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Cultural Interchange Between Medieval Eastern and Western Architecture
| Article
# : |
11037 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1986 |
3,187 Words |
| Author
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Aptullah Kuran
Aptullah Kuran is professor of architectural history at
Bosphorus University in Istanbul. An expert in Islamic art,
Kuran's most recent work is Sinan: The Grand Old Master
of Ottoman Architecture. |
If we disregard the funerary towers erected as memorials to be viewed form the outside, Anatolian Seljik buildings, in conformity with one of the principal characteristics of Islamic architecture, are essentially introverted. There exists in this architecture a contrast of expression between the unassuming, often rigidly rectilinear outer shell of a building and the rich inner facades which display a variety of proportional relationships and subtle texture rhythms.
Up to the second quarter of the thirteenth century, Anatolian Seljuk architecture was basically plain and unsophisticated. As it matured, the interiors became articulated and the decorations on the masonry or wooden surfaces increased. Entire walls and inner sides of vaults and domes began to be covered by faience mosaics and glazed tiles. Although the severity of the rectilinear external forms containing the inner building did not disappear, portals that heralded the world within assumed monumental dimensions and often rose above the cornice level. The portals were built in the form of muqarnsas-crowned recesses with small niches cut into their side walls and were framed by decorative bands of geometric an floral designs.
Unlike the brick architecture produced by the Great Seljuks in Iran, Anatolian Seljuk buildings were on the whole constructed of stone. It is quite clear that the Seljuk architects not only adopted the local building materials and techniques but were inspired by the wealth of architecture they found in Byzantine Anatolia, since a number of stylistic manifestations in their buildings can be traced to regional sources. Despite, however, the change in building materials, adoption of local construction methods and techniques, and the critical confrontation with the remnants of earlier Anatolian civilizations, the traditional introversion of the Anatolian Seljuk building hidden inside an austere rectilinear mass remained unchanged.
The interiority in Anatolian architecture is emphasized by a courtyard or a domed central hall, and the external faces of the building are turned inwards to comprise the four walls enclosing the courtyard or hall. In this architecture, the outer walls do not function as reflectors of the building's inner life; they serve solely as containers of space. They are not so much the smooth skin of the structure but chador made of a rough fabric masking the building from the world outside.
Where there is no courtyard or domed central hall, as in traditional laterally-set mosques, the sense of interiority is expressed through a
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