Journal of Researches in Islamic Architecture

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Islam spread quickly less than half a century on a large scale - from Spain to the borders of China. While, Christianity spread slowly during several centuries. After the spread of Islam in the West of Asia and the evolution of intellectual foundation of the community, the need for creating cities in accordance with Islamic lifestyle through making the least changes to the existing structure, resulted in adopting a new approach like converting churches into mosques in many Muslim cities. This research studies the various aspects of Islamic and Christianity beliefs on the process of converting churches into the mosques. The questions are: How have the formation of spaces in churches and mosques influenced by Islamic and Christian ideological flows? How have the Islamic thoughts embodied in the Christian architecture, during the process of converting churches into the mosques?
The hypothesis of this research is: “the formation of historical process of converting churches into the mosques is because of either existence of parallel aspects in Islamic and Christian theology or flexibility of Islamic thoughts in influencing by aesthetic patterns”. Based on the research questions and to examine the hypothesis, we analyze the process of converting churches into the mosques through using library source and adaptive approach of historical-interpretive method. Findings indicates that the origins of these monumental buildings is the simple form of a house that later developed to magnificent architectural forms in response to historical events. Due to the idea of collective worship in Islam, more diverse range of religious buildings were created in Islamic era than Christian era. The introduction of Islam to the new cities and its political power influenced the architectural aspects of the cities. In spite of the parallel aspects and common roots of the early churches and mosques, it was probable that churches were used for different purpose, but the process of converting churches into the mosque in the newly Muslim regions shows the compatibility of Islam with the culture, ideology and the main purpose (worship of God) of Christianity.