International Journal of Islamic Architecture - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2015

The editorial introduction to this special volume presents the theme of this collection of articles: ‘expertise’ in the architecture of the Islamic world since 1800. Taken together, these articles address how the processes of empire building, modernisation, statecraft and diplomacy – some of the most common themes of architecture in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries – have been contingent on a web of expertise defined by a rich and varied array of authors and contexts. These studies demonstrate that while European and later North American agents and paradigms of expertise left a strong, often forceful, imprint on the architecture of the Islamic world, a number of dynamic forces internal to Islamic tradition, from the practices of gardening to mosque design, from the mural to the master plan, consistently inflected these imprints. They turn our attention away from an obsession with agency and historiography towards the vicissitudes and specificity of historical and cultural context.

Among the many effects of the Tanzimat period’s political and cultural reforms was an overhaul of the physical appearance of the house of Osman. Borrowing from their immediate predecessor Selim III, sultans of the nineteenth century hired foreign horticultural experts to design their imperial gardens. The new post of the head-gardener, continually refilled by European expatriates until the early twentieth century, would revitalize the once prominent, pre-Tanzimat court institution of the gardeners’ corps. This article provides an in-depth look at the first of these figures, Christian Sester from Bavaria, who would design and install the last and largest of these imperial sites – the groves of Çragan Palace that would later become the Yldz palatial complex – and in the process reconfigure the corps with a group of his disciples. Sester’s scholastic foundation in the vibrant European milieu of the German Enlightenment later primed him to become the ‘noble’ garden expert among the equally multicultural émigré community that he would form in the Ottoman capital.

This article looks at the work of the French architect Pascal Coste in Egypt. Muhammad Ali hired him primarily as an expert for infrastructure projects in 1817. Over the course of several years spent in Egypt, Coste also studied the main medieval monuments, particularly in Cairo. These studies were related to his plans for two revivalist mosques in Cairo and Alexandria (which were never realized). They also resulted in the publication of his seminal work Architecture Arabe ou Monuments du Kaire. Employing a process-based reading of the architect’s drawings, I seek to revisit Coste’s work as an engineer and an historian of architecture in and for Egypt. I will look at the role of the expert as intellectual agent, assess the notion of drawing as a medium for the establishment of cross-cultural knowledge and relate these observations to his more technical and applied work as an engineer. Through a critical assessment of the limits and possibilities of this expert’s cross-cultural agency, the case study of Coste also aims to offer an exemplary perspective on the role of the Muslim Middle East and related notions of tradition within the narrative of a larger modern Mediterranean world.

Zoubeïr Turki, a prominent artist of the Ecole de Tunis, painted the mural La Procession des Mourabtines in the lobby of the Hôtel Ribat in Monastir, Tunisia in 1962. Its iconography, patronage and position in Monastir’s architectural landscape elucidate the contentious and hierarchical relationships of power underwriting the art and tourism industries during the decade of Tunisian socialism (1961–1969). In this mural, Turki portrayed former president Habib Bourguiba leading a chain of murabitun (volunteer warriors) from the city’s landmark Islamic monument, its eighth-century ribat (a coastal fortress with military and religious functions). The artist’s dual reference to Tunisia’s Islamic history and Bourguiba’s burgeoning cult of personality testify to his engagement with claims to religious expertise in a contested political economy. With its various subtexts and ambiguities, the mural invites an interrogation of expertise and power in three concentric domains: the reforms of Habib Bourguiba and his administrative elite, the infrastructure supporting the installation of decorative programmes in state-owned hotels, and the audience’s capacity to conceptualize the mural within the discursive framework of modernization.

In the 1980s, Israeli industrialist Stef Wertheimer proposed transforming the eastern Mediterranean into a transnational economic bloc that would overcome territorial conflicts through shared prosperity. This vision grew out of his extensive correspondence during the 1970s with local and international experts. In a grand scheme he called the ‘New Levant’, multiple ‘industrial gardens’ – industrial enclaves for entrepreneurial development – would accommodate technological incubators in a sachlich (matter-of-fact) architectural environment. Several examples of the industrial garden model have been built in and around Israel. This article argues that the ‘New Levant’ scheme on the one hand echoed a contemporary geopolitical divide between oil and non-oil producing countries, and, on the other, a moment of proto-globalization of national economies in the region. The article further aligns this vision of a Levantine network with scholarly depictions of the historic Levant – a territory in which extraterritorial capitulation, pragmatism and foreign expertise facilitated transnational economic exchange. Furthermore, it is suggested that the architecture of the industrial gardens spatially articulates economic processes. The economy-driven architecture and planning of the ‘New Levant’ thus became an efficient vehicle for negotiating national and cultural boundaries. As such, it allows for a critical reading of the region’s globalization and emerging identities.

This article discusses the contribution of professionals from socialist countries to architecture and urban planning in Kuwait in the final two decades of the Cold War. In so doing, it historicizes the accelerating circulation of labour, building materials, discourses, images, and affects facilitated by world-wide, regional and local networks. By focusing on a group of Polish architects, this article shows how their work in Kuwait in the 1970s and 1980s responded to the disenchantment with architecture and urbanization processes of the preceding two decades, felt as much in the Gulf as in socialist Poland. In Kuwait, this disenchantment was expressed by a turn towards images, ways of use, and patterns of movement referring to ‘traditional’ urbanism, reinforced by Western debates in postmodernism and often at odds with the social realities of Kuwaiti urbanization. Rather than considering this shift as an architectural ‘mediation’ between (global) technology and (local) culture, this article shows how it was facilitated by re-contextualized expert systems, such as construction technologies or Computer Aided Design software (CAD), and also by the specific portable ‘profile’ of experts from socialist countries. By showing the multilateral knowledge flows of the period between Eastern Europe and the Gulf, this article challenges diffusionist notions of architecture’s globalization as ‘Westernization’ and reconceptualizes the genealogy of architectural practices as these became world-wide.

In 2007, the City of Stockholm initiated the Järva Lift to remodel several ‘segregated’ suburbs, originally constructed during the state-sponsored ‘Million Programme’ (1965–1974). Recognizing the area’s large immigrant population, the Lift proposed several new mosques; Spridd’s Multicultural Centre, Johan Celsing’s Rinkeby Mosque and a new building for the Stockholm Large Mosque Organization with collaboration from Tengbom are now planned. Here, I explore how these projects travel, both across domains of design expertise and through the planning regimes of the Swedish capital. Many constituents have origins in Somalia, yet architects from countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have been asked to submit sketches, and Swedish architects have ultimately been hired to create or reshape designs that appeal to the local planning bureaucracy. Intriguingly, all three Swedish firms – ranging from boutique to corporate – have never before designed a mosque. Clients request intricate façade details or distinct interior spaces for men and women, moves that are considered ‘un-Swedish’ for formal and social reasons respectively. In response, two mosques are described as merging Muslim and Scandinavian design traditions, and one architect proposes the eventual disappearance of a mobile panelling system designed to separate worshippers of different genders. Has bureaucratic expertise trumped the design knowledge that a more seasoned mosque architect might bring?

Sharing Sacred Spaces in the Mediterranean: Christians, Muslims and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries, Dionigi Albera and Maria Couroucli (eds.) (2012) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 290 pp., 1 b/w illus. ISBN 9780253356338, $70.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780253223173 $24.95 (paperback)

Muslims and Others in Sacred Space, Margaret Cormack (ed.) (2013) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 256 pp., 17 b/w illus. ISBN 9780199925049, $105.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780199925063, $36.95 (paperback)

The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia: Architecture and Court Culture in Umayyad Córdoba, Glaire D. Anderson (2013) Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 258 pp., 82 b/w illus., 16 colour illus., ISBN 9781409449430, $109.95 (hardback)

Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World, Zayde Antrim (2012) New York: Oxford University Press, 240 pp., 8 b/w illus. ISBN 9780199913879, $69.00 (hardback)

Picturing History at the Ottoman Court, Emіne Fetvaci (2013) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 332 pp., 102 colour illus. ISBN 9780253006783, $45.00 (hardback)

Women, Gender, and the Palace Households of Ottoman Tunisia, Amy Aisen Kallander (2013) Austin: University of Texas Press, 287 pp., 15 b/w illus. ISBN 9780292748385, $55.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781477302132, $25.00 (paperback)

The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi’is and the Architecture of Coexistence, Stephennie Mulder (2014) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 320 pp., 21 b/w illus., 121 colour illus. ISBN 9780748645794, $120.00 (hardback)