Banu Umayyah In Islamia

Historical Background

Banu Umayyah is a Qurashi family that was famous for merchandize. Abu Sufyan Ibn Harb, their leader, was an archenemy of Islam and Prophet Muhammad. In a dramatic shift, he embraced Islam in 624 CE. The third of the rightly-guided-Caliphs, ‘Uthman Ibn ‘Affan, was also an Umayyad. Long story short, the whole fitnah, (sedition between the companions) which erupted the first Muslim civil war, was all about Mu’awiyah, son of Abu Sufyan, charging ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, of not retaliating against the murders of ‘Uthman. Mu’awiyah fought ‘Ali and was able to assume power in 661 CE to be the first Umayyad Caliph founding the first ruling dynasty in the Islamic history.

The Umayyad rule was

It extensively draw upon the architecture of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. This, however, did not last to be the case as Islamic dogma and features started to shape the architecture and introduced new forms of decoration and new style of buildings. The Umayyad period is surely the formation period of Islamic art and architecture, in which the process started from mere copying to gradual innovation and distinctiveness.

The very basic rule that shaped the designs of art and architecture is a religious rule that states total absence of any human and animal features. This rule, nevertheless, was not the case for royal palaces and bathes, especially the ones that are totally away from and inaccessible to the eyes of the public. The designers, therefore, were driven to find solutions and they resorted to rely on many forms of art such as mosaics, kufi inscriptions, magnifying planets and leafs, geometrical designs and patterns.

Here, the most significant accomplishments and works of the Umayyad shall be illustrated briefly. This would include the Umayyad mosques, mihrab, desert palaces and

They, in addition, build the first state mosque in the Islamic history, the Mosque of Damascus. It must be understood, henceforth, that the huge/great works of architecture were very strong political statements and not only religious buildings. The Dome of the Rock, for instance, was basically built to attract visitors and pilgrimagers when the Ka’baah was not yet under the control of the Umayyad.

The Dome of the Rock was built by Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan between 693-692. Straight away you can see that Islamic mosques are very different from Christian churches. Instead of being made like a Roman basilica, long and narrow, the Dome of the Rock is hexagonal (six-sided). Inside, the Dome of the Rock had a series of round arches all around it, surrounding the actual rock, which Muslims believed to be the rock Muhammad had the journey of Mu’raj from. These arches had stripes of dark and light-colored stone, which was a new idea in this