Date: 30th June – 2nd July 2022
Place: Córdoba (Spain)
The mosque, in its diverse architectural and visual expressions and as an institution, is considered one of the most significant manifestations of Islamic cultures. While the basic liturgical concept as a place of prayer is universal, a mosque can acquire further functions, and its form has proven extraordinarily malleable across and within regions and times. Scholarship has dealt with this diversity in studies on formal and conceptual evolution, typologies, and regional or local traditions.
Over recent decades many questions became more complicated or persist unanswered. The formal and conceptual sources of the earliest materially extant mosques remain a matter of debate and speculation. Transformations in the visuality, the layout, the elements, and the fittings of the mosque and its place in urban planning have been described from an architectural, archaeological, and historical angle and may require more explanation from a liturgical, religious, social, or ideological perspective. The re-use of mosques in a changing environment (such as in the Iberian Peninsula) has been documented, while its implications for artistic and cultural heritage call for discussion.
The 17th Colloquium of the Ernst Herzfeld Society invites recent research on the mosque in transformation, as an architecture and a visual and functional space in continuous evolution, transcending notions of the mosque as a fixed entity. The organizers invite papers that deal with transformations in the visuality, materiality, and concept of the mosque as seen in architecture and decoration, in furnishings and liturgical elements, in specific functions at specific times, in their changes including usage by other religious communities, and with reference to social, ideological, and historical currents. If you want to submit a paper proposal for the graduate meeting (separate call), please send
your title and abstract to Suzanne Compagnon: suzanne.compagnon@univie.ac.at
If you want to submit a paper proposal for the graduate meeting (separate call), please send your title and abstract to Suzanne Compagnon: suzanne.compagnon@univie.ac.at