bloom_qubbat al-khadra' and the iconogrpahy of height

8/12/2019 Bloom_Qubbat Al-Khadra' and the Iconogrpahy of Height

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THE QUBBAT AL-KHADRA AND THE ICONOGR PHY OFHEIGHT IN EARLY ISLAMIC RCHITECTURE

BYJONATHAN M BLOOMIT HAS LONG BEEN KNOWN THAT SEVERAL IMPORTANTpalaces constructed by Muslim rulers in the sev-enth and eighth centuries had a feature medievalsources refer to as a qubbat al-kha4dr, which isusually understood in the secondary literature tomean "a green dome. Although K. A. C. Creswellbriefly discussed this feature in his magisterialworks on early Islamic architecture, its impor-tance was first noted, although not pursued, byOleg Grabar over thirty years ago.I A reexamina-tion of the early Islamic qubbat al-khadr7 showsthat it was a critical link between the palacetraditions of the pre-Islamic Mediterranean landsand those of later Islamic times.

The earliest example of the qubbat al-khadrwas built in Damascus during the caliphate ofcUthman (644-56) by MuCawiya, later the firstUmayyad caliph. Adjacent to the first congrega-tional mosque in the city, Mucawiya erected aresidence which was referred to as the qubbat al-khadra. Itwas built ofbaked brick and had a doorwhich led into the maqsiiraof the mosque. It wa sstill standing at the end of the ninth century whenthe geographer and historian Ya'qubi saw it. Ac -cording to 'Ilmawi, a sixteenth-century sourcequoted by Creswell, a Greek ambassador toMu'awiya had said upon seeing it, The upperpart would do for birds and the lower for rats.Although Creswell followed 'Ilmawi's late andprobably unreliable account in his assessment ofthe building, Herzfeld correctly interpretedYa'qubi's account to mean that it must have beensubstantial, a famous and splendid building.

Ya'qubi is also the source for another example,for he noted that the Umayyad governor of Iraq,al-Hajjaj, built a palace in the western city ofWasit, the Umayyad capital of Iraq. The palacewas crowned by a qubbatal-khadr',known synech-dochically as the khart of Wasit. According toIbn Rusta, an early-tenth-century source, this struc-ture was so high that it was visible from thirtymiles away.3 A third qubbat al-khat4raPwas builtover the audience hall at Rusafa, al-Walid's capi-tal in northern Syria and the royal city of theUmayyads during the long reign of Hisham (724-43). Grabar toyed with the idea that these domed

structures at Damascus, Wasit, and Rusafa be-longed to an Umayyad tradition of building royalsymbols, but dismissed it because the impact ofMu'awiya's palace could have been little morethan symbolic.4

That this architectural form was not exclusivelyan Umayyad type is shown by the example atHashimiyya, one of the early Abbasid administra-tive capitals in the region ofKufa, which probablyhad one as well. According to the ninth-centuryhistorian al-Tabari, the caliph al-Mansur (r. 754-75) had been in his khadrawhen the Rawandiyyarebels approached him and attempted to fly outthe window, a context suggesting that the struc-ture was elevated.5 Perhaps the most famous qub-bat al-kha.dr7 was the example in the Round CityofBaghdad, ordered byal-Mansurwhen he found-ed the city in 762. At the back of the centralpalace, there was a reception hall (iwan) measur-ing 30 x 20 cubits leading to a domed audiencechamber twenty cubits square. The sources donot state how one ascended to the similar domedaudience hall that surmounted it, but the spring-ing of this upper dome is known to have beguntwenty cubits above the second floor. This upperdome was known as the qubbat al-khadr; the topof it stood eighty cubits (forty meters) high andwas crowned by a weathervane in the shape of ahorseman. Contemporaries considered the horse-man the crown (tj) of Baghdad, a guidepost('alam) for the region and one of the memorablethings (ma'thara) that one associates with theAbbasids. 6 Itwas also a convenient metaphor forthe caliph's power and authority. If the sultansaw that figure with its lance pointing to a givendirection, he knew that some rebels would maketheir appearance from there: and before longword would reach him that a rebel had appearedin that direction. 7 Like aweathervane, the horse-man was supposed to predict storms before theyblew in. Consequently the collapse of the qubbatal-kha4trW and the horseman on it during a stormin 941 was indeed an omen: within four years theBuwayhids had entered Baghdad and establishedthemselves as protectors of the Abbasid caliphs.

Over each of the four gates to al-Mansur's


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Round City other elevated domed chambersmarked the extent of the caliph's personal do-main and authority. These audience rooms stoodover the inner gates of the city and were reachedby staircases or ramps. Each was crowned by adome fifty cubits high and a moving figure similarto the one over the central palace. The caliphused these satellite audience halls when he wishedto look at whoever might be approaching orwhatever lay beyond the city walls.8

The Arabic expression qubbat al-kha4r. hasbeen consistently translated into English as greendome, for indeed qubba is the Arabic word for dome or cupola and khaqr7 is the feminineform of the adjective green. Since glazed tileswere notyet used to cover domes, such scholars asCreswell were led to propose that the greendome would have been a structure of woodcovered with sheets of copper, which, when oxi-dized, would have acquired the requisite greenpatina. This logical interpretation has been uni-versally accepted and elaborated. The exampleof the Dome of the Rock, the earliest (691-92)and perhaps greatest ofIslamic monuments, sup-ports this interpretation, for it is contemporarywith the structures under consideration and itswooden dome was covered with lead sheets. Evi-dence against this interpretation, however, isprovided by the rules of Arabic grammar, whichinsist that the expression al-qubbat al-kha 4rg beused to render green dome, where both thenoun and the adjective are preceded by the def-inite article al-. The words in the expressionqubbat al-khari' are in construct (Arab. idaifa),and must therefore be construed as the dome ofal-kharae. Although the most familiar meaningof the Arabic root kh-d-r (from which khadraPderives) is green, it is often also found as asynonym for nature and life and can also referto herbs. The adjective akhdar, formed from thesame root, is associated with darkness and some-times denotes black, dark blue, and gray, as wellas darkness.9 The noun al-khaldra can also conse-quently refer to the sky, and akh4aris he normaladjective for the heavens. Al-khadra'"is an epithetin which the quality of a substantive predomi-nates, ' 0 so the construct form qubbat al-kha4r7emust therefore be translated as the Dome ofHeaven. The expression qubbat al-khadri' thusreferred initially not to a colored dome but to acelestial one. In later times, the original meaningof this expression was lost, whether from disuseor conflation with actual green (or blue) domes.

This explanation of the qubbat al-khadr& as acelestial dome allows several extant examples ofheavenly ceilings in early Islamic architecture tobe integrated with the early Islamic structuresknown only through texts. At Qusayr 'Amra, thesmall bath complex in the Jordanian desert, dec-oration transforms a domed bathing chamberinto an architectural expression of royal splen-dor. 2 The decoration of the building has beenattributed to the patronage of the profligateprince al-Walid II (r. 743-44) in the decadesbefore his accession. The main hall of the build-ing is a three-aisled basilica; its royal content inboth form and decoration has long been appre-ciated, as have the Roman origins of the astro-nomical ceiling in the domed room of the bath-ing suite.'3 There, a map of the heavens has beenprojected onto the undersurface ofa cupola. Saxlrecognized that the projection is not that of theheavens as they appear to an observer who looksup at the sky, but as they would have been repro-duced on the outer surface of a celestial globe orin a book illustration. This celestial dome has thedistinction of being the only extant example of atype known from antique texts, but it was ratherprosaic in execution. The painter copied hismodel with little understanding, and the build-ing's patron (or interior decorator) displayed abizarre sense of humor or over-eager imagina-tion when using celestial imagery over the medi-eval equivalent of a hot tub. Such an interpreta-tion accords well with the character of al-Walid asdelineated by Robert Hamilton.'

4The other extant example of a qubbatal-kha4rr

in early Islamic architecture is found at Khirbatal-Mafjar, the ruins of an Umayyad palace nearJericho. Like Qusayr 'Amra, the building has alsobeen attributed to the patronage of al-Walid IIbefore his accession.' 5 In the small domed andvaulted room at the rear of the bath hall, frag-ments of painted stucco reliefs have been recon-structed as showing four winged horses in roun-dels on the pendentives, which support a circle ofbirds. This circle in turn supports the drum,containing eight grilled windows which admitteda gentle light, and the dome, from the apex ofwhich peer six heads of handsome young menand women emerging from lush acanthus leaves.This apical composition replaces the oculus, whichin the symbolic cupola paintings of late classicaland later times indicates the great beyond orthe domain of the all-highest divinity.'6 The sym-bolic depiction of the heavens on the ceiling at

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Khirbat al-Mafjar, which combines winged horsesofSasanian artwith heavenly birds and the hourisof a verdant Qur'anic Paradise, represents a longarchitectural tradition in the Near Eastern andMediterranean worlds.17 The ceiling also nicelycomplements the splendid mosaic pavement inthe apse of the same room, which depicts a rug onwhich two gazelles are shown grazing peacefullyon the left side of a quince tree, while a ferociouslion devours the crumpled body of a third gazelleon the right. The image was probably intended asa representation of earthly power. 8 This smallroom, usually known as the diwan and recentlyidentified by Hamilton as the bahw, was probablyused for private audiences and assignations.' 9

These two examples of the qubbat al-khad4r donot, however, show the elevation characteristic ofthose Domes of Heaven known from literarysources, but this apparent anomaly may only bethe result of the accidental survival of two exam-ples built by an unconventional prince prone towitty gestures in his private architecture. Unlikethe Domes of Heaven at Qusayr cAmra and Khir-bat al-Mafjar, those at Damascus, Rusafa, Wasit,Hashimiyya, and Baghdad were not only visiblefrom a great distance but their reception roomswere elevated above the ground floor. This at-tribute of height links these early Islamic palaceswith those ofpre-Islamic southern Arabia, such asGhumdan, the famed pre-Islamic palace at San'a'in the Yemen. Ghumdan is said to have hadtwenty stories, each ten cubits (five meters) high,and was allegedly destroyed when Muslim armiesconquered the city and established the firstmosque opposite it and using its stones.2 0 Thistradition of tall palaces has been preserved intothe twentieth century in the multistoried housesof Yemeni cities. Many examples in San'a' havemore than five stories; the largest commonly haveseven, eight, or even nine, and the main enter-taining room is invariably located on the topfloor.21

The tradition of palaces with elevated recep-tion rooms in southern Arabia is quite distinct,however, from the palatine tradition in the Med-iterranean world, where the elevation of the audi-ence hall does not seem to have been very impor-tant. One need only think ofsuch examples as thePalatine in Rome, Diocletian's palace at Split,and the Great Palace of the Byzantine emperors,where the necessary impression of grandeur wasconveyed by the great extent of the structure,rather than by height.2 2 The southern Arabian-

early Islamic tradition is also quite distinct fromthe Sasanian tradition in Iran and Mesopota-mia.2 3 At the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon, forexample, there was a colossal vaulted iwan inwhich the emperor sat under a suspended andponderous jeweled crown; parting curtains re-vealed him seated on a magnificent carpet spreadon the ground.2 4 Although many Sasanian tech-niques and decorative motifs were adopted inearly Islamic architecture, their palaces seem tohave had little impact on the development of thequbbat al-khalr.

There was a notable change, however, in thespatial organization of Islamic palaces in theninth century (and probably as early as its begin-ning), when horizontal extension began to be thecharacteristic feature of such enormous palacesat Samarra as the Dar al-Khilafa (or Jawsaq al-Khaqani) and the Balkuwara, which cover im -mense tracts and are hidden behind blankwalls.2 5This change in the spatial organization of thepalace is revealed in the account of the receptionof the Byzantine ambassador by the Abbasid ca-liph al-Muqtadir in his palace in Baghdad in 917.The caliph impressed the ambassador by keepinghim moving through a succession of palaces,courtyards, corridors, and rooms. After coolinghis heels for two months in the palace of Sa'id, theambassador was conducted to the Dar al-Khilafapalace. He passed by 160,000 cavalry and infantrybefore reaching a vaulted underground passage,through which he walked. He was then conduct-ed about the palace in which 7,000 eunuchs, 700chamberlains, and 4,000 black pages were sta-tioned along the rooftops and in the upperchambers. Later, he was conducted from theBab al-'Amma to the Khan al-Khayl palace, andfrom there through corridors and passagewayswhich connected to the zoological garden. Theentourage was then brought to a first court wherethere were four elephants and to a second withone hundred lions. They were then taken to theNew Kiosk, a building situated amidst two gar-dens, from which they were conducted to theTree Room and then to a palace called Qasr al-Firdaws. Next they were taken to a passageway300 cubits long. After touring twenty-three palac-es, they were conducted to the Court of theNinety. Because it was such a long tour, theauthor of the account adds, the ambassador'sretinue sat down and rested at seven particularplaces, and were given water when they desiredit.2 6 Literary and archaeological evidence suggests

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that the celestial dome favored in early Islamicpalaces for the reception room was replaced bythe vaulted iwan, and upper chambers and suchhigh places as rooftops, which had once beenplaces of prestige, became service areas for eu-nuchs and pages. The splendor of the ruler wa sconveyed by the distance the courtier had totraverse and the retinue in front ofwhich he hadto pass. A special treat was the subterraneanpassage, through which the ambassador was con-ducted. Such passages seem to have become derigueur n Islamic palace design of the tenth andeleventh centuries.2 7

This change in the spatial organization of theIslamic palace is contemporary with a change inthe spatial relationships seen in Islamic citiesbetween the palace and the congregationalmosque. These had normally been adjacent struc-tures in the first two centuries of Islam, butthroughout the ninth century the palace wa sbuilt at an increasing distance from the mosque.This is evidence not only of the decreasing in-volvement of the caliph in matters of religion, butalso of the growth of the mosque as an indepen-dent institution. The changed horizontal rela-tionship between the palace and the mosque isalso observable in the vertical dimension. In earlyIslamic times the palace had been visible from agreat distance, while the mosque normally hadfew if any features to mark its presence from afar.In the ninth century, just as palaces becamehidden behind blank walls, mosques began toacquire architectural features that made theirpresence known from a distance.

The first of these features, introduced in theearly ninth century, was, of course, the tower.'Towers and tall structures, including the qubbatal-kha4r7, generally disappeared from palaceswhen they became associated with mosques. Anexception is the building known as the Qubbatal-Himar (Dome of the Donkey), built by Caliph al-Muktafi (r. 902-8) within the grounds of the Tajpalace at Baghdad, after he returned there fromSamarra. It seems to have been a tower, semicir-cular in plan, ascended by a spiral ramp with agradient gradual enough to allow a donkey tocarry the caliph to its summit, whence he couldenjoy the view of the surrounding country-side.2 9 The second new feature introduced intothe mosque was the monumental portal, whichhad also been a feature of secular architecture.The first appearance of this feature in religiousarchitecture appears to be in the early ninth-

century renovations of the Masjid al-Haram atMecca. Elaborate portals quickly became a com-mon feature of mosque architecture, for exam-ple in the ninth century at Cordoba or in thetenth century at Mahdia and Isfahan.3 0 The thirdfeature, the monumental dome with a clearlyvisible profile, was not normally a part of themosque until the eleventh century, apart fromthe idiosyncratic examples at Damascus andJerus-alem. This delay may have been the result of themultivalent associations of the dome, which hadpreviously been used for palaces and was increas-ingly used for tombs.3 '

The dome in the palace, however, was aban-doned neither as a formal unit nor as ametaphor;itwasjust no longer visible from the outside. Thecruciform suites of rooms at the centers of theJawsaq al-Khaqani and Balkuwara palaces wereprobably domed, although they are not men-tioned in texts and were probably too low to havebeen visible from the exterior of the buildings. 3 2The representation of the Dome of Heaven alsocontinued to be important, atleast in the interiorof the palace. Itwas certainly the intention of themakers of the extraordinary wooden ceiling ofthe Hall of the Ambassadors at the Alhambra,whose starry sky depicts the seven heavens, andthis same concept was also invoked in the splen-did fourteenth-century muqarnas ceilings at thePalace of the Lions there.3

The high dome, however, continued to be arecurrent feature of palaces in Islamic literature,but the limits of space prevent more than asampling of examples. The tenth-century poetIbn Hani' al-Andalusi described the residence ofthe Banu Hamdun in Algeria, for example, insuch phrases as O Palace whose high domesoverlook the Zab " or palace covered with a veryhigh white dome, so high that even the windscannot touch it and [have to] blow underneathit."34 The eleventh-centuryJewish poet of Grana-da, Ibn Gabirol, wrote of a palace which had adome: "At dusk it looks like the sky whose starsform constellations. 3 5 The verses of the Andalu-sian poet Ibn Zamrak that are inscribed on thewalls of the Hall of the Two Sisters at the Alham-bra speak of a cupola which by its height be-comes lost from sight."36

This literary image remained potent for centu-ries in Islamic palace design, albeit with a changeofname. The fifteenth-century (inili Kiosk at theTopkapi Palace in Istanbul, for example, has longbeen recognized as the only surviving example of

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JONATHAN M. BLOOMNotes

1. K A. C. Creswell, EarlyMuslim Architecture,2nd ed.in 2 parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969;hereafter EMA), pt. 1; Oleg Grabar, Al-Mushatta,Baghdad, and Wasit, The World of Islam: Studies inHonorofP.K Hitti (London: Macmillan, 1959), 99-108; O. Grabar, 'The Islamic Dome, Some Consid-erations, Journal f the Society of ArchitecturalHisto-rians22(1963): 191-98.

2. EMA 1:40-41.3. Ya'qubi [Yackibi ], Les Pays, trans. G. Wiet (Cairo:

Institut francais d'archeologie orientale, 1937),165, and Grabar, Al-Mushatta, 105.4. Grabar, Al-Mushatta, 106 (quoting Ibn CAsakir).5. AbfiJa'far Muhammad ibnJarir al-Tabari, Taikh

al-rusul wa'l-multk, ed. Muhammad Abi FadlIbrahm (Cairo: Dar al-MaCarif, 1387/1967), 8:83.

6. Jacob Lassner, The Topography of Baghdad in theEarly Middle Ages (Detroit: Wayne State UniversityPress, 1970), 52-53, 135, 239.

7. Lassner, Topography, 52-53.8. Lassner, Topography, 54 .9. Edwin William Lane,AnArabic-EnglishLexicon (Lon-

don: Williams and Norgate, 1863-93), 756 s.v.kh-d-r.

10. Lane, Lexicon, 756b.11. What twentieth-century Americans understand to

be the meanings of green and blue do not haveexact equivalents in medieval Arabic. See the En-cyclopaedia ofIslam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill,1954-; hereafter E12), s.v. "Lawn," byA. Morabia,5:700 and 706. Cf. also the article by Nasser Rabbatin this volume.

12. Creswell (EMA 1:390-415) identified this room asa calidarium,but was puzzled because it was not, aswas normal, a dead end in a series of increasinglyhot rooms. Instead, a vaulted passage leading fromthis room was built as though itwere intended tobe left open, and then closed by a thin wall of badmasonry (p. 395).

13. Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1973), 153 ff. For theceiling, see in particular, Fritz Saxl, 'The Zodiac ofQusayr CAmra," EMA 1:242-51.

14. Robert Hamilton, Walidand HisFriends:An Umay-yad Tragedy(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

15. Hamilton, Walid and HisFriends.16. Richard Ettinghausen, FromByzantium to Sasanian

Iran and the Islamic World: Three Modes of ArtisticInfluence (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), 46 .

17. Karl Lehmann, 'The Dome of Heaven, Art Bulle-tin 27 (1945).

18. Richard Ettinghausen, ArabPainting Geneva: Al-bert Skira, 1962), 37 .

19. Hamilton, Walid and HisFriends,38.20. E12, s.v. Ghumdan.21. R. B. Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock, eds, San f :An

ArabianIslamic City (London: World of Islam Festi-val Trust, 1983), ch. 22, 'The Houses of SanC')."

22. On the role of elevation for visibility in Romanarchitecture, see William L. MacDonald, TheArchi-tecture of the Roman Empire: An Introductory Study, 2vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965-86),1:47-74 and 2:133-42.

23. See the discussion by Lionel Bier in this volume.24. Ettinghausen, FromSasanianIran,28.25. In addition to K A. C. Creswell, Early MuslimArchitecture, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1940), see the contri-

bution of Alastair Northedge to this volume. Oneimportant transitional feature at the Dar al-Khilafais the broad staircase ascending from the Tigris tothe Bab al-'Amma, a principal and ceremonialgate. It is perhaps the only example of a proces-sional stairway in Islamic architecture before theintroduction of European styles of stairs in Otto-man and Qajar architecture in the nineteenthcentury.

26. Lassner, Topography, 88-91.27. The Fatimid caliphs of Cairo had such a passage

between their two palaces. See al-Maqrizi, al-Mawiz wa'l-itibarbi-dhikral-khi.tatwa -thar(Cairo,1853), 1:457. For another subterranean passagefrom the citadel atAleppo, see the contribution ofYasser Tabbaa in this volume.

28. For a full discussion, see Jonathan M. Bloom,Minaret: Symbol ofIslam (Oxford: Oxford Universi-ty Press, 1989).

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THE QUBBATAL-KHADRA'29. EMA 2:264; E12, s.v. Baghdad 1:898a.30. For Mecca, a convenient source is Muhammad

Shafi', "A Description of the Two Sanctuaries ofIslam by Ibn cAbd Rabbihi, in A Volume ofOrientalStudies Presented to Edward G. Browne, ed. T. W.Arnold and R. A. Nicholson (Cambridge, 1922),416-38; for Cordoba, see Klaus Brisch, Zum Bibal-Wuzur (Puerta de San Esteban) der Haupt-moschee von Cdrdoba, Studies in Islamic Art andArchitecture in Honour of Professor K. A. C. Creswell(Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1965),30-48; for Mahdia, see Jonathan M. Bloom, TheOrigins ofFatimid Art, Muqarnas3 (1985): 20-38;for the Jurjir portal at Isfahan, see Sheila S. Blair,The Monumental Inscriptions rom Early Islamic Iranand Transoxiana(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), 52-53.

31. That the dome and the portal had been features ofpalatine architecture is striking indeed; that thetower also had specifically palatine origins makesa coincidence improbable. The present contextdoes not allow sufficient space to follow this line ofreasoning further, but it raises important ques-tions about the relationship between the palaceand the mosque in early Abbasid times. Sauvagetbelieved, probably erroneously, that the Umayyadmosque developed out of the royal audience hall;it now seems likely that many of the most distinc-tive features of the mosque had palatine origins inthe Abbasid period. SeeJean Sauvaget, La mosquieomeyyade de Midine(Paris, 1947).

33. See Oleg Grabar, TheAlhambra (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1978).

34. See MariusCanard, Une famille de partisans, puisadversaires, de Fatimides en Afrique du nord,Milanges d'histoire t d'archiologie e l Occidentmusul-man, vol. 2 (Algiers, 1958), 43.

35. Grabar, Alhambra, 148.36. Grabar, Alhambra, 145.37. The prestige of the pavilion can be measured by

the vast number of Persian and Turkish poemscomposed in its praise, which show that the heav-enly associations of the Tiled Kiosk, built as avariant of the Hasht Bihisht pavilion type, wererecognized by contemporaries. Typical of them isVeliyfiddin Ahmed Pasha's long poem, which saysthat the lofty pavilion reproduced the structure ofthe heavens on earth with itsarches and numerousdomes. Its gilt tiles resembled the sun and themoon, the cypresses painted on its walls were likethe Tuba tree in paradise, and the projectingalcove (,sahniin)where the sultan saton his throneprovided avision of the gardens of paradise; it hada pool (havi)and a waterwheel (dolb). See GuilruNecipoglu, Architecture, Ceremonialand Power: TheTopkapiPalace n the Fifteenth andSixteenth Centuries(New York: Architectural History Foundation andCambridge: The MIT Press, 1991), 216-17.

32. The Haruni palace at Samarra had a qubbat al-min.taqa according to al-Tabari, 9:126.

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