A Comparative Study of Traditionalism and Historiography in the Explanation of Mosque Architecture by Focusing on the notions of Titus Burckhardt and Oleg Grabar's Model

Serious efforts to understand the nature of Islamic art and architecture in the West began with the formation of the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and culminated in the nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, researchers and historians looked at Islamic art with an ethnographic approach, emphasizing the role of climate, local geography, and racial characteristics as determining factors in the formation of art and architecture. In the second half of the century, they investigated Islamic art to find and determine general, universal, transhistorical, and timeless rules and ignoring climatic elements and ethnic characteristics. In the late nineteenth, Hegelian thought came to dominate the writing of art history, and Islamic art and architecture, based on the philosophical teachings of Hegel's history, were examined based on historical algebra and certainty. This approach emphasizes the unity of history and considers art and all human intellectual and cultural manifestations to come from a single spirit. Therefore, with such an approach, the works of Islamic art and architecture are considered as the continuation of Byzantine and Sassanid art based on the chronological sequence. From the middle of the twentieth century, in addition to the Sassanid and Byzantine roots of Islam art, the role of Islam and its connection with the works of art and architecture was also considered. Some researchers of Islamic art have considered it to be influenced by the ontology of Islam and have given its elements a religious and transcendent meaning. An example is Titus Burckhardt who explained the common values and characteristics of the traditional originated art, especially the Islamic tradition from the standpoint of religious revival called the traditionalism school; And the path of modern historians in the context of Orientalism, such as the Grabar model, which denies traditionalists disbelief in history and the existence of purely transhistorical truths in Islamic art. Now, since the mosque is the first and most important manifestation of Islamic buildings in which Islamic art has been formed; most of the studies by researchers and historians are about building a mosque. The present study deals with the comparative study of mosque architecture in the views of Titus Burckhardt of the traditionalist movement and Oleg Grabar of the historians. Despite the methodological differences in Burckhardt and Grabar's approaches and their interpretation and explanation of the architectural principles and elements of the mosque building, they explain Islamic architecture, especially elements of the mosque according to the role of religious component and both believe that the mosque is built on the foundations of other religions. Now the question is what influence their views have on the definition of Islamic architecture? Findings show that Burckhardt believes that the formation of architecture and its elements have been derived from the Islamic traditions while Grabar refers to Islam as a cultural component along with historical and social ones. The aim of this study is to find commonalities and differences between these two perspectives in Islamic architecture according to their specific approach.