The Mihrab (Prayer Niche)

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The Mihrab -(Prayer Niche)

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The mihrab is the focal point in the interior of a mosque. It is located in the qibla wall, which is oriented toward Mecca, the holy city of Islam. Muslims face such a wall when praying. An inscription frieze is sometimes located across the top of a qibla wall.


It is mainly the liturgical qibla axismade visible. It is an early innovation in Islamic architecture, and its origins have been the object of controversy. It entered Islamic world in 707- 9 as a concave shape. This fashioned masonry, is a niche in the qibla wall similar to those in the coptic churches, with difference beimg that what had been a devotional niche; now became directional.

Mihrab isan acoustic device, a resonator for the voice, shaped to bounce the sound back and magnify it at the same time. The concave mihrab is where the imam( theprayer leader) stations himself to lead the congregation in prayers, therefore it wasn’t fortuitous innovation but the consequence of an order that the Muslims overseers must have given the copts. The niche tappers inward from bothsides to 1.30 m, and they meet in the middle at a 20 cm wide and 2 m highglass block, which allows defused light,not direct, to penetrate. This soft light will illuminate the niche internally. The philosophy is to create an ethereal environment and to direct the worshippers to that passage of light. Light has always been an essential concept in Islam as a religion, as well as an art and architecture, it symbolizes faith and sacredness. As described in the Holly Qur’aan “ God is the light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of his light is as if there was a niche and within it a lamb, the lamb enclosed in glass, the glass as if a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the East not the West, whose oil illuminates although fire has not touched it, light upon light. God guides whom he will to his light, God set forth parables for man and God is all knowing.” Sourat 24 “ The Light,” verse(35). Promptly, the Mihrab became the central feature of any mosque, and of all sacred art and architecture in Islam. It has little in common with the Alter of a Christian church; indeed, in all essential respects it is its antithesis. Where as an Altar is convex, or at least protuberant, the mihrab is concave and this concavity is a symbolism of which requires that it bekept empty at all times, and opposes itself aesthetically to the cluttered surface of an Altar mensa. It is not the niche thatis sacred but the direction it expresses.I tried to take advantage of the qibla wall thickness, which is 1.50 m, and to cutinto the wall. Traditionally, mihrab was always a decorative element. It has always been exposed to ornamentation and decoration, and treated as ansculptural element. The intention was to create a simplefeature that stands out by its simplicity not by its decoration, and to introduce itself as a directional element, more than to distract the worshippers attention from their worship.

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