Permanent installation of a carpet, Dimensions variable.
The hundred-square-meter Amir Shakib Arslan Mosque is a newly constructed place of worship located in Moukhtara, in the Shouf mountains of Lebanon, designed by LE.FT Architects (Makram el Kadi and Ziad Jamaleddine). It offers a contemporary interpretation of the conventional architectural typology of the mosque. Commissioned by Walid Joumblatt, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), it is a reincarnation of a mosque that once stood in the same village, albeit in a different location, and was destroyed in 1823. Moukhtara is a village shared by a small community of Druze and Christians, neither of whom typically pray in mosques, and thus Amir Shakib Arslan is a sort of hybrid religious structure and political gesture.
Abu Hamdan collaborated on certain aspects of the mosque, particularly on non-architectural yet aesthetic factors of its religious function. Working with the idea of the space being nondenominational, he designed the prayer carpet, incorporating a design using an image of sound waves taken from a recording of Qur’anic recitation. The artist stated: “The carpet is a new kind of calligraphy, in the sense that it’s a visual representation of spoken language and a means by which the form of the word takes precedent over its legibility. Moments in the soundwaves where the many names for ‘God’ appeared were removed, in part to avoid the possibility of visitors stepping on the word but also to speak to the present absence of the divine that is so fundamental to the esoteric interpretations of Islam.”
