Caso Terremoto, México, 2017

sacred mosqUe after those of mecca and medina,

the Aqsa Mosque is situated on the eastern edge of K  48  apostasy

the Old City in JerUsalem. It is part of a complex

of buildings and monuments known as the Noble Sanctuary, which stands atop the remains of the Second Temple of israel, which was destroyed

by the Roman army in 70 c.e. Jews and Chris-

tians therefore commonly know this area as the Temple Mount. The name of the mosque itself was obtained from a passage in the qUran that

says, “Glory be to him who transported his ser- vant by night from the sacred mosque [in Mecca] to the most distant (aqsa) mosque, the precincts of which we have blessed” (Q 17:1). Though there was some dispute over where the mosque mentioned in the Quran was actually located, the verse was eventually linked by Islamic tradition to the night JoUrneyand ascent of mUhammad,

when he was believed to have been miraculously transported one night from Mecca to Jerusalem, up to heaven, then back down to Mecca. The Aqsa Mosque, therefore, was said to be where Muham- mad led the angels and former prophets in prayer

before his heavenly ascent to meet with God. Despite this legendary account, the mosque was first constructed after Muhammad’s death by the Umayyad caliphs Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) and his son, al-Walid (r. 705–715). It was designed as a rectangular congregational mosque for Friday prayers, with a dome and a long north-south axis that was aligned with the dome oFthe rock, a

separate memorial structure to the north. Mosa- ics, marble, and carved wood decorated its walls. It had to be reconstructed and expanded several times over the centuries because of earthquakes, and it now can hold up to 400,000 worshippers. When the crusaders seized Jerusalem in 1096, the Aqsa Mosque was converted into a royal pal- ace and later a barracks for the Knights Templar. Muslims believed that these Christians had defiled the mosque; when saladin (d. 1193) recaptured

the city in 1187, he purified the building so it could once again be used as a place for congrega- tional prayer. After Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, administration of the mosque remained in the hands of Muslim

authorities, and Palestinian Muslims were allowed to continue using it for Friday prayers. Together with the Dome of the Rock, the Aqsa Mosque has since become a symbol for the Palestinian nationalist movement and liberation from Israeli occupation. Indeed, Palestinians call the second intifada (uprising) in the West Bank and Gaza that started in 2000 the al-Aqsa Intifada.

See also arab-israeliconFlicts; architectUre;

christianityand islam; palestine.

Further reading: Oleg Grabar, The Shape of the Holy:

Early Islamic Jerusalem (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1996); Robert W. Hamilton, The Structural

History of the Aqsa Mosque (Jerusalem: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1949).

Arab

Originally an ethnic designation for the people of Arabia, Arab is now commonly used to refer to people who speak Arabic, claim ancestry in North Africa or the Middle East, or consider themselves nationals in one of the recently created Arab nation-states. In its original meaning, Arab applied to several Arabic speaking tribes from the Arabian Peninsula (the area including contem- porary saUdi arabia, yemen, Oman, United Arab

Emirates, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and parts of syria and iraq). Classically

imagined as camel-breeding nomads, many Arabs

have always lived in cities and have been noted

for their loyalty to family and hospitality and to a rich poetic tradition. Because mUhammad (d. 632)

was a member of the Arab tribe called qUraysh

and he delivered the qUran in Arabic, the Arabic

language became very important to the practice and understanding of islam. Arabs played a cru-

cial role in helping expand the boundaries of Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula, and today they remain guardians of the most holy Muslim city of mecca. This has led to some confusion

between the terms Arab and Muslim: Arab is an ethnic category, while Muslim refers to religion.

Arabs are not necessarily Muslim, and indeed there are many Christian Arabs. Moreover, the majority of Muslims (about 80 percent) do not consider themselves to be Arab, and some people who do consider themselves to be Arab—espe- cially the children of migrants—do not neces-

sarily speak Arabic. Like all ethnic categories, the definition of Arab is somewhat flexible and depends on context.

See also arabiclangUageandliteratUre; arab

leagUe.

David Crawford

Further reading: Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab

Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1991); Maxime Rodinson, The Arabs (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1981).

arabesque

Arabesque is a term meaning à l’arabe, or in the arab mode, a European designation for ornamen-

tal passages in mUsic, dance, poetry, and visual art. First used by 17th-century European travel-

ers as an adjective, it began to function as a noun by the later 19th century, when it entered debates

Carved stucco arabesque designs decorate arches in the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain (13th/14th century). (Federico R. Campo)

on the nature of ornament. The arabesque was understood to represent a paradigmatic way of life—simple and instinctual, close to nature yet profoundly spiritual, unchanging, and stoic. These characteristics were visually apparent in applied decoration of floral scrolls, interlaced and/or overlapping geometric motifs, or styl- ized writing, sometimes in combination. To European eyes, the two-dimensionality, abstrac- tion, and nonfigural nature of these decorative designs made them perfect expressions of Arab- Semitic abhorrence of representations of living beings (even though some of them included such representations). Their being categorized as ornament underscored their additive and unnec- essary nature and their lack of meaning, while their infinite repetition with minute variations expressed a horror of emptiness. By 1900, when the first handbooks on Islamic art were written, the arabesque was cited as the major character- istic of an art whose goal was to express infinite (ethnic or created) variety within unity (of Islam and God). Some Muslim scholars now uphold this concept as an expression of tawhid (unity)

partly as a way of affirming Islamic cultural and political identity.

Recent research demonstrates that the ara- besque has complex histories and meanings. On a theoretical level, floral, geometric, or calligraphic arabesques may have acted as carriers of pleasure, mediators between (human) nature and culture. Historically, they first appeared in late 10th-cen- tury baghdad, when they were also introduced

into the three-dimensional muqarnas decoration used for the portals and domes of shrines. The Persian term girih (knot) expresses their math- ematical and geometrical complexity, and their specific context indicates that they belonged to inter-Islamic philosophical, theological, and political discourses on the nature of God and the universe. The visual appeal of the girih mode eventually led to its adoption in a variety of later contexts, even when its original purpose was no longer operative.

See also architectUre; calligraphy; ibnal-baW- Wab, abUal-hasanali; mathematics; theology.

Nuha N. N. Khoury Further reading: Terry Allen, Five Essays on Islamic

Art (Sebastopol, Calif.: Solipsist Press, 1988); Oleg

Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992); Ernst Kühnel, Die

Arabesque (Wiesbaden, 1949); Richard Ettinghausen, The Arabesque: Meaning and Transformation of an Orna- ment (Graz, Austria: Verlag für Sammler, 1976); Gülru

Necipoglu, The Topkapi Scroll—Geometry and Ornament

in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, Calif.: The Getty

Center, 1995); Yasser Tabbaa, The Transformation of

Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival (Seattle: University

of Washington Press, 2001).