Dictionary of islamic architecture

Further reading:
A.Petruccioli (ed.), 
The Garden as a City: The City as a
Garden,
Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design
Research Centre, Rome 1984.
N.Titley and F.Wood, 
Oriental Gardens,
BL Humanities,
1991.
Gedi
Ruined Islamic city near Malindi in Kenya, one of the
first Islamic settlements in East Africa to be systematically
investigated by archaeologists starting in 1945.
Gedi is unusual as it is the only major settlement on
the East African coast not to be built directly on the
sea-shore—instead it is located 6 km inland and 3
km from the nearest navigable creek. The city seems
to have been founded in the thirteenth century
although most of the standing remains date from the
fifteenth century. By the sixteenth century the city
seems to have been abandoned, although it was
briefly resettled in the seventeenth only to be finally
abandoned after the attacks of the migrating Galla
tribesmen.
The site stands on a rocky spur which dominates
the surrounding countryside. The city covers an area
of 45 acres and was contained within a town wall
which enclosed a Great Mosque, seven smaller
mosques, a palace and several private mansions, in
gardens

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addition to many smaller houses which must have
been made of wattle and daub. The ruins also contain
the remains of substantial coral stone tombs one of
which carries an inscription dated to 1399-
The Great Mosque is one of the best-preserved
examples of its type in East Africa. It is constructed in
the typical East African style with a flat concrete roof
supported on rectangular stone piers and doorways
on the west and east sides. There are three rows of six
piers with the middle row aligned on the central axis
in line with the mihrab. The mosque has a fairly wide
plan achieved by placing transverse beams between
piers and spanning the distance between beams by
longitudinally placed rafters. This differs from the
more usual technique of placing beams longitudinally
with transverse rafters as was used in the smaller
mosques at Gedi and elsewhere on the coast. The
mihrab is a fine example of the developed form of
the early type of coastal mihrab. It is built out of
dressed undersea or reef coral and set in a rectangular
panel surrounded with an architrave carved in a cable
pattern. The mihrab is decorated with eleven inset
blue and white porcelain bowls, five in the spandrel
above the niche, two in the pilasters and six in the
niche itself. The edge of the mihrab is recessed five
times before the niche itself which is a plain,
undecorated semi-circular apse. Immediately to the
east is a built-in stone minbar.
Sometime in the sixteenth century a separate area
for women was screened off at the back of the mosque.
To the east of the prayer hall is a veranda opening
onto the ablutions court which contains a tank fed by
a well, footscrapers, a latrine and a staircase to the
roof. The other mosques at Gedi are all much smaller,
narrower structures consisting of a simple prayer
room and ablutions area to the east.
The palace of Gedi is a large complex probably
built for the Sultan of Malindi. It stands amongst
several other grand houses which probably housed
ministers or other members of the royal family. The
palace essentially consists of two main areas, the
original palace and the northern annexe. It has a
monumental entrance leading via a small courtyard
into the main reception area, which is a long open
courtyard aligned east-west. The sultan’s private
residence was to the south of this whilst the harem
was located on the west side, although it only connects
with the main palace via a small doorway from a
courtyard at the back of the sultan’s quarters.
The houses at Gedi are of interest because they
show a development in form from the fourteenth to
the sixteenth centuries and are the prototype for the
more famous Swahili houses of the eighteenth
century. The earliest houses consist of en-trances into
a long, narrow sunken courtyard from which a single
entrance would lead into a reception room behind
which were bedrooms and a store room. In later
houses the courtyards became bigger and often an
extra ‘domestic’ courtyard was added at the back.