Dictionary of islamic architecture

See also:
Istanbul, Ottomans
Further reading:
W.S.George, 
The Church of St Eirene at Constantinople,
Oxford 1912.
R.L.Van Nice and W.Emerson, ‘Hagia Sophia and the first
minaret erected after the conquest of Istanbul’, 
American
Journal of Archaeology
54, 1950.
Hajj routes
Special roads or routes which are taken by pilgrims on
their way to Mecca.
Hajj, or pilgrimage, is one of the five pillars of Islam
along with prayer five times a day, fasting, the giving
of alms, and bearing witness that there is only one
true God. Each Muslim is required to attempt at least
once in a lifetime to visit the holy cities of Medina
and Mecca. It is well known that Mecca was an
important ritual centre before Islam and that it would
have been visited as a shrine. Under Islam, however,
the importance of visiting Mecca was greatly
increased especially as the numbers of Muslims
increased around the world.
Until the advent of rail and more recently air
travel, the Hajj was a very arduous and risky under-
taking requiring considerable preparation.
Although coming from diverse locations, most
pilgrims would have to make the last part of their
journey through Arabia on one of several major Hajj
routes. The main routes were Damascus to Mecca,
Cairo to Mecca via the Sinai, Basra to Mecca, Sanca
to Mecca coastal route, Sanca to Mecca inland route
and Oman to Mecca via one of the Yemeni routes.
Of these routes the most important were those that
led from Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo. Over the
centuries each of these routes developed various
facilities for travellers which included wells,
cisterns and dams, bridges, paved roads, markers
and milestones, khans and forts. Of all the routes
the Damascus route appears to be the oldest,
following pre-Islamic trade routes. One of the most
important stations on this route is the city of
Humayma in southern Jordan where the Abbasids
planned their revolution. Other early sites on this
route are Khan al-Zabib, Jize and Macan, all of
which contain remains of early Islamic structures
associated with the Hajj. At Jise there is a huge
Roman reservoir and nearby are the remains of the
recently excavated Umayyad palace of Qastal which
may have functioned as a royal caravanserai to
receive important officials on the Hajj. Khan al-
Zabib consists of a large square fortress-like
building with a central courtyard and a mosque
built to one side. At the oasis town of Macan there
is also a huge Roman reservoir and there are signs
that the nearby Roman fortress at Udruh was
converted into an official Umayyad residence at this
time. With the move of the caliphate from Syria to
Iraq the Damascus route declined in importance,
but the route was still used throughout the Ayyubid
and Mamluk periods, as testified by the fourteenth-
century pilgrimage itinerary of Ibn Battuta and the
existence of several Mamluk forts on the route such
as those at Jize and Zerka. With the Ottoman
conquest of the Mamluk Empire in the sixteenth
century the Hajj route was provided with new
facilities and provided with fortified garrisons
stationed in small forts along the route. The forts
were built not only to protect the water cisterns and
wells (which were repaired at the same time) but
also to provide an efficient postal service for the
Hajj. The forts had a simple square plan based
around a central courtyard with a well in the centre.
They were mostly two-storey structures with a
crenellated parapet above and projecting
machicolations (structures protecting openings
through which to attack the enemy) on one or more
sides. The forts were built to overlook the water
reservoirs which were filled each year in
preparation for the Hajj. It should, however, be
remembered that the pilgrims would have stayed
in vast encampments of tents next to the cisterns.
By the eighteenth century the facilities had fallen
into disrepair and the forts were inadequate
protection against increased bedouin raids. In
consequence the number of forts was augmented
to cover most of the stops between Damascus and
Mecca, and new wells, cisterns and bridges were
provided. The design of the eighteenth-century
forts was slightly different, with square projecting
corner turrets and small gun slits. At the beginning
of the twentieth century a narrow-gauge railway
was built to replace the camel caravans; it used
many of the same stops as the caravan route and
forts were erected to protect the stations.
The decline of the Syria-Damascus Hajj route in
Hajj routes

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the eighth century was largely a result of the
development of a direct desert route between
Baghdad and Mecca. The route was provided with
facilities paid for by Zubayda, wife of Caliph Harun
al-Rashid. Over fifty stations have been identified
on the route which is marked with milestones. The
most important facilities were the cisterns which
were either square structures in rocky ground or
circular where they were built in sand. The route
included a number of stops of varying size, the most
important of which was al-Rabadah, which has
recently been excavated to reveal a desert city in an
area used to raise camels —probably for the Hajj.
Facilities at the sites varied but usually included a
mosque, a fort or palace and several unfortified
residential units. The buildings were mostly built out
of coursed stone rubble for foundations and had a
mud-brick superstructure, although occasionally
buildings were made of fired brick. Several of the
mosques have been excavated (at Zubalah, al-Qac
and al-Rabad-ah). They generally have a courtyard
leading to the prayer hall which has a projecting
mihrab and a fixed minbar, and there is also usually
the remains of the base of a minaret. Palaces were
found at several sites (al-
Ashar, al-Shihiyat, Zubalah
and al-Qac) and consist of large rectangular or square
enclosures divided into separate inner courtyards,
which in turn may be composed of several residential
units. The outer walls of the palace enclosures are
Qal
at Qatrana on the Ottoman Hajj route, Jordan
al-Rowdah, eighteenth-century mosque on Syrian Hajj route.
Note double mihrab
Hajj routes

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107
supported by solid semi-circular and circular
buttresses. On a smaller scale are the small forts
discovered on the northern part of the route which
are simple square structures built around a central
courtyard with circular and semi-circular buttress
towers on the outside. The houses on the route
resemble the palaces in the variety of their internal
arrangements; however, the basic unit seems to
consist of a courtyard leading on to one or more
groups of three rooms.
In more recent times the Hajj has been made by
rail, sea and air and appropriate facilities have been
built to accommodate modern pilgrims. One of the
more famous recent buildings connected with the
Hajj is the Hajj terminal at Jeddah which has won an
award from the Agha Khan foundation.