Notre Dame, which burned down last year in France, Big Ben in the British capital, London, and the Basilica of Saint Mark (Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice / Venice, Italy) are ancient beacons in Western civilization, but a new book by a British historian states that the designs of these unique architectural icons And other great buildings in Europe have been borrowed or "looted" from the Islamic world, including the design of the twin towers, rose windows, vaulted ceilings, and more.
British author and academic Diana Dark considers that the designs of these European architectural monuments do not go back to the Gothic heritage or European Christian history, as is always assumed, but rather to owe their design to the deserts of Syria, and specifically to a village located west of Aleppo.
These monuments were inspired by the architecture and style of an ancient ancient church whose remains are located in Idlib and is called “Qalb al-Loza” from the fifth century AD. Many of the features of Gothic architecture owe thanks to Islamic origins and clear Arab influences, as the author says.
The Origins of the Orient
According to Dark, author of "My Home in Damascus" and a researcher in Syrian heritage, the architecture of Notre Dame - and all the Gothic cathedrals in Europe - and its twin towers surrounding its elaborate entrance, its pink windows and even its vertical tower, which burned down a city with its design to the ancestors of ancient architecture in the Middle East, quoted the returning Crusaders To Europe in the 12th century the style of the twin towers surrounding the pink windows.
In her interview with Al-Jazeera, Dark said that she insists on using the word "theft" and not "revelation", to describe Western architecture’s quotation of Arab and Turkish architectural styles, stressing that Westerners did not recognize the great Islamic and Oriental influence on Gothic and European architecture.
Not only are the origins of the Twin Towers and the Rose Window dating back to the Middle East, but also the polygonal vaults, pointed arches, and even the recipe for stained-glass windows, Dark said in a report published in the British Guardian newspaper.
Gothic architecture as we know it owes much more to the Arab and Islamic heritage than it owes to the Goths. “I was amazed at the reaction. I thought more people knew, but there seems to be a big gap of ignorance about the history of cultural appropriation against the background of the rise of Islamophobia,” says Dark I thought it was time for someone to correct the story. "
Turkish influences
In his article published by the British Middle East Eye website, writer Vaughan Hart believes that "Christian intolerance", the bias of academics to Western sources, and the recent spread of Islamophobia have all played a major role in obscuring Arab and Islamic influence on Western architecture. .
The writer says that by the end of the 17th century, trade with Turkey constituted a quarter of England's commercial activity abroad.
He adds that the English Al-Mashriq Company - which is also known as the "Turkey Company" - was not only responsible for commercial exchanges between the two countries, but also sent periodic reports on Hagia Sophia and other Turkish monuments to the Royal Society, to quench the eagerness to know the secrets of oriental architecture. Among them is the engineer Christopher Ren, whose theory was based on the Islamic origins of Gothic architecture in her book "Theft from Muslims ... How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe".
Gothic Architecture and Its Origins
The writer says that the conflicts and wars in the Middle East have made visiting cultural attractions in the region difficult, and have increased the world's disregard for Islamic architecture.
Dark is based on the theory of the English engineer Christopher Wren (1632-1723), who asserts that Gothic architecture was not in fact an invention of the Goths, but rather that it had an Arab-Islamic origin.
Ren considered that these architectural styles came to Europe through the Crusades, and he did not mention anything about the presence of Muslims in Spain.
Dark tried to confirm his theory by identifying the eastern origins of Gothic architectural forms, such as the pointed arch, the three-lobed arch, the rose-window, and the twin towers.
Although the identity of those who contributed to the occurrence of this cultural cross-fertilization remained unknown, many monuments in Syria and other places in the Middle East stand witness to the transmission of architectural characteristics from east to west, including the Roman churches in Europe, which Dark confirms are similar in their characteristics to what I saw it in the forgotten areas of northern Syria.
Spain and the Islamic Legacy
The author explains that Dark moved in her book through a chronology starting from the pre-Islamic period and the Christian architecture that appeared in the East, specifically in Syria, through the period of the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 AD), up to the Islamic presence in Spain, which extended until 1492 And erased by the Spaniards of their history, she said.
Although hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Seville, Granada and other Andalusian cities every year, Spain "is not ready to recognize its Islamic history," according to Dark.
Dark confirms that the conversion of Islamic monuments into Christian buildings, as happened with the Cordoba Mosque, which was turned into a cathedral, did not hide its eastern roots, so that the similarity between it and the palaces and Umayyad mosques in Damascus remains evidence of the architectural cross-fertilization between East and West.
And the matter is not limited to Spain, as in her book, Arc deals with the Islamic influence on Venice and many other Italian monuments, including the façade of St. Andrew's Cathedral in Amalfi.
Jerusalem and Andalusia
Due to its prevalence in the major cathedrals in Europe, it is easy to imagine that the pointed stone arches and the high polygonal vaults are of Christian origin, but the arches belong to an Islamic shrine from the seventh century in Jerusalem, and the vaults began in a mosque from the tenth century in Andalusia.
In fact, this first known example of a polygonal structure is still standing, and visitors to the Great Mosque of Cordoba can marvel at its many arches intersecting in a practical engineering masterpiece and decorative structure, and the structure has never needed repair since its existence a thousand years ago.
The pointed arch was a practical solution to a problem faced by builders working at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in the Islamic world, and was built in 691 AD by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marawan.
The challenge was how to arrange an outer portico of round arches with a smaller interior corridor, while maintaining a horizontal roof between them, and in order to align the openings the masons had to give the inner arches a tighter rotation, making them pointed.
Another design can be seen higher than the Dome of the Rock, where the dome is surrounded by a corridor of triple-lobed arches, the tri-arch pattern that continued to cover nearly every European cathedral, and was adopted European and Christian as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.
"Time and time again, I was amazed at how much these buildings we think were mainly Christian and European, but were based on the ignorance and misinterpretation of earlier Islamic forms," Dark says.
She notes that the massive influence of the Dome of the Rock dates back to the Crusaders in the Middle Ages who mistakenly believed the building was the Temple of Solomon.
Venice and Arabic design
Drawing on the research of the British architectural historian Deborah Howard, Dark considers the design of Venice to be more Arab than European, from its narrow winding lanes and patio houses with rooftop terraces to the Islamic decoration of the Doge's Palace (similar to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem) and the bulbous domes of Saint Mark's. All were the fruits of the journeys made by Venetian merchants to Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Persia, which enhanced the level of influence that extended even to fashion, as women in Venice were veiled in public places and wore black clothes from head to toe.
The transfer of Islamic motifs to the West was not always so simple, as the pointed arch took a more rounded path, and underwent several transformations during the Abbasid era and in Cairo, where the arches spread and became more sharp and directive, and Dark tells the story of Italian merchants who transferred the design in the tenth century and one of them took the window design Pointed to the Abbey of Monte Cassino in 1065.
East and West
In its presentation, The Guardian said Dark's book is delightful, featuring meticulous research that sheds light on centuries of borrowing, and traces the architectural origins of major buildings in Europe, from parliaments and Westminster Abbey to Chartres Cathedral and St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.
The roots of European architecture and its Levantine ancestors also tell a story of political power, wealth, fashion and architectural styles, with tales of the plunder of the Crusaders, fashion-conscious bishops, and world merchants who discover new methods and technologies and borrow them back to their homelands.
"We now have the idea of East and West, but at that time that was not the case, there were huge cultural exchanges that came mostly from East to West, very little went the other way," Dark says.