Minbar

Minbar (Arabic منبر ) plural manabir / منابر / manābir is the pulpit in the mosque, usually next to the prayer niche mihrab on the qibla wall built on the Khateeb ( خطيب ) on Friday sermon ( Chutba ) holds. Earlier also the decrees of the respective rulers were announced from the pulpit. On the way, the term was originally a loanword from the Ethiopian has already Theodor Nöldeke noted.

History and function of Minbar

The origins of the Minbar date back to the time of the Prophet Mohammed, built from palm trunks two stages with a seat which made according to tradition, so his faithful could see him better. It was called a ʿ WAD (plural of ʿ ūd, wood ). Among the Islamic historians reported al - Waqidi in the world history of al-Tabari on the establishment of a " pulpit " at the time of Muhammad: " In this year (7/ 628) made ​​the Prophet his minbar on which he to preach to the people used, he took two steps and its seat ( maq'ad ). According to another version it was made in the year 8/629, and we also keep for sure. " Similarly, the Minbar has been used by the first caliphs. First, the minbar was thus as seat of power and as a symbol of the temporal power.

Not all mosques had originally a pulpit; the Egyptian local historian al -Kindi al - Misri († 971 ) " reported in the 10th century on the major expansion work of the Great Mosque in Fustat under the famous Qurra ibn Sharik tax administrator, the pulpit in the year 94 ( d h.zwischen 712 and 713) had erected in the mosque. Up until the time of al -Kindi, she was the second oldest pulpit in the provincial cities after Prophetenminbar in Medina: "He ( Qurra ibn Sharik di ) presented the new minbar in the year 94 (equivalent: 712-713 ) on. It is said that an older pulpit one knows to this day in any administrative area than this -. Apart from Prophetenminbar " An old report, handed down in a papyrus roll ( University of Heidelberg), it is a Minbar already given against 658-659 in Fustat have, which was used as the seat of the provincial Verwaltes in his speeches in the secular sphere.

The first Caliph of the Umayyad, Mu ʿ āwiya b. Abī Sufyan, ran his own Minbar with on his journey from Damascus to Mecca. Thus, the first Minbar were movable. The city chronicler of Mecca al - Azraqi († 865) reported that Mu ʿ āwiya was the first to have held in Mecca, the Friday sermon from this Minbar from, which had only three stages. The Minbar of Umayyad al - Hakam II was after the completion of the main mosque of Córdoba in 965-966, Andalusian According to historians, also portable and could be moved on wheels. The Abbasid caliph al - Wāṯiq (reigned 842-847 ) gave the order to three important stages of the pilgrimage ( Hajj ) - Mecca, Mina and Arafat ʿ - each set up a pulpit. These served as it is read at al - Azraqi to cultic purposes in the pilgrimage ritual, as at all stations a sermon is delivered.

But even over the Umayyad period, a minbar was also used as a judge 's seat, had erected himself in front of his house the judge to proclaim from there right judgments. This application of the Minbar is still detectable in the 10th century in Kairouan. The pulpit as a device in the management of public business is detached in this case from the minbar of the mosque and is privately owned by the judge in the secular sphere. The use of the Minbar to purely cultic purposes in the mosque can be observed only under the Abbasids. "With the development of the mosque for the exclusive worship building is the minbar, the throne of the theocratic ruler, to the pulpit ."

The archaic form of Minbar as part of Islamic religious building is preserved in its original in the main mosque of Kairouan, erected by the rulers of Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Aghlabids II (up to 902) made ​​of cedar, which was supplied for these purposes directly from Baghdad. This elfstufigen pulpit still lacks the distinctive pattern of the later Holzminbars, because the entrance gate and the roof top is missing. The entire ornamentation is umayyadisch (see also: Kairouan ).

During the Fatimid has the final shape of the pulpit, as it presents itself in the Al -Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is formed. Nūr ad - Dīn she has donated in 1168 in favor of the Mosque of Aleppo and was taken by Saladin in Jerusalem. This minbar Already own a frame gate and a dome housing as a coronation. Similarly, the minbar in the mosque and Madrasa of Sultan Hassan (1354-1361) in Cairo - now made ​​of stone - designed.

Another example of Fatimid art of the pulpit design with its frame system and the Vine Fill in Syrian- Egyptian style is in the ʿ Amr Mosque in Upper Egyptian Qu قوص / QUS obtained. Minbar and Mihrab here form an interior architectural unit and were a gift of the Fatimid Wezirs and governor of Aswan and Qu ʾ i ʿ ibn Tala Ruzzīq طلائع بن رزيق / Tala ʾ i ʿ b. Ruzzīq '' to the city in 1155th

Mihrab of Qu; neck

The prophets pulpit from Medina as a place of Eidleistung

Among the Minbar in the Islamic world takes for granted the minbar of the Prophet in Medina a special position. The Eidleistung on Prophetenminbar has in the course of adjudication of particular importance: one next to or on the minbar of the Prophet of advance perjury leads to hell. A in the relevant hadith collections several times quoted the Prophet saying is normative in this sense Character:

The warning from the punishment of the hell-fire " ... ( he ) takes his place in Hellfire on" is an old one, in the hadith literature employed in similar contexts motif. The oldest work that lists these alleged prophetic speech, the right is the work of scholars Malik ibn Anas; as commentary states that the request of the defendant, to take the oath on Prophetenminbar, was legal practice since the early days of Islam. Islamic traditions, according to the Prophet Mohammed is said to have canonized the Eidleistung to his pulpit on legal issues as Sunnah. However, research is now believed that the Prophetenminbar in Medina during the lifetime of Muhammad not to the sacred places - such as the Kaaba in Mecca, where they used also to take the oath - belonged. Because the oldest document from the early days, the so-called " Constitution of Medina ", refers only to the settlement of Yathrib as " holy" and " inviolable" ( haram ), but not a specific location, or even the Minbar itself The taboo of pulpit, to which one has to take the oath par excellence in Medina, is of later origin than their construction. The pulpit was gradually developed to " grandstand for the discussion of all public affairs " ( Ignaz Goldziher ). She was initially a kind of " judgment seat ", the well-known whereabouts of Mohammed outside the prayer times - as Carl Heinrich Becker, in his study aptly describes. The pulpit thus was understood already in the early days as a symbol of secular, political power; it is the place for meeting and confirmation of political legitimacy. In the election of the first Caliph Abu Bakr this was asked to climb into the pulpit for the people to swear allegiance to him - it says in the description of the event in Bukhari; Ahmad ibn Hanbal in - in his " Musnad " it says, " when people had gathered, Abu Bakr mounted the pulpit ( minbar ), to something that had made ​​him what he then held the speech ." Even when Prophetenminbar is not the building itself or its shape or size of foam, but the place itself, where you shall take the oath or receives political legitimacy.

The function of the minbar in Medina and later in the provincial cities as places of public life and the Eidleistung in legal decisions was understood originally not as a parallel to the Meccan sanctuary, where the deposition of the oath was already in pre-Islamic custom. The direct connection of the two places - the Kaaba in Mecca, the Prophet's pulpit in Medina - takes place only in the systematization of the early attempts jurisprudence at the time of Malik ibn Anas and aš - ʿ ī Safi in the late 8th century. By shaping the course of justice referred to the Prophetenminbar as " arbitration " of law maqta al - huquq / مقطع الحقوق / Maqţa ʿ u ʾ l - ḥuqūq (see Lit.Dozy ); in the major mosques of the Islamic empire - Damascus, Kufa, Fustat, Córdoba - however, was close to the mihrab as a place of Eidleistung.Gemäß a fatwa from Qairawan, the Moroccan scholar al - Wanšarīsī (* 1439, † 1508) in his collection of North African cited legal opinions Eidleistung can take place at the issued Qur'an ( Mus-haf ) in the main Mosque of Susa.

The Islamic Jurisprudence of the 9th century, however, held the Eidleistung to the Minbar easier mosques invalid: "no one is on oath in the mosques of the Bedouins called, either because of a Vierteldinas nor less." Such an interpretation - the distinction between mosques that are located in the neighborhoods of certain tribes and those of urban residents - could thrive under social distinctions between settled people and bedouin

The Prophetenminbar in Medina remained untouchable as a relic from the early days to the present day; this thought is, as the sources report, in the first Muslim century ( 7th century AD), part of the Islamic tradition. The caliphs of the Umayyad - Mu ʿ āwiya, ʿ Abd al -Malik ibn Marwan and al - Waleed ibn ʿ Abd al -Malik said to have had the intention to take the prophets pulpit to Damascus, to thereby impart the political power in the new residence of the Umayyad emphasis. Mu ʿ āwiya could be deterred from his doubt politically motivated projects, but left the pulpit from Medina wrap in their original location with a substance - an act whereby an object, as shown by Julius Wellhausen, and after him by C. H. Becker, a certain sanctity acquired and which has been in the Kaaba in Mecca already common in the pre-Islamic period.

That one harbored against the taboo of Prophetenminbars also concerns that show already in the middle of the 8th century returned to the Prophet statements in the form of Hadith: "God, save me from my grave that is worshiped as idols, and my pulpit to parties used "

In Mecca the oath facility is par excellence the Kaaba, but that has no Minbar; the Eidleistung takes place there between the corner of the Black Stone and the Maqam Ibrahim: ( baina r- RUKN wa - ʾ l - Maqām ). By the beginning of the 8th century Meccan scholars have been determined, the local historian al - Azraqi that Eidleistung is not allowed in small claims at this point, so that the sanctity of the place should be stressed.