Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
Court and prayer hall
Build the congregational mosque as an enclosed courtyard (sahn) with a covered prayer hall (haram) on its qibla side and shaded porticoes (riwaq) on the others.
The model is traditionally traced to the Prophet’s house at Medina, a walled yard with a shelter of palm trunks and fronds along its qibla side. The great mosques of the first Islamic centuries enlarge the same idea: a court open to the sky, where the overflow of worshippers can pray and where the ablution fountain stands, and a hall of columns roofed in timber on the qibla side. The proportion between court and hall varies widely; at Córdoba each extension of the hall ate into the court.
The type is inward-looking. From outside the early mosque presents plain buttressed walls, often crenellated; its richness is reserved for the court, the prayer hall and above all the qibla wall.
Related rules
Make the prayer hall of identical bays of columns and arcades, so that it can be enlarged by adding aisles or bays without changing its character.
hall = n aisles × m bays of one module
Build the tower for the call to prayer in the form of the regional tradition: square and stepped in the Maghreb and Spain, cylindrical and tapering in Iran and Central Asia, needle-like and polygonal in the Ottoman lands.
Lay out the capital as a circle with four gates at equal intervals, each facing the region its road leads to, and put the ruler’s palace at the centre, so that no part of the city is further from him than any other.
4 gates on the diagonals (Khurasan NE, Basra SE, Kufa SW, Syria NW); palace at the centre
Leave the centre of the city open: set the palace and the congregational mosque side by side in a great court, and allow round its edge only the guard, the police and the offices of state: no private houses and no markets.
palace 400 × 400 cubits; mosque 200 × 200 cubits; Green Dome 80 cubits high
Keep trade out of the ruler’s city: move the markets to a suburb outside the walls and give each trade its own street or row, with the noisome trades at the far end.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Court and prayer hall”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/sahn-and-haram. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.