The untold stories of “Islamic” architecture and urbanism: rationality and power manifestations

Despite various attempts and approaches to scrutinize the concept of Islamic architecture, the prevailing discourse, set by orientalists since the nineteenth century, still holds true to some extent. It mostly focuses on the physical products of Islamic architecture and cities, with little attention paid to the underlying production mechanisms. Hence, the term “Islamic architecture” has been the subject of extensive debate, but still no consensus being achieved. Scholars are divided between thos