
to "common folk"
today,
a reflection of the
gap
between
linguists
and users that
is, however,
an
important
index of
meaning.
64Al-Khalil's
interpretation may
be derived from al-Farra' (d. 822), Macdni al-Qur'an, 2:356, for
Qur'an 19:11,
where "the mihrab is the
masjid," though
al-FarraD also relates mihrabs to
places
of
gath-
ering
that are
majalis.
Both David and Zachariah use their mihrabs for
prayer;
these verses are often used
to
argue against
mihrabs
by contrasting pre-Islamic
use with a hadith that makes the entire Earth a
masjid
for
Muslims-e.g., al-Suyuti,
al-Khasdis al-Kubrd, 3:188, whose
argument
contributed to the mihrab's
Christian
origin
in studies cited in n. 8. In Ibn al-Anbari, Al-Zdhir, 1:540-41, and Ibn Sidah, Al-
Muhkam, 3:235, Jewish mihrabs are connected to
majlis
rather than
masjid;
in
Tdj
al-'Arus
they
are in-
terpreted through
harb as the
places
where the Bani Isra'il
gathered
"as if to consult in matters of war."
65As in the Lisdn's
entry
above and in Ibn
Durayd's
below.
66A
complete quotation from al-Asmai
making
this
argument is in Ibn al-Anbari, al-Zdhir, 1:541.
The connection between the mihrab and the
ghurfa
is based on
analogy,
as reflected even in such late
entries as the Lisdn's, where the mihrab is "like" the
ghurfa.
67Ibn
Durayd,
Jamharat
al-Lugha (Beirut, 1987), 1:275-76. A similar
approach
is followed
by
Kura'
(d. 922) in
Al-Munjidfi al-Lugha, 325-26, see n. 101.
68Wa bihi summiya mihrdbu
al-masjid.
69Min
qawlihim
mahirib
ghumddn, yuriduina al-ghuraf.
70Rabbatu mihrdbin idhd
ji'tuhd / lam adnui aw
artaqi
sullamd.
7Waddah al-Yaman is one of the transitional
poets whose work was collected
by al-AsmaC (d. 828).
Ibn
Durayd quotes
al-AsmaI
through
Abu Hatim (d. 862 or
869), thereby establishing
a direct chain from
the earliest collector to the
lexicographer.
72For the
height
of Maharib Ghumdan, as also the
Qur'anic Maharib
Sulayman,
see N.
Khoury,
"The Dome of the
Rock,"
60.
73In Ibn
Durayd's entry
the
ghurfa is too well known to be defined (wa al-ghurfa al-ma'riifa).
74See various locations in al-A'sha's Diwdn and the discussion of the
poet's
themes and
imagery
in
Zaynab
'Abd al-'Aziz al-'Amri, al-Simdt
al-Haddriyya fi
ShiCr al-A'shd
(Riyadh, 1983), esp.
385-86.
Cf. Diwdn Imru'
al-Qays
b.
Hajar al-Kindi (sharh Abi
al-Hajjdj Yusuf al-Shantamri), ed. Ibn Abi Sha-
nab
(Algiers, 1974), 83 f. The
poets compare large
horses and camels to monumental structures whose
mihrabs/necks are their
highest
units.
Similarly,
the mihrab as "the lion's den" is a characterization that
relies on the lion's
place
in the
hierarchy
of the animal
kingdom;
see the verses
quoted
in Ibn
Sidah,
Al-Muhkam, 3:235.
75As
per
Ibn al-Anbari (see n. 66), al-AsmaCi
argued
on the basis of
(ihtajja bi-) verse 38:21.
761In
Sijistani, Mukhtasar, 160, tasawwur can occur
only from a
height;
in Tabari, Tafsir, 23:141, it
indicates
entry
from other than the mihrab's door. These accounts are related to Ibn
Ishaq's Sira, where
David is lured into
"looking
down"
by
a bird that stands on the dar's/mihrab's window
ledge;
see G. D.
Newby,
The
Making of
the Last
Prophet (Columbia, S.C., 1989) 159; cf.
Mary's
mihrab in Qur'an 3:37,
24 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
explained by
al-Tha'alibi
(d. 1035), Qisas
al-Anbiya' (Cairo, n.d.),
333 f.
(through
Ibn
Ishaq)
as also
requiring
a ladder for access.
77Yaqut al-Hamawi, Mujam al-Buldadn (Beirut, 1955-57), 4:210-11,
on the
authority
of Ibn al-Kalbi
(d. 819).
The
plurals
Maharib Ghumdan and Maharib
Sulayman
are
comparable
to the
plurals
Mada'in
(Ctesiphon)
and Mada'in Salih (in Saudi
Arabia). Although
their exact architectural references are not
clear,
the denominations seem to
imply general
cultural and historical
importance.
Mihrdb's use as
"monument,"
whether in the
singular
or the
plural, emphasizes
a memorial function and content that will
be discussed later.
78As in the Lisan
entry quoted
earlier,
'Urwa ibn
Mascud (d. 630)
entered his mihrab and "over-
looked" the
people
of Ta'if at
dawn,
an action that
is, significantly,
described
through
the verb
ashrafa.
Al-Azhari
(d. 980), Tahdhib, explains
that this action
"signifies
that it
[the mihrab]
is a
ghurfa
to which
one ascends." Cf. Ibn Hisham
(d. 833)
Sirat
al-Nabi,
ed. M. M. CAbd al-Hamid
(Cairo, 1958), 4:194,
where the same account uses the variant
Cilliyya.
These mihrabs are related to the
Qur'anic ones,
such
as
Mary's,
which also had stairs
(Qur'an 3:37;
n.
76).
79Abu
'Ubayda, Majdz al-Qur'an, 1:91;
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn 'Aziz
al-Sijistani (d. 941),
Kitdb
Gharib
al-Qur'dn,
ed. M. B. al-Na'sani
(Cairo, 1325), 241; Al-Azhari, Tahdhib, 5:23-24;
and see Ibn
Manzur's
quotation
cited earlier.
80The
implied sequence
is from current
(mosque-related) applications
to
early
and
"pre-Islamic"
(Qur'anic)
ones and
finally
to
"pre/non-Islamic" (historical
south
Arabian, poetic)
ones. Mihrdb's seem-
ing ambiguity
here is shared
by
the
pre-Islamic inscriptions
discussed earlier.
81The
exception
that
proves
the rule is Abu Hilal al-'Askari
(d. 1004)
Al-Talkhis
ft
Macani Kalimdt
al-Nads, 251,
who
explains ghurfa
as mihrab and adds that
cilliyya
is
ghurfa's Hijazi equivalent.
Al-
Asma'i's insistence on mihrab as "the Arabs'
ghurfa"
is
quoted by
Ibn al-Anbari, Al-Zdhir, 541. Ibn
Durayd, Jamhara, omits all definition of
ghurfa
because "it is well known," whereas others, including
Ibn Sidah, Jawhari, Firuzabadi, and Ibn Manzur, equate ghurfa
with
cilliyya
but do not mention mihrab.
Conversely,
al-Azhari
explains
'Urwa ibn Mas'ud's mihrab in Ta'if as a
ghurfa,
which Ibn Hisham,
Sira, 4:194 (one of the earliest references to this mihrab) records as
cilliyya
in "fa lammd
ashrafa
lahum 'ald
cilliyyatin
lahu." Cf. the account in Abui al-Qasim
Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (d. 871), Futuh Misr
wa Akhbdruhd, ed. Charles C.
Torrey (New Haven, 1922), 104-5, on the first
ghurfa
built in Fustat, a
structure that
Caliph
'Umar ordered torn down because its owner "overlooked" his
neighbors.
82Although
both
masjid
and majlis can be
expressed architecturally,
both can also refer to social and
functional
groupings
without architectural
expression,
a critical detail in lexical definitions of
mosque
mihrabs.
83Ibn al-Anbari, Al-Zdhir, 1:540-41.
84This is the case whether mihrab is used as "monument" or as the
quality
"monumental."
85The
clarity
of mihrdb's
in this verse and in
Qur'an
38:21 makes them the most
popular
illustrations of the
mihrdb-ghurfa
connection. It is under the influence of this verse that the
mihrab has come to be defined as "women's chamber" in modern dictionaries,
as for
example
in
Dozy's
Supplement
aux dictionnaire Arabe.
86Leading
to mihrab as the "lieu d'access difficile" of
Troupeau's study,
and to the
maqsuira
in Ser-
jeant, "Mihradb," 448-49.
Inaccessibility
is a critical identifier of certain mihrab structures and
spaces,
inasmuch as it reveals their nature as monuments on the one hand and restricts their attribution to a
specific person
or culture on the other.
87Here mihrab switches from
metaphor (in
reference to the invisible
high structure)
to
metonym (in
connection with its new
"high" subject).
88Horovitz, "Bemerkungen," 262; the translation of the second
part
of the verse follows
Serjeant,
"Mihrab," 450.
89A1-Mufaddaliyydt, 115; Horovitz, "Bemerkungen,"
260.
Serjeant, "Mihradb," 451, translated the sec-
ond hemistich as "the Persians
light up
the arch of the throne of the
king,"
thus
allowing
mihrab to move
to different functional contexts while
maintaining
its form.
90The verse
quoted
in Lisdn al-'Arab.
9tHorovitz, "Bemerkungen,"
260
(palace); Fehervari, "Tombstone or Mihrab," 250 f.
(tomb);
cf. Whelan,
"The
Origins,"
207.
92That Mihrab Tadmur is
Udhayna's
attribute is clear from the structure and content of the
poem,
in
which each verse mentions a famous historical or
legendary figure along
with an attribute,
as for in-
stance, Solomon and his
gift
of control over natural and
supernatural beings.
The
subtlety
of the
Udhayna
verse rests on the action and nature of the
"ropes,"
whose
continuous,
eternal circuit transforms the same
"high"/mihrab position
into a
"low," permanently
debased one
expressed by mathwi (final abode; per-
manent
residence)
whose literal
rendering
as "tomb" does not
express
the
complexity
of the verse
(see
n.
94).
93Memory
is both a factor of mihrab's use as a
subject's
attribute and its
application
to
physical
monuments that are vehicles of
memory.
94The verse
(like
others in the
poem)
would be
meaningless
without this
memory,
for it relies on both
the eternal action of the
maniya
and on
Udhayna's
eternal
presence
in his Mihrab for its
expression.
Its
complexity
rests on
oppositional
ideas
(high
versus
low,
eternal versus
finite),
as
expressed
in the action
of the
continuously revolving ropes (the
asbab mustamirra) and the idea of this mihrab as "eternal res-
idence" or mathwa. Asbab mustamirra is
explained by
the
lexicographers
as the mechanism of
rope
and
pulley
attached to
wells,
and so
provides
a
rotating
"wheel of fortune"
image
controlled
by
the
manaya,
forces that resemble the Greek fates in
affecting
human
destiny.
Thus,
lows and
highs
are in continuous
tension;
all that is "raised
up"
must
eventually
be
"brought
down." The mathwd
is
explained
as
"perma-
nent
residence," and, only by extension,
as "final
abode, tomb,"
which contrasts with the
"high"
mihrab.
Al-A'sha, therefore,
uses the
mandya
as the
power
of time and
destiny
that
elevated, yet destroyed,
the
greatest figures
in
history,
but that is ineffective
against
the Eternal
Concept,
the
poem's
main theme and
a
Qur'anic topos
discussed in John
Wansbrough, Qur'anic Studies: Sources and Methods
of Scriptural
Interpretation (Oxford, 1977).
95Serjeant, "Mihrab," 449, renders these mihrabs as nasd'ib, graven stones, stelae. These are, of course,
essentially
monuments with memorial functions; cf. Fehervari, "Tombstone or Mihrab"; Nuha N. N.
Khoury,
"The Mihrab
Image:
Commemorative Themes in Medieval Islamic Architecture," Muqarnas
9
(1992): 11-28.
96The
"spoken"
evidence reflects those
interpretations
based on
usages
marked
by
min
qawlihim
("from the
expression" or, literally,
"from their
saying"),
which could
belong
to the
literary
or the ver-
bal domain.
97Al-mihrdbu sadru
al-bayti
wa akramu mawdi'in
fihi,
wa bihi
summiya
mihrdbu
al-masjid-that
is, the
mosque
mihrab was named in
analogy
to mihrab's use in mihrab
al-bayt, underlining
mihrab in
the first
expression
as a
cognate
of mihrab in the second
expression,
but
providing
no
identity
between the
two
expressions.
This
operation
neutralizes debates over mihrdb's
origins
in the
masjid/temple
as
opposed
to the
majlis/palace,
as in al-Isfahani, al-Mufraddt, 160-61; Lammens, "Ziad ibn Abihi,"
esp.
246.
98The variant
reading muqdm
is a dais or
platform.
99The
qibla's
basic
interpretation
as "frontal direction" is related to
"face/facing" wajh/muwdjaha,
see
Sijistani, Tafsir, 9, for Qur'an 2:142-44 (the revelation of the new
qibla).
100Wa innamd
qila
1i
al-qiblati
mihrdban li'annahd
ashrafu mawdi'infi al-masjid.
Ibn al-Anbari
quotes
Abu
'Ubayda through
Abu Bakr (Ibn Durayd)
on the mihrab as the foremost location in the
majlis,
a
statement that
appears
in Abiu
'Ubayda's Majdz al-Qur'dn, 1:91, for verse 3:37; 2:144, for verse 34:13.
The statement on the
qibla, however, seems to be Ibn al-Anbari's.
l1lAbui al-Hasan 'All ibn al-Hasan al-Huna'i (known as) Kura', Al-Munjidfi al-Lugha,
ed. M. M. U.
'Abd
al-Baqi (Cairo, 1396), 325-26. The
complete entry
follows the methods of al-Khalil and Ibn Du-
rayd
in
giving
current
meanings first, then
Qur'anic
and
poetic
illustrations. It
proceeds,
"The mihrab is
that toward which
prayers
are said. And the mihrab is the ghurfa; and in the Qur'an, lammd tasawwarui
al-mihrdb [38:21]. 'Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a al-Makhzuimi said, 'a
lady
of a mihrab-whenever I come to
her / I am not satisfied until I climb a staircase"' (the verse is misattributed and contains a
corruption).
This
entry
demonstrates both the
consistency
of the verse and its
position
in the
expository sequence.
02As a result of these definitions, the imam who
occupies
the
maqam can also be understood as a
"qibla
marker" and, by extension, as a mihrab, a
designation
that occurs in Shi'i
usage
where certain
imams are
spiritual mihrabs/qiblas
and
recipients
of
prayer.
An
argument against
this use is in al-Wali,
Al-Masdijid,
220. For a
variety
of medieval
qibla-marking
devices as mihrabs, see Al-Amuli (1547-
1626), Al-Lumca
al-Dimashqiyya,
1:200.
t03Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee,
20
(al-Muqaddasi), 83-84, n. 1
(Ibn 'Abd Rabbih) where
Sauvaget
con-
siders the
usage
"an error of
interpretation"
on the author's
part.
104Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn 'Ali
al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418), Subh al-A'shdfi $ind'at al-Inshd', ed.
Wizarat
al-Thaqafa (Cairo, n.d.), 3:337-39.
26 Nuha N. N.
Khoury
105Al-Qalqashandi,
Subh
3:337-40,
uses both mihrdb al-sahdba and
qiblat
al-sahdba in his account
of the Fustat
mosque.
Mihrdb al-sahaba and
maqsu~rat
al-sahiiba
appear
in Ibn
Battuta, Tuhfat
al-Nuzzdr
fi
Ghard'ib al-Amsdr wa
CAjdjib al-Asfar,
ed. A. al-cAwamiri and M. A. Jad al-Mawla
(Cairo, 1933),
1:85;
Ibn
CAbd al-Hadi,
Thimdr
al-Maqdsidfi
Dhikr
al-Masdjid, 166,
both in reference to the Damascus
mosque.
In each of these cases mihrab refers to location as well as orientation and acts as an attribute.
106For
example,
at Jebel
Seys mosque,
dated to ca.
700-10,
which
overlaps
the 707-9 date
provided
by
the historians for the first niche
mihrab;
see K.
Brisch,
"Das
Omayyadische
Schloss im Usais: Vor-
laufiger
Bericht uiber die mit Mitteln der DFG unternommenen
Grabungen," Mitteilungen
des Deutschen
Archaeologischen Instituts, Abteilung
19
(Cairo, 1963): 141-87,
esp.
181,
Figure
27;
and see n. 6 for
other
examples. Although
the
dating
of some of these
early
mihrabs remains
controversial,
there is no
need to
reject
them out of
hand, as,
for
example,
Creswell,
who
consistently
dated
mosques according
to the
presence
or absence of
niches,
would have
done;
see A Short
Account, 40,
222.
Rather,
as we shall
see,
these niches are
ignored by
the historians because
they
were concerned with historical
value,
not
with
archeological
or
chronological
truth,
as it related to a
particular group
of urban
mosques-regard-
less of whether
they
were aware of the existence of niches elsewhere.
107As identified
by Sauvaget,
the earliest of these historians is the
Egyptian
al-Kindi
(d. 961),
whose
own source was Ibn
Qudayd (d. 924). Sauvaget
here
speculated
that these historians had a Medinese
source,
most
likely al-Waqidi (d. 823),
and
preserve
a lost Medinese tradition that does
not, however,
mention the mihrab as niche. He
states,
"La est l'interet veritable de ces nouvelle
citations,
car elle
levent une contradiction a
laquelle
on ne
pouvait passe
outre: le fait
qu'une
tradition relative a la
mosquee
de Medine
[i.e.,
on the niche
mihrab]
ait
pu
etre conservee seulement
par
des auteurs
egyp-
tiens," La
Mosquee,
19
(original emphasis).
In
fact,
the
Egyptian
historians do not so much
preserve
the
Medinese tradition as re-create it.
1081Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, Futuh, 238-39, reproduces
these accounts on the
authority
of Ibn
'Ufayr
(764-841). Cf. Whelan, "The
Origins,"
209-10.
109Capitalizing
and
dropping
the conventional "the mihrab of 'Amr" better reflects the memorial
significance
of these mihrabs and the intent of the accounts. The
wording
is Ibn
Duqmaq's (see next
note), who
reproduces
accounts similar to Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's on the
authority
of al-Kindi.
ll?Ibn
Duqmaq,
Kitdb al-Intisdr li Wdsitat 'Iqd
al-Amsdr
(Bulaq, 1309), 64, "li'annahu fi samti
mihrdbi al-masjidi
alladhl bandhu CAmru,
wa kdnat
qiblatu al-masjidi al-qadimi
cinda al-'umudi al-
mudhahhabah." Ibn
Duqmaq
recommends
kneeling
in front of this niche because of its association with
'Amr ibn al-'As and his
companions (pp. 59-62), and insists on the
validity
of its erroneous orientation
because it was set
by
them. The mihrabs of the sahdba are often the focus of such debates, as exem-
plified
in the
long passages
on
Egypt's
different qiblas
in
Maqrizi's
Khitat. The
preservation
of these
mihrabs as historical artifacts also often became a discursive detail in
ideological discussions, as was
the case in
10th-century Cordoba; see the texts
preserved
in Ahmad
al-Maqqari, Nafh
al-Tib min Ghusn
al-Andalus al-Ratib, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1302), 1:263 (on the other hand, as is illustrated
by
an incident that
took
place
at Cordoba's main musalld, the mihrab was still considered a
"portable" space
in certain set-
tings). Similarly,
the
Prophet's
Mihrab (as oriented
space)
is also inalienable, as in
al-Suyuti, Al-Khasd'is,
3:359.
1
l1This attribution
compelled
Fikri's
attempt
to
prove
the existence of an
original
niche at the
mosque;
Fikri, "Bid'at al-Mahdrib," Majallat
al-Kdtib al-Misri 40 (1946): 306-20. Cf. Creswell, EMA, 2:308;
G.
Mar9ais,
Manuel d'art musulman (Paris, 1926), 1:22, for the
present
niche mihrab's later date. In
light
of the new
archeological evidence, the
Qayrawan mosque does, however, raise the issue of whether
any
major
urban
mosques
had niches before al-Walid embarked on his architectural
project.
112Ibn Battuiitah, Tuhfat al-Nuzzar, 1:73, 85; cf. Creswell, EMA, 1:169-70 for the
post-Umayyad
date
of all three extant mihrabs. The
suggestion
that the Damascene
mosque's
reconstruction
began
before
Medina's is a
logical
conclusion of the
oft-quoted
statements that have al-Walid
sending
workmen from
Syria
to the
Hijaz;
the Damascene mihrab is
given chronological primacy
in Afif Bahnasi, "Le Premier
mihrab dans la
mosquee islamique,"
Le Mihrab, 56-59.
113The
practice
continues even
among
later authors who, like their
predecessors,
often also mention
the "first niche mihrab" not in connection with al-Walid but his cousin, governor
of Medina (and later
caliph)
'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz; Ibn
Duqmaq,
Kitdb al-lntisdr, 63 (on the
authority
of al-Kindi), after
stating
that the Fustat
Mosque
had no niche mihrab until Qurra
ibn Sharik, continues with the formula,
"The first to introduce this innovation into
mosques
was 'Umar ibn
CAbd al-'Aziz." A number of simi-
lar statements is in
Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee,
15-16.
114Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee, Figure
5. It should be noted that while
Sauvaget's
shifted niche reflects
his belief that al-Walid's
mosque
accommodated the older
one,
he
provides
no
supportive
evidence for
the shift
apart
from a note that refers to a different location in his text.
115The
wording
is from Ibn 'Abd
Rabbih,
Al-cIqd al-Farid,
ed. Ahmad Amin
(Cairo, 1949), part
29:98-102. Cf.
Sauvaget,
La
Mosquee, Figure
5.
16See n.
6,
106.
117Al-Mufraddt,
160-61
(with
some
paraphrasing);
the last statement is followed
by Qur'an 34:13,
which acts as
supportive
evidence for the
opinion
with which al-Isfahani ends his discussion of mi-
hrab's
applications
in the
masjid
and
majlis.
l8There
are both medieval and modern variations
that,
obviously,
do not use the
phraseology
al-
mihrdb
al-mujawwaf
On the
contemporary end,
one encounters obituaries of both Muslims and non-
Muslims who
occupied
"the mihrab"
(i.e.,
"the
acme")
of their
professions;
a call for contributions from
an Islamic
philanthropic organization
is
stamped
nida' min mihrab al-lmdn and
accompanied by
the
translation,
"A call from the heart." At the other
pole,
while
post-modern interpretations
often alter the
mihrab's formal
identity,
the traditional mihrab as niche continues to
appear
even in
simple, provincial
mosques
of
primarily symbolic architecture;
an
example
where a niche is
represented
on the
only, qibla,
wall of such a
mosque
is in Richard
Pare, Egypt: Reflections
on
Continuity (New York, 1990), pl.
15.
9As
per al-Wali,
n.
3,
"the mihrab in
today's
idiom is the
qibla."
120The
implications
of this
retrojection
with
regard
to the
Umayyad
mihrab will be discussed in a
larger study by
the author on the
Prophet's Mosque, currently
in
progress.

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The Mihrab: From Text to Form

Author(s): Nuha N. N. Khoury

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