by bria4123 on March 15, 2012
Mosque architecture and the most basic Islamic truths reflect each other in tremendously rich ways.
Islam has 5 pillars of faith, and the main one is the Shahadah. It declares that God is One and unified, and that Muhammad is His prophet. Islamic art and thought revolve around these 2 ideas. Mosque architecture is centered on them, and building and faith conjoin in ways that make the Islamic world one of the globe’s most beautiful cultural landscapes. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 14, 2012
You can see a lot of intellectual depth in traditional Chinese architecture.
It’s one of the world’s most prevalent art forms, so it’s easy to think you’re familiar with it. But Chinese architecture reflects the cultural wealth of the land it emerged in. So, we’ll explore some of the meanings under its surface. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 13, 2012
I desperately needed to exercise. I was staying in a hotel in a small village high above Petra, Jordan. After savoring the pastries at the dinner buffet, I decided to hike up to one of the mountain peaks above.
The village was much smaller than Wadi Musa, which many tourists haunt. My hotel was the only one there, and it was modeled on an ancient village–so it blended right in. As I walked down one of the two main streets, a middle-aged man approached me and asked if I needed something. I told him that I had to exercise my dinner off, and he said, “Go anywhere you want. It’s perfectly safe here.” I trusted him–Jordanian villagers are proud of their hospitality. I turned onto the steepest road and headed towards the mountain top–and an experience that took me back to origins of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 11, 2012
I thought I’d cause a little trouble while I was in Egypt. I knew that this story would mess with my Cairo guide’s head.
5 weeks before, I was in Malaysia, in Malacca’s Chinatown. The community temple (pictured above) is full of Confucian and Daoist shrines, and ancestral tablets. Lots of traditional Chinese faiths thus rub shoulders in a view of Heaven as an extension of the family and the community. This view of divinity is strikingly different from the focus on a single all-powerful god that the Middle East’s three great religions have stressed. So, my young Cairo guide, who was a pious Muslim, who had never been out of Egypt, was about to get a little shock. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 11, 2012
Many things that you see in modern China have emerged from China’s deepest ancient thoughts.
The person paying respects at a shrine in Beijing is following patterns that were established over 3,000 years ago. We’ll explore a key concept behind them. It’s very deep, and uniquely Chinese. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 9, 2012
Come into the light.
Entering Laon Cathedral doesn’t bathe you in ordinary light. You’re immersed in something that would have transfixed the people in the Middle Ages who built it. Let’s step into their world. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 9, 2012
I took a day trip north from Paris to Laon to see its magnificent cathedral. It lived up to its billing, but the countryside made an equally great impression on me.
The train station stands at the bottom of a steep hill that Laon stretches over in an S-curve. From the other side of the town, I descended a stairway, and found myself in a little valley that represented France’s land and culture as well as any other place I’ve seen. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 9, 2012
The first phase of the development of Gothic style was very cool because architects were experimenting with new forms without having a standard design yet.
You can thus see a lot of variety in ways that builders were expanding beyond the simple 2-dimensional designs of earlier churches, and into a more dynamic world that merchants and scholars in Europe’s growing towns could relate to. A more sophisticated way of seeing the world was opening up. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 8, 2012
The Khmer kings wanted more. You’d think the royal palace at Angkor and its sprawling parade ground rumbling with elephant fights and polo matches would be impressive enough.
But Khmer kings in the thirteenth century rivaled the gods in real estate development. [click to continue…]
by bria4123 on March 7, 2012
What are those mysterious buildings behind that old Khmer pool?
They were built in the early 13th century, and they face the royal palace at Angkor, so they must have had a special meaning. [click to continue…]
