Influence of Islamic Architecture on Europe

Behind me is Canterbury Cathedral, sometimes called England in

Stone.

It's one of Europe's finest examples of the style we call Gothic.

But what if I told you that pretty much every architectural

feature

in this cathedral, built incidentally by the Norman French

with stone brought in specially from Normandy, had its origins

in the Middle East and the Islamic world?

It's the same with Notre Dame in Paris.

When it caught fire in 2019, the world was

transfixed and the French suffered a nationwide

outpouring of grief. Our identity is going up in flames, they

cried, without any notion of their cathedral's

backstory.

That's when I decided to write a book about how Islamic

architecture shaped Europe.

So let's take a quick architectural journey to see how

cultures and religions interact and interweave in

all kinds of ways that challenge assumptions we may make

about our national history and heritage.

We can trace ideas and styles as they passed from

vibrant Middle Eastern centres like Damascus,

Baghdad and Cairo to enter Europe via

gateways like Muslim Spain, Sicily and Venice

through the movement of pilgrims, bishops,

merchants and medieval crusaders.

It's a rich tale of cultural exchange that will help you

see some of Europe's and even America's iconic

landmarks with new eyes.

We'll start with the twin tower cathedral style so familiar to us from

Canterbury and Notre Dame in Paris.

The first church in that style dates from the 5th

century and still stands on a remote hilltop in

war-torn Syria. It's called Qalb Lauze,

meaning heart of the almond, and it's just one among thousands

of churches scattered over the wild and magical hills west of

Aleppo.

These churches were built to serve the Byzantine settlements known

today as the Dead Cities. Syria in stone, you could

say, and collectively they represent the

transition from Roman paganism to the zeal of early

Christianity.

When the first Muslims arrived in Syria, adopting Damascus as

their capital, they absorbed and learnt from the earlier

Byzantine, Hellenistic and Persian

civilisations,

gradually synthesising their architectural styles into

something new and distinct.

Among these early Muslim innovations were tree file arches,

triple arches, first seen inside the Muslim shrine of

the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, then developed further in

Muslim Spain at the Cordoba Mesquita, where they were

elaborated into decorative cinquefoil arches, that's

with five arches instead of three, and multifoil

arches. They covered every surface with great

energy

and flair. The early Muslims loved arches.

The arch never sleeps, runs the proverb.

As for the pointed arch, that first entered Europe thanks to

Amalfi merchants in Italy trading with Cairo.

Inspired by the pointed arcades of the Ibn Tulun Mosque,

they funded the same style in their new cathedral.

When a visiting Benedictine abbot saw the style, he liked it so

much that he ordered the same for his monastery at Monte Cassino,

as did the abbot of Cluny in France, even importing the

same craftsmen and materials to make sure they got it right.

Once Cluny, the most powerful church in all Europe,

had them, the

fashion was set.

Soon, Europe's medieval Gothic cathedrals like

Canterbury and

Notre Dame were covered in pointed and tree file

arches inside and out, just like London's Big

Ben and the Houses of Parliament were covered with them centuries later

after the fashion came back in the Gothic Revival.

Early Muslims pioneered the use of ribbed vaulting in

the ceilings of mosques and palaces, using their deep

understanding of complex geometry.

They discovered how to cleverly disguise the structural elements,

the ribs, by covering them in decoration.

Their technique was brought to Europe by Muslim masons via

Muslim Spain and Norman Sicily, and was then

further refined over the centuries by Christian craftsmen

till it reached the peak of perfection in the fan-vaulted ceiling

of King's College Chapel in Cambridge.

Medieval stained glass in cathedrals like Chartres and

Canterbury was shipped into Europe from Syria, the

world leader in glass production.

Venetian glass recipes specified cinders of Syria

to give the best quality and lustre, while Venetian

craftsmen learnt from Syrian techniques.

The concept of heraldry originated on the plains of Syria,

where crusaders first saw Saracen knights on horseback

holding jousting tournaments, and the fleur-de-lis,

now universally recognised as the national symbol of France,

appeared for the first time as a blazon for the Muslim ruler

Nuruddin.

Christopher Wren, England's best-known architect, wrote

that what we call the Gothic style should rightly be called

the Saracen style. He even explains how he used

Saracen vaulting in the dome of St Paul's Cathedral

and why it was the best. That's why the cover of my book

shows the interior dome of St Paul's.

It's also the reason behind the title, Stealing from the

Saracens, a deliberate double irony, a play on

words based on the derivation of Saracens,

Saracin, meaning thieves in Arabic.

In other words, isn't it crazy that we in Europe called Arab

Muslims thieves when actually we took a lot of ideas from

them?

The bottom line is that no one has a monopoly on ideas.

Everyone's contribution needs to be acknowledged,

no matter where it comes from.

No one owns science, just as no one owns architecture.

Cultures are intertwined and everything builds on everything

else.

I'm Diana Darke in collaboration with the Emir Stein Center.