عمارة المسجد في الساحل الشرقي الأفريقي حتى نهاية القرن 9 ه-15 م

Abstract EN

The East-African Coast is regarded as one of the oldest locations that has direct contact with the Islamic world.

Settlers of this territory are characterized by having a very old and strong relationship with Arabs even before Islam.

Commerce in general played a big role nourishing this relationship.

With the arrival and commencement of the Islamic religion to these locations came a development of relationships spreading them throughout the whole African continent.

Migration between the Arab and African lands also played a role similar to that of commerce in fortifying these relationships.

As the number of merchants who established themselves along the African coastline increased along with the arrival of large groups of immigrants, there came a desperate need for mosques to be built both in the original cities along the coastline and the newly established Muslim cities.

City planning and development started according to Islamic traditions and architecture and settlers started investing in the building of the mosques.

The traditions and architectural styles of the original cities which setters and migrants came from were reflected in the newly–built cities.

As time went by small mosques evolved into bigger mosques with Friday prayers and other ceremonial and religions activities.

mosques became of very many shapes and sizes and were then followed by the building of all sorts of establishments.

The Arab–Islamic style and tradition controlled the forms of mosques along the East–African coast, although there were a few traces of non–Islamic, non–Arab architecture here and there.

A complete architectural view formed as one looks at the mosques and all their parts including the place of prayer, the prayer–call tower and the mosques dome.