Cross-cultural “Stuff”
What Makes a Mosque, Pt. 2: Suleyman the Magnificent Builds A Mosque
Commissioning a mosque was both an act of piety and a political statement in the Ottoman empire. Surrounded by building complexes that provided social services ranging from a public fountain to a caravanserai, mosques anchored new neighborhoods in old cities. Who commissioned what was carefully linked to social status. Small officials commissioned small mosques. Grand…
Read More
What Makes a Mosque? Part One
Glazed tiles, soaring minarets and a central dome don’t make a mosque, any more than a steeple makes a church. In the early days of Islam, when Muslims numbered in the dozens, Mohammed’s followers prayed together in the open courtyard outside his house in Medina. Once the numbers of the faithful grew a little larger,…
Read More
The Great Wall of China
When faced with a threat or simply with contact with what we learned in graduate school to call The Other, our natural instinct is to build a wall to keep Them out or to keep Us in. * The earliest cities that we know of, the tel culture in what is now Palestine, were built…
Read More