Page 162 - UAE Truncal States_Neat
P. 162

The Islamic Basis of Society
         with different materials depending on the wealth of the founder or of
         the community who built it. There were very simple palm-frond
         mosques2” which could hardly be distinguished from the neighbour­
         ing barasti compounds, because they could not exceed the other
         buildings in height and they had no minarets. The only immediately
         distinguishing feature externally was the qiblah, the niche orien­
         tated towards Mecca. Often, however, the mosque was the only brick
         building among the houses of a village or of a tribal quarter in a town,
         and near the coast this would usually be a structure of coral stones
         bound together with mud. This construction allowed the mosque to
         have two or three open arches in the long wall opposite the qiblah. A
         few low-level windows in the shorter walls, and on either side of the
         qiblah, allowed enough air to enter the building, which might well be
         filled to capacity at prayer times. A rectangular courtyard in front of
         the mosque and facilities for ablution completed such a typical small
         mosque.
           Often there was no minaret, although some mosques had a small
         elevated platform a little higher than the roof on one side of the
         building. The more elaborate mosques had one minaret; the arches
         and the gallery, for the mu'addin who calls for prayer, would have
         some decorative plasterwork or carved wood. The interior of the
         mosques was very simple; the floor was usually covered with rush-
         mats or, rarely, with woven rugs.
           The number of mosques in use in theTrucial States during the first
         two decades of this century can only be estimated, because written
         records were not even kept for the waqf which existed for the
         maintenance of a mosque. There seems to have been a great increase
         in the number of new mosques being founded during the height of
         the pearling industry, and the majority of those mosques which were
         still in good repair and use during the 1950s and early 1960s had
         been built within living memory of the people who still prayed there
         then.30
           As already mentioned, each mosque was provided for by the waqf
         attached to it. There was no need anywhere on the Trucial Coast for a
         special person or organisation to administer all the waqf property of
         one town, as the communities were small enough for it to be common
         knowledge who built and endowed a mosque, and what it cost to
         maintain it. Either the founder of the mosque or a member of his
         family or the imam who was attached to the mosque supervised the
         collection of the income and the use of it.

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