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The prayer hall in a mosque is aligned to the direction of the Qibla wall, indicating the orientation of Mecca.
Christian churches are full of pictures that tell you stories but there are no pictures in these great Islamic interiors. The decoration here communicates in other ways.
The Kairouan Mosque is a fine example of Islamic recycling with it’s 414 reused columns.
There are many remarkable things about the Kairouan Mosque. But particularly remarkable, I think, is the proof that is offered here that architecture is an art form of spaces, not of details. Of courtyards, not of capitals.
Waldemar Januszczak concludes his journey of Islamic Wonder of the Cordoba Mosque. The building has world famous arches from an earlier visigoth church.
This is the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, the largest navigable river in Spain. The name is Islamic. It comes from al-wadi al-kabir, which means “the great Valley”.
Waldemar Januszczak wonders at the fantastic achievements of the great Islamic scholars and architects. He visits Cordoba and the Dome on the Rock.
This location, Temple Mount, is the holiest spot in Jerusalem. This is where King Solomon built the first Jewish Temple, the one destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.
The mosaics in the Damascus Mosque evoke the pleasures that await the righteous in Paradise. The Qusayr Amra Bathhouse is a wealthy oasis of indulgence.
This is the earliest known Islamic star chart, painted onto the Dome at Qusayr Amra. Around the edge are the 12 signs of the Zodiac. And in the middle, frescoed representations of the constellations.
The Nilometer was an ingenious, engineering method to measure and control the annual flooding of the River Nile, before construction of the Aswan Dam.
Alfraganus’s most famous achievement as an astronomer was calculating the diameter of the Earth. Copernicus was said to have used his results. There’s even a crater on the moon named after him, the Alfraganus crater.
Martyrs were believed to hold a special place in heaven, So being favoured by a martyr was deemed to be your ticket to the afterlife and a place with Zeus.
This is Santa Constanza. It’s Christian church now. But, originally, this was a Roman mausoleum. It was built by Constantine’s own daughter, Constanza.
The pagan Goddess Isis was a natural model to become the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.
From the outside, you wouldn’t have known the Lullingstone house church was there. It was a modest Christian conversion and almost invisible.
In the early days of Christianity, nobody really knew what Jesus Christ looked like. What little evidence there is often conflicts.
The first Jesuses in art are young, handsome, curly-haired and free. So, either Jesus deliberately misled his followers about what he actually looked like for the first 1,000 years or so of Christianity, or the Turin Shroud is a mediaeval fake. I know what I think.
Waldemar Januszczak discusses the meaning of symbolism used in early Christian Art. The secrecy and Rotas Square used to hide it from the Romans,
The famous Christian sign, the Christogram, or Chi-Rho, represents Jesus himself. It is made by combining two Greek letters, Chi and Rho, the first two letters of the word Christos, which means “the anointed one”.
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