The Great Mosque of Samarra

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that despite the Koran's strictures against sumptuousness and grandeur, the mosques are built with opulence and splendor. The author points out that early Islamic art offers a striking contrast to Christian art and architecture by the avoidance of religious symbolism found in Christian churches and art. The paper relates an additional feature of the Great Mosque at Samarra: the ziyadas, an outer enclosure or extension common to early Islamic mosques which surrounds the structure on the north, east and west sides but not on the qiblah wall (the wall in the direction of Mecca which Muslims face in prayer).

From the Paper:

"On the north side of the Great Mosque stands a single, large minaret, a lofty tower surrounded by one or more projecting balconies from which the summons to prayer is cried by the muezzin. Yet with this particular minaret, the builders decided to shape it in the form of a ziggurat, a stepped, truncated pyramid based on Assyrian architecture reminiscent of ancient Mesopotamia. But the minaret at Samarra was most probably inspired by a certain kind of spiral tower of unknown purpose found in Sassanid, a dynasty of the Persian kings of the third to the seventh centuries in present-day Iran."

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