Churches and Mosques: Aesthetics and Transfer of Marble in Early Islam

Continuous interaction with the Mediterranean Sea brought first Arabs and then Muslims in contact with the aesthetic values of marble as a building material, which they actively integrated and transformed in their own architectural practices. In the pre-modern world, due to the cost of quarrying, transportation, and its working, marble remained available only for projects involving extremely wealthy patrons. For the Umayyads, the first Islamic dynasty, who ruled the caliphate in Damascus from 661 to 750, this was also the case: marble was highly desirable yet hard to obtain. Evidence of this lies in their extensive reuse of marble material in religious and princely buildings, as well as in examples that show a ‘failed’ use or reuse of marble.