Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-279) and index.

Introduction. Architecture and poetics ; The aims of this book -- Architecture and meaning in the theory of al-Jāhiẓ. Architecture and meaning : al-Jāhiz's view ; Aesthetic, variety and emotion ; Voice, body and emotion ; Al-Bayān, architecture and commemoration -- Architecture and poetics. Modus operandi ; Al-Khalil's theory of language ; Arabic poetics ; The palace and the Qasīda -- Architecture and myth. Hadīthu Sinimmār -- Al-Jāhizin the mosque at Damascus : social critique and debate in the history Umayyad architecture. Yaqubi's account ; Muqaddasi's account ; Architecture and hospitality ; 'Umar II : architecture and piety -- Architecture and desire. "Architects" or architectural planners ; The desire for architecture ; Architecture and misrecognition ; The travelling gaze : Ibn al-Jahm's eulogy of the palace al-Haruni ; Building, reflection and emptiness -- Conclusion.

Mohammed Hamdouni Alami argues that Islamic art has historically been excluded from Western notions of art; that the Western aesthetic tradition's preoccupation with the human body, and the ban on the representation of the human body in Islam, has meant that Islamic and Western art have been perceived as inherently at odds. However, the move away from this 'anthropomorphic aesthetic' in Western art movements, such as modern abstract and constructivist painting, has presented the opportunity for new ways of viewing and evaluating Islamic art and architecture.

This book questions the very idea of art predicated on the anthropocentric bias of classical art, and the corollary 'exclusion' of Islamic art from the status of art. It addresses a central question in post-classical aesthetic theory, in as much as the advent of modern abstract and constructivist painting have shown that art can be other than the representation of the human body; that art is not neutral aesthetic contemplation but it is fraught with power and violence; and that the presupposition of classical art was not a universal truth but the assumption of a specific cultural and historical set of practices and vocabularies.

Based on close readings of classical Islamic literature, philosophy, poetry, medicine and theology, along with contemporary Western art theory, the author uncovers a specific Islamic theoretical vision of art and architecture based on poetic practice, politics, cosmology and desire. In particular it traces the effects of decoration and architectural planning on the human soul as well as the centrality of the gaze in this poetic view - in Arabic 'nazar'- while examining its surprising similarity to modern theories of the gaze. --Book Jacket.