Cosmology in architecture - 1

In his famous Ihya Ulum al-Din (Reviving the Sciences of Religion), al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the celebrated Muslim theologian and mystic, cites an intriguing analogy. He says: “As an architect draws (yusawwir) the details of a house in whiteness and then brings it out into existence according to the drawn exemplar (nuskha), so likewise the creator (f atir) of heaven and earth wrote the master copy of the world from beginning to end in the Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahf uz) and then brought it out into existence according to the written exemplar.”
In contrast to the current understanding of a boundless and infinitely expanding universe, premodern Muslims thought of and described the cosmos as being finite, founded, and with astronomically definable limits. The entirety of the cosmos was graspable by means of geometry, numbers, and the alphabet.
It was conceived in the form of concentric circles, at the center of which humans dwelled and at the outer limit stood the all-encompassing divine Throne.Space and time, as we know them, terminated at the divine Throne, which formed the threshold into the divine realms of being. There and beyond, different modalities of space and time prevailed. The Throne, the outer limit of the universe, was also visualized to be “quadrangular” in form but with a sense of spatiality that was distinct from our own. Marking a transitional zone, the Throne was seen to partake in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. Within this geometrically defined and ordered cosmos things were interrelated; they occupied definite positions within an intricate hierarchy. Nothing stood in isolation or ambiguity; everything was carefully positioned. Premodern Islamic sources provide very detailed descriptions of the cosmos, and the Sufis, among other Muslim thinkers, present numerous geometrical diagrams that illustrate the fundamental order of being and the basic design of the world, translating into visual idioms the “textual” contents of al-Ghazali's exemplar.
The move is explored in a variety of contexts and manifestations. The first trace of this move unfolds the metaphysial order, which is then traced in the cosmic order, which is in turn traced in the architectural order. Spatially, the move refers to the deployment of space from a central point along the three axes of what the French philosopher and metaphysician René Guénon describes as the “threedimensional cross.”
The Islamic cosmos consisted of the seen and unseen, the divine and human domains, with each having its own inhabitants, landscape, and order. The seen world was constructed of nine concentric spheres, seven planetary ones encompassed by the sphere of the fixed stars (the divine Footstool) and the utmost encircling sphere without stars (the divine Throne). The seven heavens rest on seven earths in the form of domed structures decreasing in size and positioned one within the other. As for the workings of the cosmos, it was seen to be regulated by a quaternary natural order of the four elements, mediated by many sets of four—four seasons,
four natures, four humors, four directions, and so forth.