Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

The Mosque of the Umayyads
The Great Mosque of Damascus, built between 706 ard 715 A.D. by the Umayyad Caliph al-Walid, is the proto type of all purely Arab mcsques. Its construction presented for the first time the problem of creating a truly Islamic space which would express in stone the relation between God and man that is expressed in prayer. With this mosque, then, Islamic architecture began. The Christian church responds to the needs of a liturgy expressing what Titus Burckhardt calls a hierarchy in the approach to the sacred. The sculptured monumental porch Js a solemn threshold between the profane and sacred world. From these one advances, in depth, in a piocession that is organized, during great celebrations, in accordance with the order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, along the central niche, as far as the choir where the light, poring down from the cupola, puts a halo round the officiating priests. The Christian space is thus centred, converging upon the alter where the sacraments are celebrated.
The space of a mosque is the converse of this structure. Unlike tlie space of a Christian cathedral, it does not evoke the Heavenly Jerusalem. Muslim prayer does not, in principle, require
Him. P 256
Cultural Activities under the Umayyads
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any building for its performance. The mosque (masjid), as the root for the word (sajada) indicates, is merely the place where one prostrates oneself (sujud). The whole world is a mosque, according to a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). There is no location, no sacred place or edifice where the Divine Presence materializes. The space for prayer is every where, it is open, it has no centre but the invisible God. If there is an enclosure where Muslims assemble to pray, it is only because the act of faith and the response to God’s Call is the deed not of an individual but of a community. In its absence, prayer can be performed on the bare ground, under a tree, on a mat or on a small carpet, and at home just as well as in the largest of mosques. The original plan of the mosque was the Holy Prophet’s house in Medina, where the companions of the little community met to pray together- a courtyard onto which opened the rough, brick-built rooms of the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) family.
This courtyard, about ten metres square, included a sheltered areas to protect the worshipers from the sun or the rain when necessary ; its roof was made of tree branches and clay and it was supported on palm-tree trunks. There was a similar gallery on the other side of the courtyard. The companions prayed either in the courtyard or under these rustic arcades. Starting with the great mosque of the Umayyads in Damascus, this plan was translated into stone. The palm trunks were replaced by marble columns. The roof of branches and clay was replaced by ceilings made of teak or by stone vaults. The columns or pillars were linked together by arches of stone or brick.
Muslim architecture was splendour of faith It gives plastic expression to it in stone or brick, in ”the arrangement of columns, pillars, arcades or cupolas, in the wooden sculpture of a minbar, in the mosaics and stalactites of a mihrab and in the light of its inner courtyard and its cloisters. It is the space in which this faith breathes, and this soul which must be brought to life again in every monument. We need to recall these fundamental aspects when undertaking a visit to the Great Mosque of the Umayjads in Damascus, the first to transpose on a monumental scale the Holy Prophet’s house, filled with the prayers of the community.”
Hitli. P259

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