the tanned skins and fabrics woven from the hair
of goats, sheep, and camels as well as from palms,
reeds, and grasses. Houses in villages, towns, and
cities in many parts of the Middle East, North
Africa, and Asia have traditionally been made
of raw or baked mud brick reinforced by stone
or wood if available. In rocky areas of yemen,
western Arabia, and the Levant (syria, Israel-Pal-
estine, lebanon, and Jordan), local stone is used
for house construction. The urban palaces and
mansions of medieval Muslim rulers in egypt,
tUrkey, Persia, and india were made of profes-
sionally cut stone, together with baked brick and
wood. Houses made mostly of wood are limited
to forestlands, such as those of eastern Europe,
the Caspian Sea region, the Hindu Kush, indone-
sia, and malaysia. The Industrial Revolution and
colonization of Muslim lands by European pow-
ers brought the introduction of new manufac-
tured materials, such as steel-reinforced concrete,
aluminum, glass, and plastics. This has resulted
in the creation of housing that is often alienated
from its natural setting. Manufactured materials
and modern designs have also made it possible
to erect multistory apartment blocks capable of
accommodating hundreds if not thousands of
people in a single residential area.
The stereotypical “Islamic” dwelling is often
said to be the Middle Eastern courtyard house,
a complex of rooms situated around a courtyard
that is open to the sky but closed to the out-
side. Entrance is provided by a single doorway
or gate that leads into the courtyard. Windows
may be lacking or are placed high enough so
that passersby cannot look inside the house. The
courtyard is a work area and provides access to
guest rooms, private living quarters, storerooms,
and a stable. It also allows for air circulation,
an advantage in regions that have a hot climate.
Yet the association of the courtyard house with
Islam is a tenuous one at best. Courtyard houses
existed in the Middle East and Mediterranean
regions for centuries before Islam’s appearance.
Moreover, after Muslims had established their
religion in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern
regions, both they and their non-Muslim neigh-
bors continued to use this house form as well as
others. As Muslims migrated beyond the Middle
East, they usually adopted the local domestic
architectural traditions of Africans, Asians, and
Europeans. Whatever traditional architectural
forms Muslims have used for their housing have
generally allowed for the accommodation of
extended families and varying degrees of interac-
tion between public and private spheres of social
life. There has been little evidence for an absolute
separation of public and private spaces, and the
same is true with respect to the segregation of
men and women within the house. Rather, such
divisions are situational, depending on temporal,
social, and economic factors. The harem—a seg-
regated domestic area for Women—is a creation
of wealthy landholders and urban elites, not a
product of Islamic religion per se.
The symbolic and legal significance of houses
in Islam can be situated, to an extent, in the
qUran and hadith, where Arabic words such as
bayt and dar are used both for ordinary human
dwellings and for sacred places and dwellings in
the aFterliFe. The Quran asserts that God created
ordinary dwellings and furnishings to demon-
strate his grace to people so that they would “sub-
mit” to him (Q 16:80–83). On the other hand, it
also states that God has punished disbelieving and
immoral people by destroying them and ruining
their houses (for example, Q 7:74–79, 27:45–52).
Believers who give up their homes and emigrate to
God and mUhammad are promised great rewards
(Q 4:100).
The Grand Mosque in mecca is called “God’s
sacred house,” and the kaaba is called “the first
house created for people” (Q 3:96–97, 5:97, 5:2).
The hadith state that the Kaaba is an earthly rep-
lica of “the frequented house” in heaven, which
is visited by thousands of angels each day. In
addition to these sacred places, there is the house
of Muhammad in medina, which consisted of
the private apartments of his wives facing towardK 312 houses