Where people disagree about the width of a public road, make it seven cubits, and let no one build out into it; lanes that serve only the houses on them may be narrower.
public road ≥ 7 cubits (≈ 3.5 m)
A saying attributed to the Prophet, that when people dispute about a road it should be made seven cubits wide, was taken by the jurists as the minimum for a public way: enough for two loaded animals to pass. Ibn al-Rami and the judges he cites treat the public road as something no owner may narrow, whether by a wall, a bench, a projecting upper room or a pile of rubble.
The Islamic town therefore has a hierarchy of ways: the through-streets from the gates to the mosque and the markets, kept open as a public right, and the private lanes and cul-de-sacs behind them, governed by the agreement of their residents.
To turn a domed square into a long church, open two of its great arches into semidomes of the same radius, and open the semidomes in turn into smaller exedrae, so that the space expands by stages from the central dome.
Hagia Sophia: central square 31 m; two semidomes of radius ≈ 15.5 m; four exedrae; interior ≈ 31 × 70 m
Where the ground is flat and the water lies deep, raise it from wells by wheels into tanks and channels, and lay the garden out in regular, symmetrical plots round them, with walks, beds of flowers and trees in order.
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
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.
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
Place an iwan (a vaulted hall walled on three sides and open on the fourth) at the middle of each side of the courtyard, the one on the qibla side leading to a domed chamber before the mihrab.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The public road: seven cubits at least”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/street-seven-cubits. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.