DUBAI, 3 August 2004 — The Gulf state of the United Arab Emirates has a battle on its hands to protect some of Islam’s earliest mosques from greedy property developers and over zealous restorers.
Scholars say they have come across derelict mosques of ingenious simplicity in the UAE, which are a world away from the elaborate structures found in most Islamic cities today.
The buildings reveal a distinctly Arabian style which survived to the early 20th century, before the UAE became the developed urban society it is today with a taste for grander places of worship.
But after three decades of rapid change in the Emirates, where most locals formerly lived in small fishing villages or desert settlements, restoration expert Abdel-Sattar Al-Azzawi said he detects a new interest in the region’s architectural heritage.
“Now young Emiratis want to know about their history and buildings,” he said.
Azzawi oversees the preservation of traditional old mosques and houses in the city of Sharjah. It has been a fight to protect this architectural heritage from greedy developers.
“They (real estate developers) just look at the money. They say it’s a waste of time, why don’t I build tower blocks instead?” he said from his office in the heart of Sharjah’s restored “heritage area”, which is surrounded by high-rises.
But his fight to save the city’s historical buildings has had some success, at least in Sharjah where the local ruler is supportive.
Recent archaeological finds in the UAE have helped pinpoint the features of Islam’s earliest mosques which emerged in the Arabian Peninsula.
“I found a mosque built entirely out of driftwood on Marawa Island. I’ve never seen anything like it,” London-based archaeologist Geoffrey King told a recent conference.
He also came across the remains of a mosque built from coral on the island of Sir Bani Yas.
Though it was difficult to date them, they could reflect the style of the earliest mosques over 1,300 years ago, he said.
“There is definitely a category which we see here...There is a distinctly Arabian tradition,” King told Reuters.
This tradition has unique features, including mihrabs — a recess, or prayer niche — which jut out from the back of the mosque and holes in walls which protect copies of the Qur’ans from humidity.
“The history of the mosque goes back to the beginning of Islam, but I’m sure the first ones were very simple — only a foundation with stone and above that only palm leaves as a kind of wall,” Azzawi said.
“I found some in Dalma and Sharjah around 200-250 years old. They are just left there — people are afraid to destroy the mosque, so they just leave them to decay,” he said.
However, traditional-style mosques are also threatened by over-zealous restoration, according to King, a fear of which has gripped experts since the controversial renovation of Cairo’s Ibn Tulun mosque where shiny marble masks the building’s 1,000 year history.
“We’re lucky we found these buildings when we did, because there was an intention to build them anew,” King said.
The most striking thing about the region’s traditional mosques is the absence of minarets, experts say. Minarets became a defining feature of Islamic architecture and the world’s major mosques today compete in their number and height.
“There is a very old Islamic tradition of having no minaret but a prayer platform for a tower,” said King, citing the Julfar mosque in the UAE town of Ras Al-Khaimah, from the 15th century, and the more recent Muhannadi mosque, built in 1931.
“I think we see in these platforms a very old Arabian tradition. The first muezzin of the Muslims in the Prophet’s day simply stood up to make the call to prayer,” he said, adding there were similar examples in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Azzawi said this reflected the simpler style of life lived by local Arabs before the skyscraper cities of recent decades.
“They didn’t need minarets. The mosques were small and situated in quiet communities,” he said. “The muezzin would just climb up onto the roof to make the call to prayer. If he was old he would call out from a stone bench inside the mosque.”
Azzawi believes the standard round minaret was developed to fit the needs of the growing number of Muslim converts after the Abbasid caliphate began in Iraq in the year 750. “I don’t think minarets were built on mosques until the Abbasid time,” he said. “I say they developed from local influences. They became used for spreading the call to prayer.”
Today minarets are essential for those aging Emiratis who are sponsoring buildings in many neighborhoods.
“Many rich men now want to do something for God, so they have a small mosque built,” Azzawi said, though they bear little resemblance to the style of the UAE’s pre-affluence days.
