The architectural heritage of the Islamic world is staggeringly rich. Here’s a list of a few of the most iconic mosques, palaces, tombs, and fortresses. In 1631 Mumtaz Mahal, the third and favorite wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who reigned from 1628-58, died while giving birth to the couple’s fourteenth child. Devastated, the emperor commissioned the Taj Mahal.

A massive mausoleum complex on the southern bank of the Yamuna Jumna River. It ultimately took more than 20 years to complete. Today the Taj Mahal is the most famous piece of Islamic architecture in the world, except for the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The monument is remarkable both for its size. The finial of the dome of the central mausoleum stands 240 feet 73 meters above ground level. It is also remarkable for its graceful form, which combines Indian, Islamic, and Persian design.

The Friday Mosque, Esfahan Heritage

Located at the center of Esfahan a city full of architectural treasures is the sprawling Friday Mosque. A mosque has stood on the site since the 8th century. However, the oldest elements of the current structure are two domes built during the Seljuk dynasty, which ruled Iran in the 11th century. The four iwan design, which first appeared in Esfahan, later became the norm for Iranian mosques.

The Dome of the Rock Heritage

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is the oldest extant Islamic monument and one of the best-known. Built in 691–692, about 55 years after the Arab conquest of Jerusalem, the design and ornamentation are rooted in the Byzantine architectural tradition. However, they also display traits that would later be associate with a distinctly Islamic architectural style.

The structure consists of a gilded wooden dome sitting atop an octagonal base. Inside, two ambulatories circle around a patch of exposed rock. The site is sacred to both Judaism and Islam. In Jewish tradition it is said to be the spot where Abraham prepare to sacrifice his son Isaac, and in Islamic tradition it is held to be the site of Muhammad’s ascent to heaven. The interior is richly decorate with marble, mosaics, and metal plaques.

Great Mosque of Samarra Heritage

When the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq build by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil reigned from 847-861 around 850, it was probably the largest mosque in the world. It had a total area of nearly 42 acres. The mosque build out of baked brick, with an interior decorate with blue glass. Most of the structure destroy during the Mongol invasion led by Hulagu in 1258.

However, one of the most intriguing features, the 170-foot and 52-meter minaret, survived. The minaret is build in the shape of a cone, wrap in a spiraling ramp that leads to the top. It’s unclear why the builders chose the conical shape; some people have noted that it slightly resembles an ancient ziggurat.

The Citadel of Aleppo

Some of the most impressive Middle East architecture is medieval fortresses in cities such as Cairo, Damascus, and Irbil. One of the last remaining examples of Islamic military architecture is the citadel that stands on the top of a hill in the middle of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Archaeologists have found fortifications dating back to Roman times and earlier.

However, the citadel begin in the 10th century and acquired its current form in massive expansion and reconstruction during the Ayyubid era about 1171–1260. Inside the citadel walls are residences, chambers to store supplies, wells, mosques, and defensive installations everything needed to hold out against a long siege.

The most-imposing part of the complex is the massive entrance block, built around 1213. A steep stone bridge resting on seven arches leads across the moat now dry to two towering gates the Gate of the Serpents and the Gate of the Lions. To enter the citadel, invaders had to penetrate both gates and navigate a winding passageway. Defenders poured boiling liquids down on them and arrows shot from numerous arrow slits rained down on them from above.

Great Mosque of Córdoba Heritage

The earliest parts of the Great Mosque of Córdoba, Spain, build on the site of a Christian church by the Umayyad ruler Abd al-Rahman I in 784-786. The structure underwent several enlargements in the 9th and 10th centuries. A richly decorated mihrab, set behind an intricate arch, was added during one of these enlargements. Porphyry, jasper, and marble columns make up the hypostyle hall of the mosque. These columns support two-tier horseshoe arches. Most of the columns and capitals recycle from earlier buildings.

Sulaymaniyah Mosque complex, Istanbul

Sulaymaniyah Mosque is among the most prominent features of Istanbul’s skyline. This complex stands on an artificial platform overlooking the Bosporus. Built by the Ottoman emperor Suleyman the Magnificent between 1550 and 1557 at the height of the Ottoman Empire’s power, it is the largest and arguably the most striking of the imperial mosque complexes in Istanbul.

The mosque interior is a single square-shape room, illuminate by more than 100 large windows, many stain glass. With a diameter of 27.5 meters and a height of 90 feet, the central dome is imposing in size.

Stagecraft, the technical aspects of theatrical production, which include scenic design, stage machinery, lighting, sound, costume design, and makeup. In comparison with the history of Western theatre, the history of scenic design is short. Although Greek theatre enjoyed its golden age two millennia ago, scenery in theatre not heavily utilized until after 1600.

And the position of scenic designer. Who is responsible for the visual appearance and function of scenic and property elements, not commonly credited until the mid-1920s. Robert Edmond Jones generally acknowledged as among the first credited scenic designers, for a 1915 production of The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife.

The term scenery can include any noncustomer visual element used in support of a production. In the context of this article, however, it will be define as any non-permanent two- or three-dimensional background or environmental element place on the stage to suggest the historical period, locale, and mood of the play being perform.

While properties with set props like sofas, chairs, draperies, etc. And hand props or any non-costume items handled by the actors, such as glassware, cutlery, or booked the same, they generally are not considered scenery.

Role Of The Scenic Designer Production

Approaches to contemporary scenic design procedure are fairly uniform throughout the Western world. One guideline is generally follow the design needs to be expressive of the mood and spirit of the play. The terms mood and spirit can be further define. Generally, mood refers to the production’s overall emotional quality happy, sad, tragic, comic, and so forth.

Spirit refers to the production concept the style or manner in which a particular production is to be present, as decided by the production design team. The director and producer almost always create the initial production concept. Depending on its clarity and the director’s and producer’s belief in it, the production concept may remain unchanged. However, it may be modify by input from designers.

The process for creating a scenic design begins with the designer closely studying the script for information it contains about the period, country, locale, mood, and spirit of the play, the socioeconomic status of its characters, and any other information that will help with the development of the design. The designer also typically researches the history of the period depicted in the play.

This is to learn not only the visual style of the period but its social context as well. The scenic designer also attends numerous production meetings where budgets, the production venue, and the details of the play and its production are discuses.

Asian Theatre

Throughout history, Western theatre has been significantly influence by religion. This is probably because, in almost all Western cultures, theatrical presentations began as an outgrowth of local religious practices. See Western theatre: The origins of Western theatre. Dominant religions in other areas of the world similarly influenced theatrical activities.

For example, in regions where Islam is the primary religion, theatre faces prohibitions against presenting images of living beings. Nonetheless, popular plays based on folkloric themes thrived. These performances did not occur in theatres or use scenery. The only staging elements employed were, at most, a rug laid on the ground and a canopy suspended overhead.

Almost all Arabic-speaking cultures also have a strong tradition of shadow puppet theatre. Among the most prominent traditions is the Karagöz puppet show. Shadow puppets, so-called because the audience sees only the shadows of the puppets projected on a cloth screen, thrived by sidestepping Islamic prohibitions.

Because the audience never saw the puppets human operators and because the puppets two-dimensional join body translucent, the shadows they produce not consider representations of humans. Like other forms of popular theatre in the Arabic-speaking world, shadow-puppet theatre uses no scenery.

Egyptian period of art and architecture, the ancient architectural monuments, sculptures, paintings, and applied crafts produced mainly during the dynastic periods of the first three millennia BCE. These monuments produced in Egypt and Nubia’s Nile valley regions. Art in Egypt paralleled the country’s political history. However, it was also based on the entrenched belief in the permanence of the natural, divinely ordained order.

Both architecture and representational art aim to preserve the forms and conventions that reflect the perfection of the world at its creation. It also embodies the correct relationship between humankind, the king, and the god pantheon. For this reason, Egyptian art appears resistant to development and individual artistic judgment. However, Egyptian artisans of every historical period found different solutions for conceptual challenges.

Predynastic Period Egyptian

The term predynastic denotes the period of emerging cultures that preceded the establishment of the 1st dynasty in Egypt. In the 6th millennium BCE there began to emerge patterns of civilization that displayed characteristics deserving to be call Egyptian. In predynastic cultures, British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie excavated at Naqdah, Al-mirah El-mra, and Al-Jīzah El-Giza. Another earlier stage of predynastic culture has been identify at Al-Badārī in Upper Egypt.

Graves at Al-Badqariah, Dayr Tasa, and Al-Mustaqiddah provide evidence of a rich cultural and industrial heritage. Pottery of a fine red polished ware with blackened tops already shows distinctive Egyptian shapes. Copper worked into small ornaments, and beads of steatite soapstone show traces of glazing. Subsequently, in the Naqādah I and Naqādah II stages, predynastic civilization developed steadily.
The working of hard stones also began in earnest in the later Predynastic period. At first craftspeople devoted to the fashioning of fine vessels based on existing pottery forms and to the making of jewelry incorporating semiprecious stones.

Period Dynastic Egypt

Evidence suggests that the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt drew together the various threads of what was to become the rich tapestry of Egyptian culture. This started the intricate weave on time’s loom. Many artistic developments can be trace back to the Naqādah II period. However, the abundant evidence from the massive tombs of the 1st dynasty at Abydos and Ṣaqqārah far outweighs what found in earlier modest burials.. The impression is certainly one of an extraordinary efflorescence of civilization. The motif of conquest is dramatically characterized in the scenes shown on the Narmer Palette, where Narmer better known as Menes, probably the last ruler of predynastic Egypt, is depicted as the triumphant ruler.

Further conventions, well established by the 4th dynasty, included the showing of both hands and feet, right and left, without distinction. Scenes set on baselines, and the events placed in sequence, usually from right to left. Unity in a scene was provided by the focal figure of the most important person, the king or tomb owner. Relative size established importance: the ruler dwarfed the generally high official, while the tomb owner dwarfed his wife and, still more so, his children.

Greco-Roman Egyptian

After Alexander the Great conquest of Egypt, pharaohs’ independent rule came to an end. Under the Ptolemies, whose rule followed Alexander’s, profound changes took place in art and architecture https://medanplaza.net/.

The most lasting impression of the new period is made by its architectural legacy. Although very small remains of significant funerary architecture, there are tombs at Tuna al-Jabal of unusual form and significant importance. Most interesting is the tomb of Ptosis’s, high priest of Thoth in nearby Thermopolis Magna in the late 4th century BCE. It is in the form of a small temple with a pillared portico, elaborate column capitals, and a large forecourt. In its mural decorations a strong Greek influence merges with the traditional Egyptian modes of expression.

The temple of Horus at Idfū is the most complete, displaying all the essential elements of the classical Egyptian temple. However, for exploitation of setting and richness of detail it is difficult to fault the temples of Philae and Kawm Umbū, in particular.