The Mihrab across Islamic Architecture

The niche form of the mihrab was not part of the earliest mosques. The Prophet's Mosque in Medina and other seventh century foundations marked the qibla with a flat wall or a mark alone, and the earliest securely dated concave mihrab niches appear in Umayyad building of the early eighth century, including the renovated Prophet's Mosque under al-Walid I. From there the form spread quickly across the expanding Islamic world and became a near-universal marker of a functioning mosque, adopted with remarkable consistency of concept even as its decoration diverged sharply by region: Ottoman mihrabs favor Iznik tilework in blue and turquoise geometric and floral patterns, Persian and Central Asian examples build up glazed tile mosaic and muqarnas hoods of extraordinary intricacy, Moorish and North African mihrabs in buildings such as the Great Mosque of Cordoba use interlacing polylobed arches and gold mosaic influenced by Byzantine craftsmen, and mihrabs across the Indian subcontinent combine carved red sandstone or marble with inlay techniques shared with contemporary Hindu and Jain temple carving.

Because the niche has no structural load-bearing role, it became the element architects and patrons were freest to elaborate without engineering constraint, and surviving mihrabs are consequently among the richest single data points historians have for tracing the movement of craftsmen, materials and ornamental vocabulary across the medieval Islamic world.