Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives

Islam & Science, Summer, 2004 by Muzaffar Iqbal

In her chapter entitled, "Calculating Surface Areas and Volumes in Islamic Architecture", Yvonne Dold-Samplonius--who has previously directed the video "Qubba for al-Kashi", showing al-Kashi's geometrical constructions for determining the volumes of domes and arches--lists a number of rough calculations of volumes and surfaces of domes from various practical mathematical works until the thirteenth century, and compares these calculations with the sophisticated approach in the Key to Arithmetic of al-Kashi, who computed various coefficients which enabled craftsmen to easily find surfaces and volumes of various types of domes found in Central Asia. Dold-Samplonius finishes her chapter with a brief examination of al-Kashi's discussion of one of the distinctively Islamic features of architecture, the stalactite vaults (muqarnas), the subject of her current research.

Her otherwise fascinating paper, however, suffers from insufficient exploration of the symbolic importance of architectural forms in Islam in general and mosques in particular. This is further accentuated by the use of a dated source for drawing primary concepts. She uses K. A. C. Creswell's 1958 work, A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture, and his 1960 article "Architecture" in the Encyclopaedia of Islam as her primary sources for introducing Islamic Architecture (235-7); both are utterly inadequate for outlining the striking characteristics of mathematical patterns in Islamic architecture which "does not derive from external historical influences, Greek or otherwise. It derives from the Qur'an whose own mathematical structure is bewildering and reveals an amazing rapport between Islamic intellectual and spiritual concerns and mathematics." (19) These connections can also be gleaned from a building like the Cordoba Mosque, one of the finest expressions of Islamic architecture, where the innate harmony that emanates from the form of the Islamic structure is obvious. In a mosque, "wherever a worshipper happens to be standing or kneeling on a mat, for him that spot is the center of the mosque, indeed of the world". (20) Dold-Samplonius could have profited from standing by the prayer niche and the marvelous array of columns and arches of the Cordoba Mosque, which have a hypnotic symmetry, as well as from an exploratory look at the pillars "linked by horseshoe-shaped arches immediately above the abaci ... [where] the arches appear to be suspended like so many rainbows in the sky ... [and] the whole structure seems to expand and extend outwards as the eye travels upward; the fan-shaped alternation of light and dark voussoirs intensifies this impression--the impression of a room that appears to fan outwards from many centers, and is at once motionless and mobile". (21)

What is missing from her chapter becomes even more pronounced because of its importance in understanding various aspects of practical mathematics in Islamic civilization--the subject of her paper--which were used to blend many features of various sciences, arts, and architectural motifs for a peculiar Islamic usage of colors, light, and forms. Mathematical theories were not only used to create a unique space inside the niche of the mosques--which evoke the feeling of awe and remind one of the mysterious "niche of light" passage in the celebrated "Light Verse" of the Qur'an (24:35)--but which were also used to construct the fluted shell-like vault, designed to produce extraordinary acoustics for the transmission of the recitation of the Qur'an to the far corners of the mosque, and the horseshoe shaped arches that seem to breathe "as if expanding with a surfeit of inner beatitude, while the rectangular frame enclosing it acts as a counterbalance. The radiating energy and the perfect stillness from an unsurpassable equilibrium." (22)