There was not a pointed or trefoil arch in sight, let alone ribbed vaulting. Byzantine church architecture, which the Umayyad caliphate inherited, had round Roman arches and single domes, like ConstantinopleвЂ™s Hagia Sophia. The trefoil arch, so enthusiastically adopted by Gothic architecture as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, first appeared as a carved decorative feature in Umayyad shrines and desert palaces. It went on to become the defining feature of Islamic religious buildings. (Andrew ShivaВ /В WikipediaВ / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Its design features were widely copied by the medieval Crusaders and brought back to Europe in the 12th century. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was built as a Muslim shrine in the late 7th century. It appeared in the 7th century Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built as the first Muslim shrine by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik, and was then further developed under the Abbasids in Baghdad.

The time has come to examine Gothic in the same way, since Cram never realized, along with Americans and Europeans in general, that key elements of Gothic architecture - the pointed arch, the trefoil arch, ribbed vaulting, and many other features - were born, not in Europe, but further east, often evolving from styles that were associated with a completely different religion.Д®ven Eurocentric architects cannot deny that the pointed arch had its origins in Islamic architecture. Few of the later Roman emperors were ethnically Italian and even fewer Byzantine rulers were ethnically Greek. Although such Eurocentrism remains deeply rooted, serious scholarship has questioned just how вЂњEuropeanвЂќ the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine civilizations that preceded the era of Gothic actually were, since all three empires were multicultural and multiethnic. The commonly held view of GothicвЂ™s provenance was that it represented EuropeвЂ™s shared heritage. Like his fellow neo-Gothic enthusiasts in Europe, and indeed like many Europeans today, for him Gothic architecture epitomized the Catholic faith. While studying classical architecture in Rome, he had an epiphany during a Christmas Eve mass, thereafter becoming an Anglo-Catholic.

The neo-Gothic clock tower commonly known as вЂњBig Ben,вЂќ attached to LondonвЂ™s Houses of Parliament, was designed by Augustus Pugin, sometimes called вЂњGodвЂ™s ArchitectвЂќ because of his devout Catholic faith.В ( Dietmar Rabich, London (UK), Elizabeth Tower, -Big Ben- 2010 - 1979, CC BY-SA 4.0) What accounts for that popularity?ДЄmericaвЂ™s leading neo-Gothic architect, Ralph Adams Cram, wrote in his book Gothic Quest about the power of architecture вЂњto bend men and sway them.вЂќ Like the fervent European Gothic Revival architects before him, such as Augustus Pugin, designer of the clock tower commonly known as Big Ben for the Houses of Parliament in London, Cram believed that Gothic was the вЂњpurestвЂќ form. On top of that, America boasts the worldвЂ™s biggest collection of neo-Gothic architecture in its universities, colleges, and schools. PatrickвЂ™s in New York City, Washington National Cathedral, and the Cathedral of St. Across the continent are spectacular Gothic Revival structures, many modelled on the medieval cathedrals of England and France, such as St. Drawing on ideas and styles passed from vibrant Middle East trading cities into the West, the architectural heritage of EuropeВ -В and AmericaВ - owes an important debt to the Arab and Islamic world, as I lay out in my newВ book, Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe.В EnglandвЂ™s greatest architect, Sir Christopher Wren, wrote that what we call 'the Gothic style should more rightly be called the Saracen style.вЂќ Americans, it seems, are especially fond of Gothic.

Saracens age of empires 2