The Other Sides of Paradise

Contemporary houses are usually recognized as forms of shelter and property. However, recent research in religious studies and in anthropology has shown that houses in pre-modern cultures can embody as well as convey sacred meanings and dominant cultural norms. Bringing together evidence from a wide variety of sources - Islamic scriptures, historical texts, archaeology, and ethnographic research - this book explains the complex array of religious meanings associated with Islamic houses and traces the shifts these meanings have undergone in the Middle East from 7th century to modern times. Campo shows how images of houses expressed in the Koran and Hadith literature have helped shape Muslim ideas about faith and disbelief, Mecca and Medina, sacred history, eschatology and the cosmos. He links his discussion of house symbolism to the establishment of the first Muslim mosques in cities outside of Arabia and to the emergence of the imperial doctrine of the "House of Islam" in 9th century Iraq. Moving to the contemporary era, the author shows that while modernity has affected the meanings Muslims attribute to their houses, it has not effaced them.