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The Mihrab: From Text to Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Nuha N. N. Khoury
Nuha N. N. Khoury
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93106, USA.
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Extract

Discovering the mechanisms that invested particular forms with meaning and created Islamic systems of signification is of major concern in the study of Islamic architecture. Although we know that these mechanisms exist, and that they produce meanings 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 particular aesthetic or practical needs. These mechanisms were most critical at the earliest 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 associations and re-created them as patently Islamic. This creative process is exemplified by that most Islamic—and problematic—architectural feature, the mihrab.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 1998 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

NOTES

1 This problem, and the general lack of a theoretical framework for the study of Islamic forms, is set out in Grabar, Oleg, “The Iconography of Islamic Architecture,” Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. Soucek, Priscilla P. (University Park, Penn., and London, 1988): 51–60.Google Scholar

2 Niche mihrabs vary in profile and ground plan; we here use “concave niche” to indicate the basic form.

3 The specific quotations are from al-Walī, Ṭāha, Al-Masājid fī al-Islām (Beirut, 1988), 220,Google Scholar although their content appears in practically every discussion of the mihrab.

4 Throughout this study, miḥrāb 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).

5 Other terms include the diminutive ṭuwayq and mishkāt, neither of which is strictly connected with the mihrab and the last of which is an acknowledged Ethiopic borrowing; see, for example, al-ʿAskarī, Abū Hilāl, Kitāb al-Talkhīṣ fī Maʿrifat Asmāʾ al-Ashyāʾ, ed. Ḥasan, ʿIzzat (Damascus, 1969), 258.Google Scholar We leave ṭāq al-imām, which belongs to a different medieval discourse on mihrabs, for a separate study.

6 Miles, George C., “Mihrab and ʿAnaza: A Study in Early Islamic Iconography,” Archaeologia Orientalia in Memoriam E. Herzfeld (Locust Valley, N.Y., 1952): 156–71,Google Scholar 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 Bates, Michael L., “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. al-Bakhit, M. A. and Schick, R. (Amman, 1989), 195–228.Google Scholar 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 importance 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)Google Scholar by Creswell, K. A. C., Early Muslim Architecture (Oxford, 1969), 2:34–36,Google Scholar and Herzfeld, Ernst, Geschichte der Stadt Samarra (Hamburg, 1948), 2:140,Google Scholar and to a late Umayyad context by Dimand, “Studies in Islamic Ornament,” Ars Islamica 4 (1937): 308.Google Scholar The earliest firmly dated in situ niches occur at the Umayyad mosques constructed ca. 720–50, Ettinghausen, Richard and Grabar, Oleg, The Art and Architecture of Islam 650–1250 (New York, 1987), 45–71, figs. 20, 21, 29.Google Scholar However, archeological discoveries of niches datable to the late 7th and early 8th centuries present a different picture; for a summary account, see Helms, Svend et al. , Early Islamic Architecture of the Desert: A Bedouin Station in Eastern Jordan (London and Oxford, 1990), 73–82.Google Scholar These findings, which seem to contradict all historical accounts, in fact conform to these accounts when they are read in line with the conclusions of the present study.

7 Five occurrences, Qurʾan, 3:37, 39; 19:11; 34:13 (maḥārīb); 38:21.Google ScholarMiḥrāb is absent from Prophetic ḥadīth; cf. Wensinck, A. J., Concordance de la Tradition Musulmane (Leiden, 1936),Google Scholar and from the Dīwān attributed to Ḥassān ibn Thābit, whose references to locations associated with the Prophet are discussed in Bisheh, Ghazi Izzeddin, 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.Google Scholar In Umayyad poetry and literature the term often refers to monumental structures; see p. 10f. and Khoury, Nuha N. N., “The Dome of the Rock, The Kaʾba and Ghumdan: Arab Myths and Umayyad Monuments,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 57–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See the articles “Mihrab” in the two editions of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. A sampler of the most influential suggestions includes Creswell, , EMA, 1:143Google Scholar (the haykal of Coptic churches); Ed. Pauty, , “L'évolution du dispositif en T dans les mosquées à portiques,” Bulletin d'études Orientates 2 (1932): 91–124, esp. 98Google Scholar (the Coptic “icon niche”); Villard, Ugo Monneret de, La chiesa delta Mesopotamia (Rome, 1940), 15,Google Scholar a general Christian context; Lambert, E., “Les origines de la mosqudé et l'architecture religieuse des Omeiyades,” Studia Islamica 6 (1956): 5–18;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, “La synagogue de Dura-Europos et les origines de la mosquée,” Semitica 3 (1950): 67–72Google Scholar (the synagogue Ark); Berchem, M. van, “Notes d'archéologie Arabe,” Journal Asiatique 17 (1891): 427Google Scholar (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 Sauvaget, Jean, La Mosquée omeyyade de Médine: étude sur les origines architecturales de la mosquée et de la basilique (Paris, 1947), 83–84, 120–21;Google Scholar and is expanded and refined in Miles, “Mihrab”; Grabar, O., The Formation of Islamic Art, 2nd ed. (New Haven & London, 1987), 90, 114–16.Google Scholar Other suggestions include tomb, Fehérvàri, Geza, “Tombstone or Mihrab: A Speculation,” in Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Ettinghausen, R. (New York, 1972), 241–52;Google Scholaridem, El, 2nd ed., s.v. “Mihrab”; and sutra (barrier between worshipper and qibla), Whelan, Estelle, “The Origins of the Mihrab Mujawwaf: A Reinterpretation,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 18 (1986): 205–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A number of interpretive categories are discussed in Bisheh, , The Mosque of the Prophet, 251–59.Google Scholar

9 Diez, El, 1st ed., s.v. “Mihrab,” proposes that the Buddhist niche is as good as any other suggestion.

10 Listed and discussed in detail in Sauvaget, , “La Mosquée,” 24–39;Google Scholar see also al-Samhūdī, Nūr al-Dīn ʿAli Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 1506), Wafāʾ al-Wafā bi Akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafā (Cairo, 1326), 1:363 f.; and n. 13.Google Scholar

11 Creswell, K. A. C., A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture, revised and supplemented by Allan, James W. (Cairo, 1989), 43–88;Google ScholarGrabar, , Formation, 104 f.;Google ScholarHillenbrand, Robert, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (New York, 1994), 68–73.Google Scholar

12 Niche mihrabs are, however, inadmissible in certain contexts on doctrinal grounds; see al-Kāẓimī, Muḥammad Mahdī al-Mūsawī al-Khāwansārī al-Iṣfahānī, Tuḥfat al-Sājid fī Aḥkām al-Masājid (Baghdad, 1376), 16–21;Google Scholaral-Jannātī, Muḥammad Ibrāhīm, Al-Masājid wa Aḥkāmuhā fī al-Tashrīʿ al-Islāmī (Nejef, 1386), 149–53;Google Scholar a milder opinion is in al-Ṭūsī, , Al-Mabsūṭ fi Fiqh al-Imāmiyya (Tehran, 1387), 1:140.Google Scholar

13 The earliest of these historians include al-Waqidi (d. 823) and Ibn Zubala (who composed his history 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 al-Baṣrī, Abū Zayd ʿUmar ibn Shabbah al-Numayrī (d. 875), Tārīkh al-Madīna al-Munawwara, ed. Shaltūt, F. M. (Jedda, 1979).Google Scholar Histories of Medina are discussed in Bisheh, , The Prophet's Mosque, 10 f.Google Scholar (including the earliest but lost al-Zuhri, d. 741); al-Jāsir, Ḥamad, “Muʾallafāt fī Tārīkh al-Madīna,” Al-ʿArab 4, 2–3 (1969): 97–100, 262–67;Google Scholar 4–5 (1970): 327–35, 385–89. Further, the niche mihrab is mentioned specifically in the context of regional histories: Sauvaget, , La Mosquée, 18,Google Scholar identified Ibn Quḍayḍ (d. 924) and the Egyptian al-Kindī (d. 961) as the earliest of this group, but postulated that they had a common, Medinese source.

14 Sauvaget, , La Mosquée, 117–21, 145 f.,Google Scholar understood the niche as part of a palatine apsidal plan, but aligned it with the Prophet's maqām in recognition of the mosque's special status. Grabar, , Formation, 115,Google Scholar 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.

15 Stern, Henri, “Les origines de l'architecture de la Mosquée Omeyyade, a l'occasion d'un livre de J. Sauvaget,” Syria 28 (1951): 269–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In this first critique of Sauvaget's classic study, Stern disassociated 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.

16 Sauvaget, , La Mosquée, 10–39, Figure 1.Google Scholar

17 Sauvaget, , La Mosquée, the quotation is from pp. 18–19Google Scholar, n. 9, and accompanies the remark that the tradition ascribing the niche mihrab to ʿUmar ibn Abd al-ʿAziz is to be found, “sous une forme légèrement différente, chez des auteurs qui n'utilisent point al-Kindi, mais bien des sources d'origine médinoise” (original emphasis). See also p. 145, where the author reviews several meanings for miḥrāb but insists on “défoncement semi-circulaire, niche arrondi.”

18 Both 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.

19 This suggestion requires the term's early currency in Medina itself, a condition that is met by Sauvaget's own endowment of chronological primacy to the Medinese texts.

20 This pedigree is upheld even by mihrab opponents such as al-Suyūṭī, , Al-Muhadhdhab fī mā Waqaʿa fī al-Qurʾān min al-Muʿarrab, ed. Sikkīn, I. M. Abū (Cairo, 1980);Google Scholarmiḥrāb is also absent from Arthur Jeffery, , The Foreign Vocabulary of the Quran (Baroda, 1938).Google Scholar

21 In reference to the internal organization of the dictionaries, regardless of linguistic/grammatical theory.

22 al-Iṣfahānī, Al-Rāghib, al-Mufradāt fī Gharīb Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, ed. Kīlānī, Muḥammad Sayyid (Cairo, 1961), 160–61.Google Scholar Al-Iṣfahānī gives a second associative meaning for miḥrāb as the location where the person at prayer “distances” himself (yakūnu ḥarīban) from mundane concerns. Cf. Sīdah, ʿAli ibn Ismāʿ īl ibn (d. 1065), Al-Muḥkam wa al-Muḥīṭ al-Aʿẓam fī al-Lugha, ed. al-Raḥmān, ʿāʾ isha ʿAbd (Cairo, 1958),Google Scholar where the same explanation is applied to kings.

23 The linguistic connection is frequently noted, Rhodokanakis, , “Zur Semitischen Sprachwissenschaft,” WZKM 25 (1911): 71–76;Google ScholarHerzfeld, , Geschichte, 202;Google ScholarMiles, , “Mihrab,” 168–69, n. 47;Google ScholarWhelan, , “The Origins,” 214 f.Google Scholar

24 Ibn Sīdah, Al-Muḥkam, defines the ḥarb derivative miḥrāb as warrior, “rajulun ḥarbun, shadīdu al-ḥarbi, shujāʿ.”

25 Miḥrāb is absent, for example, from the list of such nouns in Qutayba, Ibn, Adab al-Kātib, 4th ed., ed. al-Ḥamīd, M. M. ʿAbd (Cairo, 1963), 449–50,Google Scholar but appears in Iṣfahānī's Gharīb and Suyūṭī's Muhadhdhab. The term's divergence from Arabic rules is discussed in Troupeau, Gérard, “Le mot mihrab chez les lexicographes arabes,” Le Mihrab dans l'architecture et la religion musulmane; Actes de colloque international tenu à Paris en Mai 1980, ed. Papadopoulo, Alexandre (Leiden, 1988), 61–64.Google Scholar

26 See Fehérvári, El, 2nd ed., s.v. “Mihrab”; and for Pahlavi and Persian connections, Melikian-Chirvani, A. S., “The Light of Heaven and Earth: From the Chahar-taq to the Mihrab,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 4 (1990): 95–130;Google ScholarHalimi, , “Le Mihrab en Iran,” Le Mihrab, 93–94.Google Scholar

27 Serjeant, R. B., “Miḥrāb” BSOAS 22 (1959): 439–53, esp. 444–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Serjeant's use of the Tāj 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 miḥrāb differs from all others in allowing the word a history of use, but stops short by assigning it the meaning, “arch.”

28 Ghul, Mahmud Ali, “Was the Ancient South Arabian Mḏqnt the Islamic Miḥrāb?” BSOAS 25 (1962): 331–35,CrossRefGoogle Scholar where mḏqnt (as “place of prayer for the dead”) provided the foundation for miḥrāb's interpretation as “tomb” in Fehéivári, “Tombstone or Mihrab.”

29 Horovitz, J., “Bemerkungen zur Geschichte und Terminologie des Islamischen Kultus,” Der Islam 16 (1927): 249–63, esp. 261–66;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSauvaget, , La Mosquiée, 145, n. 6;Google Scholar Diez, El, 1st ed., s.v. “Mihrab”; Fehérvári, El, 2nd ed., s.v. “Mihrab”; for meḥrām, see Troupeau, , “Le mot mihrab,” Le Mihrab, 62.Google Scholar

3O lbid.The problem of the vowel shift is discussed in the accompanying debate, 63Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., 62.

32 Ibid.; 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 Mujāwir from Ibn Durayd; see Mujāwir, Ibn, Ṣifat Bilād al-Yaman wa Makka wa Baʿḍ al-Ḥijāz al-Musammāt bi Tārīkh al-Muṣtabsir, ed. Lovegren, Oscar (Leiden, 1954), 2:181–82Google Scholar.

33 ḤRM carries the meanings of Ḥaram/Ḥarām, and mḤrm appears in one inscription as tomb; see Harding, G. Lancaster, An Index and Concordance ofpre-Islamic Names and Inscriptions (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar, with many variations under the entry ḤRM. For contacts between South Arabian and Abyssinian cultures during the 6th-century Hadramawti migrations and the later Abyssinian invasion of Yemen, see Miiller, Walter, “Outline of the History of Ancient Southern Arabia,” Yemen: 3000 Years of Art and Civilization in Arabia Felix, ed. Werner Daum (Mainz, Innsbruck, and Frankfurt/Main, 1988): 49–50.Google Scholar

34 Beeston, , “Pre-Islamic Inscriptions,” Yemen, 100Google Scholar, where the Himyarites (Arabic Tabābiʿa) did not necessarily speak the Sabaic language, but “may have used it as a prestige language for inscriptional purposes, in somewhat the same way that the Nabateans and Palmyrenes used Aramaic for their inscriptions, though they probably spoke Arabic themselves.”

35 Beeston, A. F. L., “Nemara and Faw,” BSOAS 42 (1979): 1–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; al-Ansary, A. R., Qaryat al-Fau (Riyadh, 1982)Google Scholar for photographic reproductions.

36 For mḤrm, see n. 33; for mḤgl, see Doe, D. B. and Jamme, A., “New Sabean Inscriptions from South Arabia,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1968), part 1:2–28, esp. 13Google Scholar, inscription no. 2109. The word appears in a long inscription in the form bmḤgln, translated as “in the state chamber.” For the “mi” prefix in a number of South Arabian languages, al-Dīn, AḤmad Ḥusayn Sharaf, Lahajāt al-Yaman Qadīman wa Ḥadīthan (Cairo, 1970), 13–20Google Scholar. Cultural-linguistic groupings in pre-Islamic South Arabia are discussed in Pirenne, Jacqueline, “The Chronology of Ancient South-Arabia-Diversity of Opinion,” Yemen, 116–22Google Scholar.

37 Serjeant, , “MiḤrāb ', ' 442Google Scholar, relays information from Ghul who discusses two inscriptions, one of which is too fragmentary to ascertain the nature of the mihrab it mentions.

38 Beeston, A. F. L., Ghul, M. A., Müller, W. W., Ryckmans, J., Dictionnaire Sabéen (Louvain-La-Neuve et Beyrouth, 1982), 69. “Dh” corresponds to the preposition “of.”Google Scholar.

39 On al-Aʿsha and other early poets, see al-Tayyib, Abdulla, “Pre-Islamic Poetry,” Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. Beeston, A. F. L. (Cambridge, 1983): 27–113, esp. 30–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 To be discussed on p. 13Google Scholar; cf. also the verse mentioned in n. 32.

41 A contemporary of the Umayyad Caliph al-Malik, Abd (685–705)Google Scholar, the verse is discussed and quoted in Rhodokanakis, N., Der Diwan des ʿUbaid-Allah ibn Kais al-Rukajjat (Vienna, 1902), 74, 222Google Scholar. Fehérvári, , “Tombstone or Mihrab,” 251; and p. 13Google Scholar.

42 Other early poets quoted in the lexicons include the 5th-6th-century Imruʾ al-Qays and Rabiʿ Rabiʿa, ibn Malik ibn, known as al-Mukhabbal al-Saʿdi, a transitional Tamimi poet who died either during the caliphate of ʿUmar (634–44) or that of ʿUthman (644–56)Google Scholar, Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt (Dīwān al-ʿArab: Majmūʿ āt fī ʿUyūn al-Shiʿr), 2nd ed., ed. Shākir, M. A. and Hārūn, A. S. (Cairo, 1942), 113 f. CfGoogle Scholar. miḤrāb as used by the transitional Christian poet al-ʿIbādī, ʿUdayy ibn Zayd, Dīwān, ed. al-Muʿaybid, M. J. (Baghdad, 1965), 84 f.Google Scholar; Kilāb al-Ikhtiyārayn (ṣanʿat al-Akhfash al-Aṣghar 235–315), ed. Qabawa, F. (Damascus, 1974), 704 f.Google Scholar

43 Qurayb, Abu Saʿid Abd al-Malik ibn, a Basran who went to Baghdad during the caliphate of al-Rashid (786–809)Google Scholar, 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 miḤrāb in medieval dictionaries. On his standing as transmitter of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and as a poet, see al-JumaḤī, MuḤammad ibn Sallām, Tabaqāt al-Shuʿarāʾ, ed. Hell, Joseph (Leiden, 1913–1916), 9.Google Scholar Some of the poetry he collected is in his FuḤūlāt al-Shuʿarāʾ, ed. Khafājī, M. A. and al-Zaynī, T. M. (Cairo, 1953); cf.Google ScholarAl-Aṣmaʿiyyāt, 2nd ed., ed. Shākir, A. M. and Hārūn, A. (Cairo, 1964).Google Scholar

44 Troupeau, , “Le mot mihrab,” Le Mihrab, 62Google Scholar. For Ghumdan, see Serjeant, , “The Church (al-Qalis) of Sanʿa and Ghumdan Castle,” Sanʿa: An Arabian Islamic City, ed. Serjeant, R. B. and Lewcock, Ronald (London, 1983), 44–48.Google Scholar

45 Usually 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, Khoury, N., “The Dome of the Rock,” 59, 62–63. Cf.Google ScholarNorris, H. T., “Fables and Legends in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times,” Arabic Literature, 384–86.Google Scholar

46 al-ʿAlāʾ, Abu ʿAmru ibn, an acknowledged early Arabist and linguist in al-JumaḤī, Ṭabaqāt, 5Google Scholar f.; Ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī, Kitāb Al-Māʾdrif ed. ʾUkkāsha, Tharwat (Beirut, 1960), 540.Google Scholar His statement is quoted by Ibn al-Anbārī (d. 939) from a chain that ends with al-Aṣmaʿī, al-Anbārī, Abū Bakr MuḤammad ibn al-Qāsim, Al-Zāhirfī Maʿ ānī Kalimāt al-Nās, ed. al-Damin, H. S. (Baghdad, 1399), 1:540–41.Google ScholarSerjeant, , “MiḤrāb,” 452Google Scholar, ascribed the frequent association between mihrabs and perfumes to the female 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 placement of women in the raised and secluded ghiurfa/mihrab (also maqṣūra) appears in most modern dictionaries (for instance, Dozy 's), though the poets themselves use this location to express the superiority, not the cloistering, of their subjects.

47 With the notable exception of Serjeant, “MiḤrāb,” who provided the word with a history of use. However, as noted by Bisheh, , The Mosque of the Prophet, 294, n. 20Google Scholar, Serjeant misread al-Zuhri (d. 741 or 742) for al-Azhari (d. 980) in the statement (originally al-Khalil's) “the mihrab is popularly understood today,” quoted by al-Zabidi.

48 We have already encountered two of the most commonly used dictionaries, Al-Qāmūs al-MuḤīṭ and Tāj al-ʿArūs. Lisān al-ʿArab, discussed on pp. 7–9,Google Scholar is the third of this triad.

49 al-Anṣārī, Jamāl al-Dīn MuḤammad ibn Mukarram (Ibn Manẓūr), Lisān al-ʿArab (Cairo reprint of Bulaq, 1300).Google Scholar All mihrab citations refer to the entries under HRB.

50 Bayt, dār, qaṣr and other problematic architectural terms have been noted in the Arabic wherever they appear. Bisheh, , The Mosque of the Prophet, 146–47,Google Scholar for bayt (pi. buyūt) as the main room of a house during the Prophet 's lifetime, Ḥujra as front room, and makhdaʿ as innermost room. Ghurfa's translation as “elevated chamber” is confirmed on p. 13Google Scholar; cf. Lane, E. W., Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge, 1984 reprint).Google Scholar

51 As noted, the word miḤrāb itself does not appear in Prophetic Ḥadīth. Ibn Manẓūr quotes a khabar that also appears in al-Azharī, see n. 52.

52 Al-Azharī, Abū Manṣūr MuḤammad ibn AḤmad, Tahdhīb al-Lugha, ed. Darwīsh, A. and al-Najjār, M. A. (Cairo, n.d.), 5:23–24.Google Scholar

53 Al-Zajjāj, , Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, ed. al-Abyarī, Ibrāhīm (Cairo, 1965).Google Scholar

54 al-Taymī, Abu ʿUbayda ibn al-Muthannā, Majāz al-Qurʾān, ed. Sezgin, Fuad (Cairo, 1954).Google Scholar This scholar is part of the triad, including al-Farrāʾ (d. 822) and al-Zajjāj (d. 928), of Qurʾanic authorities most often quoted in the early dictionaries. The specific information is absent from published editions of al-Zajjāj 's Iʿrāb.

55 Al-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 Lisān 's main source.

56 On themasjid-majlis controversy, Pederson, El, 2nd ed., s.v. “Masdjid.” Sauvaget based his interpretation of the niche mihrab on the majlis argument in Lammens, H., “Ziad ibn Abihi vice-roi de l 'lraq, lieutenent de Moʿawiya,” Revista degli Studi Orientali 4 (1911): 1–45;Google Scholar 199–250; (1912): 653–93, see esp. 240 f.; cf. Horovitz, , “Bemerkungen,” 259–63.Google Scholar

57 al-Farāhīdī, Abū ʿAbd al-RaḤmān al-Khalīl ibn AḤmad, Kitāb al-ʿAyn, ed. al-Makhzūmī, M. and al-Samarrāʾī, I. (Iraq, 1981);Google Scholar al-Azharī begins with qāla al-Layth. On al-Layth, see Darwīsh, ʿAbdallāh, Al-Maʿājim al-ʿArabiyya maʿ Iʿtināʾ Khāṣṣ bi Muʿjam al-ʿAyn li al-Khalīl ibn AḤmad (Cairo, 1956).Google Scholar

58 The qāla may in fact have migrated from the Tahdhīb into the Lisān 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 qāla signal. Indeed, Ibn Manzur 's lexical sources are even fewer than his qāla markers would suggest, and are concentrated on al-Azharī who, in contrast, follows earlier practice by providing clearer chains of transmission.

59 One example where this lack of temporal specificity contributes to complicating the word 's history is Amīn, M. M. and Ibrāhīm, L. A., Al-MuṣṭalaḤāt al-Miʿmāriyya fī al-Wathāʾiq al-Mamlūkiyya 648–923H; ADI250-I517 (Cairo, 1990), 100,Google Scholar 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 further reflect the common practice of treating most medieval Arabic dictionaries as of equal value or universal applicability.

60 For information on Arabic dictionaries, Haywood, J. A., El, 2nd ed., s.v. “ḳāmūs”Google Scholar; idem, Arabic Lexicography: Its History and its Place in the General History of Lexicography, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1965);Google Scholar Darwīsh, Al-Maʿājim al-ʿArabiyya. For language collection and preservation under the Umayyads, particularly after ʿAbd al-Malik 's reforms, see Khāfajī, MuḤammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim, Al-Ḥayāt al-Adabiyya: ʿAṣrBanī Umayya 41–132H (Cairo, n.d.), 19 f.Google Scholar; Hawting, G. R., The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750 (Carbondale, III., 1987), 9–11.Google Scholar

61 This clarity is demanded by the lack of a pre-established lexical tradition that the early lexicographers could draw upon in creating their own entries, and by their concerns with language, thus leading to a more systematic presentation than later counterparts.

62 Al-Farāhīdī, , Kitāb al-ʿAyn, 3:214.Google Scholar

63 As is also signaled by ʿāmma, in al-miḥrābu ʿinda al-ʿāmmati al-yawma; trans. Serjeant, , “Miḥrāb,” 441,Google Scholar 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.

64 Al-Khalil's interpretation may be derived from al-Farrāʾ, (d. 822), Maʿāni al-Quʿān, 2:356,Google Scholar for Qurʾan, 19:11,Google Scholar where “the mihrab is the masjid,” though al-Farrāʾ also relates mihrabs to places of gathering that are majālis. 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-Suyūṭī, , al-Khaṣāʿiṣ al-Kubrā, 3:188,Google Scholar whose argument contributed to the mihrab's Christian origin in studies cited in n. 8. In al-Anbārī, Ibn, Al-Zāhir, 1:540–41,Google Scholar and Sīdah, Ibn, Al- Muḥkam, 3:235,Google Scholar Jewish mihrabs are connected to majlis rather than masjid; in Tāj al-ʿArūs they are interpreted through ḥarb as the places where the Bani Israʾl gathered “as if to consult in matters of war.”

65 As in the Lisān's entry above and in Ibn Durayd's below.

66 A complete quotation from al-Asmaʿi making this argument is in al-Anbārī, Ibn, al-Zāhir, 1:541.Google Scholar The connection between the mihrab and the ghurfa is based on analogy, as reflected even in such late entries as the Lisān's, where the mihrab is “like” the ghurfa.

67 Durayd, Ibn, Jamharat al-Lugha (Beirut, 1987), 1:275–76.Google Scholar A similar approach is followed by Kurāʿ, (d. 922) in Al-Munjidfi al-Lugha, 325–26, see n. 101.Google Scholar

68 Wa bihi summiya miḥrābu al-masjid.

69 Min qawlihim maḥārīb ghumdān, yurīdūna al-ghuraf.

70 Rabbatu miḥrābin idhā jʾtuhā / lam adnū aw artaqī sullamā.

71 Waddah al-Yaman is one of the transitional poets whose work was collected by al-Asmaʿi (d. 828). Ibn Durayd quotes al-Asmaʿi through Abu Ḥātim (d. 862 or 869), thereby establishing a direct chain from the earliest collector to the lexicographer.

72 For the height of Maharib Ghumdan, as also the Qurʾanic Maharib Sulayman, see Khoury, N., “The Dome of the Rock,” 60.Google Scholar

73 In Ibn Durayd's entry the ghurfa is too well known to be defined (wa al-ghurfa al-maʿrufa).

74 See various locations in al-Aʿshā's Dīwān and the discussion of the poet's themes and imagery in al-ʿAmrī, Zaynab ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, al-Simāt al-Ḥaḍāriyya fī Shʿr al-Aʿshā (Riyadh, 1983), esp. 385–86.Google Scholar Cf. Dīwān Imrūʿ al-Qays b. Ḥajar al-Kindī (sharḥ Abī al-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf al-Shantamrī), ed. Shanab, Ibn Abī (Algiers, 1974), 83 f.Google Scholar 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 Sidah, Ibn, Al-Muḥkam, 3:235.Google Scholar

75 As per Ibn al-Anbari (see n. 66), al-Asmaʿi argued on the basis of (iḥtajja bi-) verse 38:21Google Scholar.

76 In Sijistānī, Mukhtaṣar, 160Google Scholar, tasawwur can occur only from a height; in Tabari, , Tafsīr, 23:141,Google Scholar it indicates entry from other than the mihrab's door. These accounts are relate d to Ibn Ishaq's Sīra, where David is lured into “looking down” by a bird that stands on the dār's/mihrab's window ledge; see Newby, G. D., The Making of the Last Prophet (Columbia, S.C., 1989) 159;Google Scholar cf. mihrab, Mary's in Qurʾan 3:37,Google Scholar explained by al-Thaʿālibī, (d. 1035), Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ (Cairo, n.d.), 333 f.Google Scholar (through Ibn Isḥāq) as also requiring a ladder for access.

77 al-Hamawī, Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldān (Beirut, 1955–1957), 4:210–11Google Scholar, on the authority of Ibn al-Kalbi (d. 819). The plurals Maharib Ghumdan and Maharib Sulayman are comparable to the plurals Madāʿin (Ctesiphon) and Madāʿin Ṣāliḥ (in Saudi Arabia). Although their exact architectural references are not clear, the denominations seem to imply general cultural and historical importance. Miḥrāb's use as “monument,” whether in the singular or the plural, emphasizes a memorial function and content that will be discussed later.

78 As in the Lisān entry quoted earlier, ʿUrwa ibn Masʿud (d. 630) entered his mihrab and “overlooked” the people of Taʿif at dawn, an action that is, significantly, described through the verb ashrafa. Al-Azharī (d. 980), Tahdhīb, explains that this action “signifies that it [the mihrab] is a ghurfa to which one ascends.” Cf. Hishām, Ibn (d. 833) Sīrat al-Nabī, ed. al-Ḥamīd, M. M. ʿAbd (Cairo, 1958), 4:194,Google Scholar where the same account uses the variant ʿilliyya. These mihrabs are related to the Qurʾanic ones, such as Mary's, which also had stairs (Qurʾan, 3:37; n. 76)Google Scholar.

79 ʿUbayda, Abu, Majāz al-Qurʾān, 1:91;Google Scholar Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAzīz al-Sijistānī (d. 941), Kitāb Gharīb al-Qurʾ ān, ed. al-Naʿsānī, M. B. (Cairo, 1325), 241;Google ScholarAl-Azharī, , Tahdhīb, 5:23–24;Google Scholar and see Ibn Manzur's quotation cited earlier.

80 The implied sequence is from current (mosque-related) applications to early and “pre-Islamic” (Qurʿanic) ones and finally to “pre/non-Islamic” (historical south Arabian, poetic) ones. Miḥrāb's seeming ambiguity here is shared by the pre-Islamic inscriptions discussed earlier.

81 The exception that proves the rule is Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (d. 1004) Al-Talkhīṣ fī Maʿ ānī Kalimāt al-Nās, 251, who explains ghurfa as miḥrāb and adds that ʿilliyya is ghurfa's Hijazi equivalent. Al-Asmaʾi's, insistence on miḥrāb as “the Arabs' ghurfa” is quoted by Ibn al-Anbārī, Al-Zāhir, 541Google Scholar. Ibn Durayd, Jamhara, omits all definition of ghurfa because “it is well known,” whereas others, including Ibn Sīdah, Jawharī, Firuzabadi, and Ibn Manẓur, equate ghurfa with ʿilliyya but do not mention miḥrāb. Conversely, al-Azhari explains ʿUrwa ibn Masʿud's mihrab in Ṭāʾif as a ghurfa, which Ibn Hisham, Sīra, 4:194 (one of the earliest references to this mihrab) records as ʿilliyya in “fa lammā ashrafa lahum ʿalā ʿilliyyatin lahu.” Cf. the account in al-Ḥakam, Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAbd (d. 871), Futūḥ Miṣr wa Akhbāruhā, ed. Torrey, Charles C. (New Haven, 1922), 104–5Google Scholar, on the first ghurfa built in Fustat, a structure that Caliph ʿUmar ordered torn down because its owner “overlooked” his neighbors.

82 Although 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.

83 al-Anbārī, Ibn, Al-Zāhir, 1:540–41.Google Scholar

84 This is the case whether miḥrāb is used as “monument” or as the quality “monumental.“

85 The clarity of miḥrāb 's height significations in this verse and in Qurʾan, 38:21Google Scholar makes them the most popular illustrations of the miḥrāb-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 Supplément aux dictionnaire Arabe.

86 Leading to miḥrāb as the “lieu d'accèss difficile” of Troupeau's study, and to the maqṣūra in Serjeant, , “Miḥrāb “ 448–49.Google Scholar 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.

87 Here miḥrāb switches from metaphor (in reference to the invisible high structure) to metonym (in connection with its new “high” subject).

88 Horovitz, , “Bemerkungen,” 262;Google Scholar the translation of the second part of the verse follows Serjeant, , “ Miḥrāb,” 450Google Scholar.

89 Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, 115Google Scholar; Horovitz, , “Bemerkungen,” 260.Google ScholarSerjeant, , “ miḥrāb,” 451,Google Scholar translated the second hemistich as “the Persians light up the arch of the throne of the king,” thus allowing miḥrāb to move to different functional contexts while maintaining its form.

90 The verse quoted in Lisān al-ʿArab.

91 Horovitz, , “Bemerkungen,” 260 (palace)Google Scholar; Fehérvári, , “Tombstone or Mihrab,” 250 f. (tomb)Google Scholar; cf. Whelan, , “The Origins,” 207Google Scholar.

92 That 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”/miḥrāb position into a “low,” permanently debased one expressed by mathwā (final abode; permanent residence) whose literal rendering as “tomb” does not express the complexity of the verse (see n. 94).

93 Memory is both a factor of miḥrāb's use as a subject's attribute and its application to physical monuments that are vehicles of memory.

94 The verse (like others in the poem) would be meaningless without this memory, for it relies on both the eternal action of the manāya and on Udhayna's eternal presence in his Mihrab for its expression. Itscomplexity rests on oppositional ideas (high versus low, eternal versus finite), as expressed in the action of the continuously revolving ropes (the asbāb mustamirra) and the idea of this mihrab as “eternal residence” or mathwā. Asbāb 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 manāya, 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 mathwā is explained as “permanent residence,” and, only by extension, as “final abode, tomb,” which contrasts with the “high” mihrab. Al-Aʿsha, therefore, uses the manāya 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 Qurʾanic topos discussed in Wansbrough, John, Qurʾanic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptura Interpretation (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar.

95 Serjeant, , “miḥrāb,” 449Google Scholar, renders these mihrabs as naṣāʾib, graven stones, stelae. These are, of course, essentially monuments with memorial functions; cf. Fehérvári, “Tombstone or Mihrab”; Khoury, Nuha N. N., “The Mihrab Image: Commemorative Themes in Medieval Islamic Architecture,” Muqarnas 9 (1992): 11–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 The “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 verbal domain.

97 Al-miḥrābu ṣadru al-bayti wa akramu mawḍiʿin fīhi, wa bihi summiya miḥrābu al-masjid—that is, the mosque mihrab was named in analogy to miḥrāb's use in miḥrāb al-bayt, underlining miḥrāb in the first expression as a cognate of miḥrāb in the second expression, but providing no identity between the two expressions. This operation neutralizes debates over miḥrāb's origins in the masjid/temple as opposed to the majlis/palace, as in al-Isfahani, , al-Mufradāt, 160“61;Google ScholarLammens, , “Ziad ibn Abihi,” esp. 246Google Scholar.

98 The variant reading muqām is a dais or platform.

99 The qibla's basic interpretation as “frontal direction” is related to “face/facing” wajh/muwājaha, see Sijistānī, , Tafsīr, 9,Google Scholar for Qurʾan 2:142–44 (the revelation of the new qibla).

100 Wa innamā qīla li al-qiblati miḥrāban liʾannahā ashrafu mawḍiʿin fī al-masjid. Ibn al-Anbari quotes Abu ʿUbayda through Abu Bakr (Ibn Durayd) on the mihrab as the foremost location in the majlis, a statement that appears in ʿUbayda's, AbūMajāz al-Qurʿān, 1:91Google Scholar, for verse 3:37; 2:144, for verse 34:13. The statement on the qibla, however, seems to be Ibn al-Anbari's.

101 al-Hunāʾī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan (known as) Kurāʿ, Al-Munjid fī al-Lugha, ed. al-Bāqī, M. M. U. ʿAbd (Cairo, 1396), 325–26Google Scholar. The complete entry follows the methods of al-Khalil and Ibn Durayd in giving current meanings first, then Qurʾanic and poetic illustrations. It proceeds, “The mihrab is that toward which prayers are said. And the mihrab is the ghurfa; and in the Qurʿ'an, lammā tasawwarū al-miḥrāb [38:21]. ʿUmar ibn Abī Rabīʿa al-Makhzūmī 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.

102 As a result of these definitions, the imam who occupies the maqām can also be understood as a “qibla marker” and, by extension, as a mihrab, a designation that occurs in Shiʿi usage where certain imams are spiritual mihrabs/qiblas and recipients of prayer. An argument against this use is in al-Walī, , Al-Masājid, 220Google Scholar. For a variety of medieval qibla-marking devices as mihrabs, see Al-ʿAmulī, (1547–1626), Al-Lumʿa al-Dimashqiyya, 1:200Google Scholar.

103 Sauvaget, , La Mosquée, 20 (al-Muqaddasi), 83–84, n. 1Google Scholar (Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih) where Sauvaget considers the usage “an error of interpretation” on the author's part.

104 al-Qalqashandī, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī (d. 1418), ṣubḥ al-Aʿshā fī Ṣināʿat al-lnshāʾ ed. al-Thaqāfa, Wizārat (Cairo, n.d.), 3:337–39Google Scholar.

105 Al-Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ 3:337–40Google Scholar, uses both miḥrāb al-ṣaḥāba and qiblat al-ṣaḥāba in his account of the Fustat mosque. al-ṣaḥāba, Miḥrāb and al-ṣaḥāba, maqṣūrat appear in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-Nuẓẓār fī Gharāʾib al-Amṣār wa ʿAjbʾib al-Asfār, ed. al-ʿAwāmirī, A. and al-Mawlā, M. A. Jād (Cairo, 1933), 1:85;Google Scholaral-Hādī, Ibn ʿAbd, Thimār al-Maqāṣid fī Dhikr al-Masājid, 166Google Scholar, both in reference to the Damascus mosque. In each of these cases miḥrāb refers to location as well as orientation and acts as an attribute.

106 For example, at mosque, Jebel Seys, dated to ca. 700–10Google Scholar, which overlaps the 707–9 date provided by the historians for the first niche mihrab; see Brisch, K., “Das Omayyadische Schloss im Usais: Vor-läufiger Bericht äber die mit Mitteln der DFG unternommenen Grabungen,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Abteilung 19 (Cairo, 1963): 141–87, esp. 181, Figure 27Google Scholar; 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, 222Google Scholar. 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—regardless of whether they were aware of the existence of niches elsewhere.

107 As 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, “Là est I'intérêt véritable de ces nouvelle citations, car elle lèvent une contradiction à laquelle on ne pouvait passe outre: le fait qu'une tradition relative a la mosquée de Médine [i.e., on the niche mihrab] ait pu être conservé seulement par des auteurs égyptiens,” La Mosquée, 19 (original emphasis). In fact, the Egyptian historians do not so much preserve the Medinese tradition as re-create it.

108 al-Ḥakam, Ibn ʿAbd, Futūh, 238–39Google Scholar, reproduces these accounts on the authority of Ibn ʿUfayr (764–841). Cf. Whelan, , “The Origins,” 209–10Google Scholar.

109 Capitalizing and dropping the conventional “the mihrab of ʿAmr” 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 ʿAbd al-Hakam's on the authority of al-Kindi.

110 Duqmāq, Ibn, Kitāb al-lntiṣār li Wāsiṭat ʿlqd al-Amṣār (Bulaq, 1309), 64Google Scholar, “liʾannahu fī samti miīrībi al-masjidi alladhī banāhu ʿAmru, wa kānat qiblatu al-masjidi al-qadīmi ʿinda al-ʿumudi al-mudhahhabah.” Ibn Duqmaq recommends kneeling in front of this niche because of its association with ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs 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 ṣaḥāba are often the focus of such debates, as exemplified in the long passages on Egypt's different qiblas in Maqrīzī's Khiṭaṭ. 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 al-Maqqarī, Aḥmad, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb min Ghuṣn al-Andalus al-Raṭīb, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1302), 1:263Google Scholar (on the other hand, as is illustrated by an incident that took place at Cordoba's main muṣallā, the mihrab was still considered a “portable” space in certain settings). Similarly, the Prophet's Mihrab (as oriented space) is also inalienable, as in al-Suyūṭī, , Al-Khaṣāʾis, 3:359Google Scholar.

111 This attribution compelled Fikri's attempt to prove the existence of an original niche at the mosque; Fikri, , “Bidʿat al-Maḥārīb,” Majallat al-Kātib al-Miṣrī 40 (1946): 306-20.Google Scholar Cf. Creswell, , EMA, 2:308;Google ScholarMarÇais, G., Manuel d'art musulman (Paris, 1926), 1:22,Google Scholar 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.

112 Baṭṭūtah, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-Nuẓẓār, 1:73, 85;Google Scholar cf. Creswell, , EMA, 1:169–70Google Scholar 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 Bahnasi, Afif, “Le Premier mihrab dans la mosquée islamique,” Le Mihrab, 56–59.Google Scholar

113 The 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) Duqmāq, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz; Ibn, Kitāb al-lntiṣār, 63Google Scholar (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 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz.” A number of similar statements is in Sauvaget, , La Mosquée, 15–16.Google Scholar

114 Sauvaget, La Mosquée, 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 forthe shift apart from a note that refers to a different location in his text.

115 The wording is from Rabbih, Ibn ʿAbd, Al-ʿlqd al-Farīd, ed. Amīn, Aḥmad (Cairo, 1949), part 29:98–102.Google Scholar Cf. Sauvaget, La Mosquée, Figure 5.

116 Seen. 6, 106.

117 Al-Mufradāt, 160-61Google Scholar (with some paraphrasing); the last statement is followed by Qurʾan, 34:13,Google Scholar which acts as supportive evidence for the opinion with which al-Isfahani ends his discussion of miḥrāb's applications in the masjid and majlis.

118 There are both medieval and modern variations that, obviously, do not use the phraseology al-miḥrāb 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 nidāʾ min miḥrāb al-imān 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 Pare, Richard, Egypt: Reflections on Continuity (New York, 1990), pi. 15.Google Scholar

119 As per al-Wali, n. 3, “the mihrab in today's idiom is the qibla.”

120 The 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.