The History of Islam told by its Great Buildings - six online talks by Dr Peter Webb

Jerusalem was the focal point of the Prophet Muhammad’s first prayers, and although Mecca soon became the geographical heart of Muslim worship, Jerusalem had special resonance in Islam’s first century. The Dome of the Rock was one of the very earliest great monuments built by a Muslim ruler, and it houses the story about how the early generations of Muslims interpreted their faith and the nature of political power. A mixture of Christianity, Byzantine art and a vibrant sense of new Muslim identity created the Islamic world’s first architectural icon.

Islam’s second dynasty, the Abbasids, faced the important task of demonstrating why they were more fit to rule than the regime they had swept away. One strategy focused on Mecca, utilising the Hajj pilgrimage as processions of political legitimacy. But there was a challenge. Mecca is more than 1000 km from the Abbasid’s capital at Baghdad, and the long journeys cut through perilously arid tracts of the Arabian Desert. The Abbasids’ great road to Mecca deserves mention alongside the Great Wall of China – both were similarly-monumental infrastructural achievements, as the Abbasid road tamed the desert and connected Arabia with the wider Middle East in ways unrivalled until our contemporary era.

In the background to the first centuries of the Caliphate were divisive arguments about how the Muslim world should be run, and who should do the running. Different opinions formed into the groups we know as Sunni and Shi’i today, and through the prism of the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, one of the world’s oldest (and still running) universities, and via buildings constructed to rival it, the meaning and significance of the Shi’a/Sunni divide becomes clear.

The Taj Mahal is a tomb, and perhaps the greatest tomb since the Pyramids. Constructed by a Muslim ruler of India, the building is also a paradox since Islamic law discourages ostentatious decoration of graves. The paradox predates the Taj Mahal by some 700 years when a long line of fabulous buildings erected above the tombs of Muslims began. To resolve the contradiction, we need to meet the Turks – an array of Central Asian peoples who embraced Islam and moved into the Muslim world. Their role in Islamic history was pivotal, and their tombs from Bukhara to Agra tell the story.

Mecca is Islam’s spiritual heart, but it is not the only shrine to which Muslims have made pilgrimage. Over the centuries, an array of smaller shrines arose, many serving the interests of Muslims who sought a more mystical approach to faith. One such monument was a fabulous complex constructed in Samarkand which reveals the secrets of Islamic mysticism – Sufism – and also bears witness to those who questioned Sufi beliefs. This lecture explores debates over how people approach Islam as a faith.

Located on opposite sides of the Muslim world, Granada in southern Spain and Bidar in southern India contain two of the greatest surviving palaces of medieval Islam, and they tell opposite sides of the story of Islam as a culture. Cultural and linguistic change usually accompanied conversion to Islam, and the result created what we call the Arab and Persian worlds. Exploration of Granada and Bidar uncovers what Arab and Persian mean, and how the pair underwrite the idea of Islamic civilisation.