Interpreting the Water Architecture of the Fatimid Era: Philosophy, Meaning and Tradition

Author: Murtazza Shakir

Throughout history, the connotation of water as the source of life has been a universal inspiration for the creators and beholders of various works of art and architecture across different cultures. In the Islamic tradition, the importance of water, both in its physical presence in the world we live in and its metaphysical presence in the spiritual abode of the hereafter, has been explicitly expressed in its two primary sources: the Quran and the Hadīth of the Prophet Muhammad. Largely inspired from these sources, a number of scholars, Muslims and non-Muslims, poets and artists, from their constant immersion and engagement with Islamic visual culture have philosophized in their works, their sensitive observation of the aesthetics of water sources and structures. Their intriguing descriptions, in addition to the universal recognition of water’s ability to provide life, have been a foundational inspiration for the positioning and depiction of water structures in Islamic art and architecture in diverse forms, and in the construction of thought-provoking constructions above or around them. One of the most significant manifestations in the development of this kind of representative construction in the history of Islamic architecture is the architecture of the Fāṭimī era in North Africa and Egypt. Set in the medieval age between the 9th and 11th centuries of the Common Era and at the heart of the physical map of the world, the Fāṭimī era represented a momentous landmark in the fruition of a philosophical perception of water architecture in the context of Islamic tradition and philosophy. The erudite literature composed and compiled by various scholars of this era provide a tremendous scope of insight in our understanding of the meanings envisaged in those otherwise neglected structures of utility harmonized with sources of water.