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Comment by teleforce | Hacker News Reader

In order to understand how the architecture of middle ages and modern intertwined between Christian and Muslim worlds, please check this excellent video [1].

It's never ceased to amaze me by the fact that now most of the mosques now look more like Christian's Hagia Sophia and churches now looks more like Muslim Spanish Moors' Mezquita.

Also it's often an oblivious fact that Norman also conquered Sicily (after Muslim's cosmopolitan Emirate of Sicily) and obviously they had learnt a lot from the Islamic architecture that they brought and implemented the concepts to Britain and other parts of Europe [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvnVi5G5SQA

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Sicily

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>churches now looks more like Muslim Spanish Moors' Mezquita

I've never seen any church that looks like that. The only Eastern architectural plan I can think of as having been exported West is the round style of the Dome of the Rock after it became a Templar headquarter.

>obviously they had learnt a lot from the Islamic architecture that they brought and implemented the concepts to Britain and other parts of Europe

There's nothing obvious about it. I see very little, if anything, in 11th c. Romance architecture (including Norman) that isn't just a spin on previous Carolingian types.

Islamic influence North of the Alps and Pyrenees seems restricted to decorative arts and fashion.

The elephant in the Mediterranean room is Rome, all the monumental architecture, including Islamic buildings, builds on Roman architectural knowledge a lot, adding its own decorations and elements.

We tend to forget that the entire North Africa and huge regions of the Near East, including today's Syria and Jordan, were Roman provincies for long centuries. This cultural bedrock did not go away during later conquests, it only eroded away very slowly.

You should also credit Persian architecture, from which Islamic tradition drew equally (although, for obvious reasons, less around the Med than in Asia).

In many cases the first version of the churches were literally built from a preexisting Roman building, recycling the stone. E.g. York Minster.

The main thing I can think of is the pointed arch. That appeared in Gothic cathedrals but not the earlier Romanesque ones, and is supposed to originate in Islamic architecture.

The way through which the pointed arch travelled to Western Europe is still up to debate. My understanding is that it was used decoratively in Islamic architecture, and that a load-bearing form existed in the Near-East but not fully realised. Single, isolated load-bearing pointed arches are still found in Turkey, Syria or Iraq in gates and bridges that predate Gothic architecture.

In my opinion that basic design was picked up during the Crusades and expounded upon due to the specific constraints of Christian architecture, that is building up rather than wide.

In the end I believe it makes far more sense that they saw something abroad used in large civil engineering and made use of out it, rather than picking a decorative feature of Islamic architecture for structural features.

I've been to the Mezquita-Catedral in Cordóba. It's a fascinating building and I do agree that it sort of forms a pair with Hagia Sophia, but I'm having a hard time seeing any influences it may have had on Western church architecture.

Other than the gothic altar section built square in the middle of the building it is very much a mosque with a completely different floor plan from the typical cross-shaped churches common in Western Europe since Romanic times. Even the typical round arches were already outdated in the West at that point in time.

As an aside, the name of the city is Córdoba - not "Cordóba" which would be the default pronunciation with no accent.

That said, Spanish / Moorish middle-age architecture is among the best and most beautiful in my opinion. Seeing how the later Christians borrowed so heavily from Islamic architecture and tradition shows that good ideas survive the test of time.

>churches now looks more like Muslim Spanish Moors' Mezquita

Have you never seen a church before??

Fun fact: Russian 'main' Orthodox church of Christ the Saviour looks like a cheap Taj Mahal imitation. [1]

[1]: https://img.likeness.ru/41/35/4135/1388229357.jpg

Russian Orthodox churches actually draw the same inspiration as most mosques. Roman church architecture started with this as inspiration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome

A famous example of the development is the Hagia Sophia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia

There's many examples of Byzantine era architecture which were the inspiration for Islamic mosques (many actually being converted into mosques): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_architecture

Now, if you know the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, or rather how Slavs became Orthodox in the first place, you'd know it's because the first Rus kingdom made contact with Byzantine Greeks and converted to Orthodoxy, hence the Greek influence in Russian (indeed all Slavic) churches.

Anyhow, the specific architectural style of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour dates back to the 11th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_church_architecture

The inspiration of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was also said to be the Hagia Sophia, although IMO it looks more like early Russian cathedrals. Also, not sure about the angle you chose, but Christ the Saviour looks quite different from the Taj Mahal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviou...

Both do draw from the same architectural tradition, but the Taj Mahal's inspiration goes like this:

Pantheon/Roman Architecture -> Hagia Sophia/Byzantine architecture -> Islamic invasions -> Persian Architecture -> Mughal Architecture

Whereas Russian Church designs came from the same initial source but diverged in the 11th century:

Pantheon/Roman Architecture -> Hagia Sophia/Byzantine architecture -> Rus Empire conversion -> Russian Church architecture.

If anything, Russian churches do draw a bit of inspiration from western church architecture of the Renaissance (there's a well-know period of time where the Tsars attempted to westernise Russia), see St. Peter's Basilica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica#/media/...

Mike, thanks for the lengthy excursion into history, but for me it is not new information (and actually being from Russia I'm used to seeing russian churches all the time).

And the thing is, traditional stock russian churches are rather different from Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the latter being a rebuilt copy of a late 19th century design. And being such a late design (by the standards of our churches), it is hard to unsee that all major details of it are borrowed from Taj Majal: the dome, the ancillary domes, the proportions of major details. Famous Russian painter Vereshchagin (of the Apotheosis of War [1] fame) openly criticized the project for being a 'direct recreation of a Taj Mahal church from Acra'

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_War

> the dome, the ancillary domes, the proportions of major details.

I mean, 5 domed churches are pretty common. Domed buildings with a similar proportion are pretty common. Here's an example that pre-dates the Taj Mahal by 100 years: https://www.advantour.com/russia/rostov/assumption-cathedral...

Similar proportions albeit slightly smaller and taller main dome (and slightly larger ancillary domes), but the curvature of the main dome is slightly more similar to the Taj Mahal's main dome. Christ the Saviour Cathedral is probably somewhere between this and the Taj Mahal for proportions.

> Famous Russian painter Vereshchagin (of the Apotheosis of War [1] fame) openly criticized the project for being a 'direct recreation of a Taj Mahal church from Acra'

Self-hating Russians (Slavs in general actually) has always been a thing. Self-hating Russian artists and writers in the 19th century was definitely a thing.

IMO, Slavs' self-hating nature and distrust of, well, everyone, is a mostly good trait but sometimes prevents them from seeing the positive side of things (my family is Ukrainian but I grew up in the west).

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