Islamic architecture comprises the architectural styles of buildings associated with Islam . It encompasses both secular and religious styles from the early history of Islam to the present day. The Islamic world encompasses a wide geographic area historically ranging from western Africa and Europe to eastern Asia. Certain commonalities are shared by Islamic architectural styles across all these regions, but over time different regions developed their own styles according to local materials and techniques, local dynasties and patrons, different regional centers of artistic production, and sometimes different religious affiliations .
156-526: The Bangabhaban ( Bengali : বঙ্গভবন , romanized : Bôngobhôbôn , lit. 'House of Bengal') is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of Bangladesh , located on Bangabhaban Road, and short road connecting Dilkusha Avenue , Dhaka . It is surrounded by the Bangabhaban Gardens (formerly Nawab's Dilkusha Gardens). The palace was originally built as
312-458: A misr (Arabic: مصر , pl. amṣār ). This policy continued up to the Umayyad period. Like frontier colonies, these towns served as bases for further conquests. Initially, they appear to have been modest settlements consisting of an agglomeration of tents, perhaps similar to ancient Roman legionary camps . They were established outside existing non-Muslim cities. They were often unfortified and
468-471: A government house of the British Empire . Following the independence of Pakistan , it became the official residence of the governor of East Bengal and, after 1955, the governor of East Pakistan . President Abu Sayeed Chowdhury became the first Bangladeshi president to reside there after taking oath on 12 January 1972. The President Guard Regiment unit is responsible for the palace's security. During
624-492: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from
780-412: A common feature of Islamic domestic architecture due to the warm climates in most countries. One of the mosque recognizable types is the mashrabiya , a wooden lattice screen which projects from the side of a building and which protected privacy by allowed those inside to look outside without being visible from outside. Another type of lattice screen, not restricted to balconies, is the jali , which
936-590: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises
1092-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where
1248-647: A flat wooden roof supported by columns, and was decorated with marble panels and glass mosaics. The prayer hall of the Abu Dulaf Mosque at Samarra had arcades on rectangular brick piers running at right angles to the qibla wall. Both of the Samarra mosques have spiral minarets, the only examples in Iraq. A mosque at Balkh in what is now Afghanistan was about 20 by 20 metres (66 by 66 ft) square, with three rows of three square bays, supporting nine vaulted domes. While
1404-672: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of
1560-660: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,
1716-520: A masterpiece of the Almoravids founded in 1082, has twelve slender ribs and the shell between the ribs is filled with filigree stucco work. Ottoman architecture developed a specific form of monumental, representative building: large central domes were erected on top of a centrally-planned building. After the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, they found a variety of Byzantine Christian churches,
SECTION 10
#17328590267561872-557: A more classical influence. Muqarnas is a three-dimensional sculpted motif created by the geometric subdivision of a vaulting structure into miniature, superimposed pointed-arch substructures or niches, also known as "honeycomb" or "stalactite" vaults. They can be made from different materials like stone, brick, wood or stucco. The earliest monuments to make use of this feature date from the 11th century and are found in Iraq, North Africa, Iran, Central Asia, and Upper Egypt . This apparently near-simultaneous development in distant regions of
2028-465: A mosque building. Its formal function is to provide a vantage point from which the call to prayer, or adhān , is made. The call to prayer is issued five times each day: dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and night. In most modern mosques, the adhān is made directly from the prayer hall and broadcast via microphone to a speaker system on the minaret. The origin of the minaret and its initial functions are not clearly known and have long been
2184-415: A mosque, a governor's residence ( dār al-imāra ), and a market were likely the first major constructions to appear, located at the center of the town. More often than founding new cities, the new Islamic rulers took over existing towns. Most of the new Arab settlers nonetheless settled into previously existing urban centers throughout the conquered territories. These cities were transformed according to
2340-550: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. Islamic architecture Early Islamic architecture was influenced by Roman , Byzantine , Iranian , and Mesopotamian architecture and all other lands which the early Muslim conquests conquered in the seventh and eighth centuries. Later it developed distinct characteristics in
2496-469: A result of this, Umayyad architecture is distinguished by the extent and variety of decoration, including mosaics , wall painting, sculpture and carved reliefs. While figural scenes were notably present in monuments like Qusayr 'Amra , non-figural decoration and more abstract scenes became highly favoured, especially in religious architecture. The Umayyad period thus played a crucial role in transforming and enriching existing architectural traditions during
2652-562: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in
2808-554: A separate and protected space where the sultan could perform his prayers (similar to a maqsura ). A similar feature is also found in the Bara Gunbad complex (late 15th century) in Delhi. The qiblah ( قِـبْـلَـة ) is the direction in which Mecca is from any given location, towards which Muslims face during prayers. Within Islamic architecture it is a major component of both the features and
2964-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in
3120-845: A standard feature of all mosques. Several major early monuments of Islamic architecture built under the Umayyads include the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (built by Caliph Abd al-Malik ) and the Great Mosque of Damascus (built by al-Walid I). The Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Al-Aqsa compound, also in Jerusalem, was also rebuilt by al-Walid I, replacing an earlier simple structure built around 670. A number of palaces from this period have also partially survived or have been excavated in modern times. The horseshoe arch appears for
3276-574: A standard feature of mosques until the 11th century. These first minaret towers were placed in the middle of the wall opposite the qibla wall. Among them, the minaret of the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia, dating from 836, is one of the oldest surviving minarets in the world and the oldest in North Africa. It has the shape of a massive tower with a square base, three levels of decreasing widths, and
SECTION 20
#17328590267563432-575: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,
3588-592: A superimposed spherical dome, is the characteristic architectural vault form of the Islamic East. From its beginnings in the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, this form of vault was used in a sequence of important buildings up to the period of Safavid architecture. Its main characteristics are: While intersecting pairs of ribs from the main decorative feature of Seljuk architecture , the ribs were hidden behind additional architectural elements in later periods, as exemplified in
3744-545: A temporal formwork to guide and center the vault. These ribs, which were left in the structure afterwards, do not carry any load. The ribs were cast in advance on strips of cloth, the impression of which can still be seen in the ribs today. Similar structures are known from Sasanian architecture, for example from the palace of Firuzabad . Umayyad-period vaults of this type were found in Amman Citadel and in Qasr Amra . An iwan
3900-610: A three-domed mosque and barracks of the president's guard regiment are located in the vicinity of the main gate of the Bangabhaban. The residential quarters for officers and staff of the President's office are located in three outlying areas of Bangabhaban. There are also two bungalows: one for the military secretary and the other for the assistant military secretary. Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ),
4056-431: A topic of scholarly discussion. The earliest mosques lacked minarets, and the call to prayer was often performed from smaller tower structures. The early Muslim community of Medina gave the call to prayer from the doorway or the roof of the house of Muhammad , which doubled as a place for prayer. The first confirmed minarets in the form of towers date from the early 9th century under Abbasid rule and they did not become
4212-455: A total height of 31.5 meters. Minarets have had various forms (in general round, squared, spiral or octagonal) depending on the period and architectural tradition. The number of minarets by mosques is not fixed; originally one minaret would accompany each mosque, but some architectural styles can include multiple minarets. In the newly-conquered areas of the early Muslim expansion, military settlements were often founded, known individually as
4368-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are
4524-494: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it
4680-536: Is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali
4836-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since
Bangabhaban - Misplaced Pages Continue
4992-554: Is a hall that is walled on three sides and open on one side. It is typically covered by a vault although this can vary. This feature was present in Sasanian architecture, though its exact origins are older and still debated. It was later incorporated into Islamic architecture. Its usage became more common and widespread under the Seljuks in the 10th century. Iwans were used in a variety of ways and arranged in varying positions in relation to
5148-485: Is a three-storeyed palatial complex, around which stands extensive greenery and tree cover. The floorspace of the ground floor is 7000 square metres. The president's residence is on the north-east corner, comprising two storeys of two suites along with five well-furnished spacious bedrooms. The president's office, the office of the civil and military secretaries and other presidential officials, and separate rooms for audience with local and foreign visitors are also located in
5304-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It
5460-668: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,
5616-638: Is common to Indo-Islamic architecture and is made of perforated stone. Other examples of balconies and related structures include the jharokha in Rajasthani and Indo-Islamic architecture and the mirador , a Spanish term applied to a balcony or lookout pavilion in Andalusi palaces like the Alhambra. Balconies also became an architectural element inside some mosques, such as the hünkâr mahfili in Ottoman mosques,
5772-699: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use
5928-426: Is due to discrepancies in the calculations of the Islamic scientists in the past who determined where Mecca was from their individual locations. Scholars note that these differences come about for a multitude of reasons, such as some misunderstanding the meaning of qibla itself, the fact that the geographic coordinates of the past do not line up with the coordinates of today, and that the determination of this direction
6084-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of
6240-413: Is made to rechristen the building to Bangabhaban , meaning "House of Bengal". After his release from custody in what was West Pakistan , the president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman , in 1972, resigned from presidency at the Bangabhaban to be sworn in as prime minister, due to the decision to switch to a parliamentary system of government. A book, Hundred Years of Bangabhaban , on the history of the Bangabhaban
6396-539: Is often regarded as the traditional "Islamic" city, occurred over a long period and was shaped by multiple social and economic causes that varied according to region and period. The arrival of Islamic rule was only one stage in a process that had already begun by the 6th century. The principle of arranging buildings is known as "horizontal spread". Residencies and public buildings as well as private housing tend to be laid out separately, and are not directly related to each other architectonically. Archaeological excavations at
Bangabhaban - Misplaced Pages Continue
6552-477: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of
6708-545: Is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It
6864-500: Is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal , and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar , Arunachal Pradesh , Delhi , Chhattisgarh , Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha and Uttarakhand . Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America,
7020-628: Is today the Darbar Hall of the Bangabhaban, and the palace soon came to be known as the Dilkusha Government House . Following the departure of the British and the independence of the Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, the new province of East Bengal officially became part of Pakistan and the palace came to be known as the Governor's House as it officially housed the governor of East Bengal . In 1955
7176-573: The Abbasid Caliphate (750–1513) was particularly influenced by Sasanian architecture, which in turn featured elements present since ancient Mesopotamia. Other influences such as ancient Soghdian architecture in Central Asia have also been noted. This was partly a result of the caliphate's political center shifting further east to the new capital of Baghdad , in present-day Iraq. The Abbasids also built other capital cities, such as Samarra in
7332-500: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played
7488-660: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including
7644-924: The Bab al-Mardum Mosque in Toledo and the minarets added to the Qarawiyyin and Andalusiyyin mosques in Fez (present-day Morocco ) demonstrate the prevalence of the same stylistic elements across the region. After its initial apogee of power, the Abbasid Caliphate became partly fragmented into regional states in the 9th century which were formally obedient to the caliphs in Baghdad but were de facto independent. The Aghlabids in Ifriqiya (roughly modern-day Tunisia ) were notable patrons of architecture themselves, responsible for rebuilding both
7800-653: The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and the Sasanian Empire . These two empires both cultivated their own major architectural traditions. Occupying the borderlands between these two empires – in the desert and steppe regions of Syria , Palestine , Mesopotamia and northern Arabia – were two Arab tribal client states : the Lakhmids , who were clients of the Sasanians and had their capital at al-Hira (in present-day Iraq ), and
7956-491: The Capilla de Villaviciosa , located several bays before the mihrab. In sections which now supporting these domes, additional supporting structures were needed to bear the thrust of the cupolas. The architects solved this problem by the construction of intersecting arches. The domes themselves are built with eight intersecting stone ribs. Rather than meeting in the centre of the dome, the ribs intersect one another off-center, leaving
SECTION 50
#17328590267568112-468: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of
8268-664: The Fatimid Caliphate rose to power in Ifriqiya, where it built a new fortified capital at Mahdia . In 970, the Fatimids moved their center of power to Egypt and founded another capital, Cairo . Fatimid architecture in Egypt followed Tulunid techniques and used similar materials, but also developed its own features. The first Fatimid congregational mosque in Cairo was al-Azhar Mosque , founded at
8424-557: The Ghassanids , who were clients of the Byzantines and protected their eastern borders. These two Arab dynasties were significant patrons of architecture in their respective regions. Their architecture is not well understood due to the scarcity of identifiable remains today, but they borrowed and adapted the architecture of their Byzantine and Sasanian suzerains . Some of their buildings are known from archeology or historical texts, such as
8580-573: The Great Mosque of Kairouan (originally founded by Uqba ibn Nafi in 670) and the Zaytuna Mosque of Tunis in much of their current forms, as well as for building numerous other structures in the region. In Egypt, Ahmad ibn Tulun established a short-lived dynasty, the Tulunids , and built himself a new capital ( Al-Qata'i ) and a new congregational mosque, known as the Ibn Tulun Mosque , which
8736-581: The Gunbad-i Qabus (1006–1007) in northeastern Iran, and the Duvazdah Imam Mausoleum (1037–1038) in Yazd . From the 12th century onward its usage became common across the Islamic world and different local styles developed over time. In addition to serving as squinches and pendentives , muqarnas was also employed to decorate cornices , portals, mihrabs, windows, arches, and entire domes. Balconies are
8892-410: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c. 1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in
9048-423: The Levant since the classical and Nabatean period. They were mainly used to cover houses and cisterns. The architectural form of covering diaphragm arches with barrel vaults, however, was likely newly introduced from Iranian architecture , as similar vaulting was not known in Bilad al-Sham before the arrival of the Umayyads. However, this form was well known in Iran from early Parthian times, as exemplified in
9204-473: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In
9360-407: The Roman -style basilica with an adjacent courtyard surrounded by colonnades , like Trajan's Forum in Rome. The Roman type of building has developed out of the Greek agora . In Islamic architecture, the hypostyle hall is the main feature of the hypostyle mosque. One of the earliest hypostyle mosques is the Tarikhaneh Mosque in Iran, dating back to the eighth century. Some scholars refer to
9516-536: The Taj Mahal ( Agra ), and at Humayun's Tomb ( New Delhi ), in India; the Shalimar Gardens ( Lahore , Pakistan ) or at the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada , Spain . As a common feature, Islamic architecture makes use of specific ornamental forms , including mathematically complicated, elaborate geometric patterns, floral motifs like the arabesque , and elaborate calligraphic inscriptions. The geometric or floral, interlaced forms, taken together, constitute an infinitely repeated pattern that extends beyond
SECTION 60
#17328590267569672-432: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"
9828-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script
9984-447: The de facto rule of the Buyid dynasty , northern Iran was ruled by the Bawandids and Ziyarids , and the northeastern regions of Khurasan and Transoxiana were ruled by the Samanids . It is around this period that many of the distinctive features of subsequent Iranian and Central Asian architecture first emerged, including the use of baked brick for both construction and decoration, the use of glazed tile for surface decoration, and
10140-617: The hypostyle format. In other cities, especially in Syria, new mosques were established by converting or occupying parts of existing churches in existing cities, as for example in Damascus and Hama . These early mosques had no minaret , although small shelters may have been constructed on the roofs to protect the muezzin while issuing the call to prayer . The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) combined elements of Byzantine architecture and Sasanian architecture , but Umayyad architecture introduced new combinations of these styles. The reuse of elements from classical Roman and Byzantine art
10296-411: The mihrab evolved to become the usual focus of architectural decoration in the building. The details of its shape and materials varied from region to region. In congregational mosques, the mihrab was usually flanked by a minbar (pulpit), and some historical mosques also included a nearby maqsura (a protected space for the ruler during prayers). The minaret is a tower that traditionally accompanies
10452-405: The oneness of God (e.g. Qur'an 112 ), and the role of Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets", which have been interpreted as an attempt to announce the rejection of the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity and to proclaim the triumph of Islam over Christianity and Judaism. Additionally, foundation inscriptions on buildings commonly indicate its founder or patron, the date of its construction,
10608-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong
10764-480: The qibla wall (the wall standing in the direction of prayer) of a mosque or other prayer space. It symbolized and indicated the direction of the qibla to worshippers. It also acquired ritual and ceremonial importance over time, and its shape was even used as a symbol on some coinage. The very first mosques did not have mihrabs; the first known concave mihrab niche was the one added to the Prophet's Mosque in Medina by Caliph al-Walid I in 706 or 707. In later mosques
10920-429: The 15th century, major Timurid monuments like the Gur-i Amir Mausoleum and the Bibi Khanum Mosque (both completed around 1404) were notable in their use of large double-shelled domes. These domes were composed of an inner shell which was visible from the interior and a larger outer shell, visible from the exterior and often of a slightly different shape. The Gur-i Amir Mausoleum's dome, the oldest one to have survived to
11076-457: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of
11232-637: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as
11388-576: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by
11544-404: The 9th century, which is now a major archeological site that has provided numerous insights into the evolution of Islamic art and architecture during this time. During the Abbasid Caliphate's golden years in the 8th and 9th centuries, its great power and unity allowed architectural fashions and innovations to spread quickly to other areas of the Islamic world under its influence. Features from
11700-451: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,
11856-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,
12012-586: The Byzantine/Roman worlds to the later Arab Islamic dynasties who established their political centers in the same regions. When the early Arab-Muslim conquests spread out from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and advanced across the Middle East and North Africa, new garrison cities were established in the conquered territories, such as Fustat in Egypt and Kufa in present-day Iraq. The central congregational mosques of these cities were built in
12168-534: The Great Mosque of Damascus feature a hypostyle hall in this fashion, with a dome above the space in front of the mihrab , and both were influential in the design of later mosques elsewhere. The Dome of the Rock and the Umayyad Mosque are also notable for their extensive program of mosaic decoration that drew on late Antique motifs and craftsmanship. However, mosaic decoration eventually fell out of fashion in Islamic architecture. The Abbasid architecture of
12324-679: The Iranian tradition. The design of the Tomb of Humayun (completed around 1571–72), including its double-shelled dome, suggests that its architects were familiar with Timurid monuments in Samarqand. The central dome of the Taj Mahal likewise features a bulbous profile and a double-shelled construction. The Great Mosque of Córdoba in Al-Andalus was initially built with a system of double-arched arcades supporting
12480-684: The Islamic West of Al-Andalus and the Maghreb. At around 1000 AD, the Bab al-Mardum Mosque in Toledo was constructed with a similar, eight-ribbed dome, surrounded by eight other ribbed domes of varying design. Similar domes are also seen in the mosque building of the Aljafería of Zaragoza . The architectural form of the ribbed dome was further developed in the Maghreb: the central dome of the Great Mosque of Tlemcen ,
12636-528: The Islamic world has led to multiple scholarly theories about their origin and spread, with one current theory proposing that they originated in one region at least a century earlier and then spread from there. Some of the earliest surviving examples preserved in situ are tripartite squinches used as transitional elements for domes and semi-domes, such as at the Arab-Ata Mausoleum (977–978) in Tim ( Uzbekistan ),
12792-504: The Lakhmid palaces of Khawarnaq and al-Sadir in al-Hira, a Ghassanid church with mosaic decoration at Nitil (near Madaba ), and a Ghassanid audience hall incorporated into the later Umayyad rural residence at ar-Rusafa . The culture and architecture of the Lakhmids and Ghassanids probably played a subsequent role in transmitting and filtering the architectural traditions of the Sasanian and
12948-520: The Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in the third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history,
13104-543: The Parthian buildings of Aššur . The earliest known example for barrel vaults resting on diaphragm arches from Umayyad architecture is known from Qasr Harane in Syria. During the early period, the diaphragm arches are built from coarsely cut limestone slabs, without using supporting falsework , which were connected by gypsum mortar . Later-period vaults were erected using pre-formed lateral ribs modelled from gypsum, which served as
13260-414: The Rock, its layout did not frequently serve as a model for major Islamic monuments after it. In hypostyle mosques, the Umayyads introduced the tradition of making the "nave" or aisle in front of the mihrab wider than the others, dividing the prayer room along its central axis. This innovation was probably inspired by the layout of existing Christian basilicas in the region. Both the al-Aqsa Mosque and
13416-576: The Selimiye Mosque, which came after many spatial and structural experiments in previous works, is Sinan's masterpiece and the pinnacle of Ottoman domed architecture. It optimizes the domed space, making all elements of the building subordinate to it. Ottoman sources boasted that its dome surpassed that of the Hagia Sophia for the first time. Gardens and water have for many centuries played an essential role in Islamic culture, and are often compared to
13572-557: The archaeological excavations at Pasargadae . The gardens of Chehel Sotoun ( Isfahan ), Fin Garden ( Kashan ), Eram Garden ( Shiraz ), Shazdeh Garden ( Mahan ), Dowlatabad Garden ( Yazd ), Abbasabad Garden ( Abbasabad ), Akbarieh Garden ( South Khorasan Province ), Pahlevanpour Garden , all in Iran , form part of the UNESCO World Heritage . Large Paradise gardens are also found at
13728-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on
13884-413: The beginning. It consisted of a simple courtyard structure built in unbaked brick, with a rectangular, almost square, floor plan measuring about 53 by 56 meters. A shaded portico supported by palm trunks stood on the north side of the courtyard, in the direction of prayer (the qibla ), which was initially towards Jerusalem . When the qibla was changed to face towards Mecca in 624, a similar portico
14040-426: The building. In the dome of the Hagia Sophia, the ribs and shell of the dome unite in a central medallion at the apex of the dome, the upper ends of the ribs being integrated into the shell; shell and ribs form one single structural entity. The structural transition below the dome is achieved by four pendentives and the domed space is extended by two semi-domes. This design, along with early Ottoman designs, served as
14196-471: The central space to be occupied by a smaller cupola. For the domes in front of the mihrab, the ribs form an eight-pointed star and an octagonal cupola in the centre. For the dome over the Capilla de Villaviciosa , the ribs leave a central square space between them, with an octagonal cupola added over this. The ribbed domes of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba served as models for later mosque buildings in
14352-506: The city of Jerash , the Gerasa of Antiquity, have revealed how the Umayyads have transformed the city plan. The antique concept of the architecture of a metropolis is based on a structure of main and smaller roads running through the entire city, and dividing it into quarters. The streets are oriented towards public buildings like a palace, temple, or a public square. Two main roads, ( cardo and decumanus ) cross each other at right angles in
14508-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in
14664-503: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in
14820-531: The development of muqarnas from squinches . Hypostyle mosques continued to be built and there is also evidence of multi-domed mosques, though most were modified or rebuilt in later eras. The Jameh Mosque of Na'in , one of the oldest surviving congregational mosques in Iran, contains some of the best-preserved features from this period, including decorative brickwork, Kufic inscriptions, and rich stucco decoration featuring vine scrolls and acanthus leaves that draw from
14976-587: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on
15132-608: The dome of the Tomb of Ahmed Sanjar in Merv , until they finally disappeared completely behind the double shell of a stucco dome, as seen in the dome of Ālī Qāpū in Isfahan. The use of domes in South Asia started with the establishment of Delhi sultanate in 1204 CE. Unlike Ottoman domes, and even more so than Persian domes, domes in South Asia tend to be more bulbous . Many monumental Mughal domes were also double-shelled and derived from
15288-570: The earlier styles of Samarra. Another important architectural trend to arise in the 10th to 11th centuries is the development of mausolea, which took on monumental forms for the first time. One type of mausoleum was the tomb tower, such as the Gunbad-i-Qabus (circa 1006–7), while the other main type was the domed square, such as the Tomb of the Samanids in Bukhara (before 943). In the 10th century,
15444-519: The earlier vegetal motifs of late antique traditions into more abstract and stylized forms, as exemplified by the so-called "beveled" style. These decorative techniques quickly spread to other regions where stucco decoration played a prominent role. Abbasid mosques all followed the courtyard plan with hypostyle halls. The earliest was the mosque that Caliph al-Mansur built in Baghdad (since destroyed). The Great Mosque of Samarra built by al-Mutawakkil measured 256 by 139 metres (840 by 456 ft), had
15600-463: The early hypostyle mosque with courtyard as the "Arab plan" or "Arab-type" mosque. Such mosques were constructed mostly under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties; subsequently, however, the simplicity of this type of plan limited the opportunities for further development, and as a result, these mosques gradually fell out of popularity in some regions. In Islamic buildings, vaulting follows two distinct architectural styles: While Umayyad architecture in
15756-672: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In
15912-549: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around
16068-404: The expansion by al-Hakam II (r. 961–976) introducing important aesthetic innovations such as interlacing arches and ribbed domes, which were imitated and elaborated in later monuments in the region. The construction of Madinat al-Zahra , a new capital and monumental palace-city in the 10th century, also created an important complex of royal architecture and patronage. Smaller monuments such as
16224-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,
16380-549: The first time in Umayyad architecture, later to evolve to its most advanced form in al-Andalus ( Iberian Peninsula ). The Dome of the Rock has a centralized floor plan with an octagonal layout. This was most likely modeled on earlier Byzantine martyria in the region that had a similar form, such as the Church of the Kathisma . Despite the religious and historical importance of the Dome of
16536-463: The flat timberwork ceiling. The columns of the arcades are connected by horseshoe arches which support brick pillars, which are in turn interconnected by semicircular arches. This arcade system was copied during the mosque's subsequent expansions, but the expansion by al-Hakam II after 961 also introduced a series of ornate ribbed domes. Three domes span the vaults in front of the mihrab wall while another one covers an area now known by its Spanish name,
16692-556: The form of buildings and in the decoration of surfaces with Islamic calligraphy , arabesques , and geometric motifs . New architectural elements like minarets , muqarnas , and multifoil arches were invented. Common or important types of buildings in Islamic architecture include mosques , madrasas , tombs , palaces , hammams (public baths), Sufi hospices (e.g. khanqahs or zawiyas ), fountains and sabils , commercial buildings (e.g. caravanserais and bazaars ), and military fortifications . The Islamic era began with
16848-511: The formation of Islam under the leadership of Muhammad in early 7th-century Arabia . The first mosque was a structure built by Muhammad in Medina in 622, right after his Hijrah (migration) from Mecca , which corresponds to the site of the present-day Mosque of the Prophet ( al-Masjid an-Nabawi ). It is usually described as his house, but may have been designed to serve as a community center from
17004-460: The formation of early Islamic society's visual culture. The Umayyads were the first to add the mihrab to mosque design, a concave niche in the qibla wall of the mosque. The first mihrab reportedly appeared at Muhammad's mosque in Medina when it was rebuilt by al-Walid I in 707. It seems to have represented the place where the Prophet stood when leading prayer. This almost immediately became
17160-423: The garden into four sections of equal size: One of the hallmarks of Persian gardens is the four-part garden laid out with axial paths that intersect at the garden's centre. This highly structured geometrical scheme, called the chahar bagh, became a powerful metaphor for the organization and domestication of the landscape, itself a symbol of political territory. A Charbagh from Achaemenid time has been identified in
17316-708: The garden of Paradise . The comparison originates from the Achaemenid Empire . In his dialogue " Oeconomicus ", Xenophon has Socrates relate the story of the Spartan general Lysander 's visit to the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger , who shows the Greek his "Paradise at Sardis". The classical form of the Persian Paradise garden , or the charbagh , comprises a rectangular irrigated space with elevated pathways, which divide
17472-714: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form
17628-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,
17784-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –
17940-522: The ground floor. In addition, there is a cabinet room, banquet hall, darbar hall ( court ), state dining hall, a small auditorium and a lounge for local visitors. In addition to the president's residence, there are five rooms for officials, a control room and a studio in the first floor. In the second floor, there are four suites for foreign heads of state and government. The Bangabhaban has an open compound of 50 acres (20 ha) of land. The security office, post office, bank, cafeteria hall, tailoring shop,
18096-483: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,
18252-510: The language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal
18408-535: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in
18564-477: The largest and most prominent being the Hagia Sophia . The brickwork-and-mortar ribs and the spherical shell of the central dome of the Hagia Sophia were built simultaneously, as a self-supporting structure without any wooden centring . In the early Byzantine church of Hagia Irene , the ribs of the dome vault are fully integrated into the shell, similar to Western Roman domes, and thus are not visible from within
18720-590: The late Umayyad period, such as vaulting, carved stucco , and painted wall decoration, were continued and elaborated in the Abbasid period. The four-centred arch , a more sophisticated form of the pointed arch , is first attested during the Abbasid period in monuments at Samarra, such as the Qasr al-Ashiq palace, and became widely used in some regions at later periods. Samarra also saw the appearance of new decorative styles, particularly in stucco and plasterwork, which rendered
18876-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between
19032-519: The main models for the early mosques built elsewhere. Scholars generally agree that aside from Muhammad's mosque/house, the architecture of the Arabian Peninsula seems to have had only a limited role in the formulation of later Islamic architecture. Prior to the start of the Arab-Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the two major powers in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean world were
19188-630: The model for subsequent development. Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan attempted to solve the structural issues of the Hagia Sophia dome by constructing a system of centrally symmetric pillars with flanking semi-domes, as exemplified by the design of the Süleymaniye Mosque (four pillars with two flanking shield walls and two semi-domes, 1550–1557) and the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne (eight pillars with four diagonal semi-domes, 1568–1574). The design of
19344-657: The name of the reigning sovereign, and other information. These decorative motifs are expressed in a range of mediums, including stone carving , brickwork, carved stucco , tilework, paint, glass mosaics, marble or stone paneling, and stained glass windows. Capitals, the upper part or crowing feature of a column, serve as a transition piece and are often decoratively carved. They range greatly in design and shape in Islamic Architecture. Early Islamic buildings in Iran featured "Persian" type capitals which included designs of bulls heads, while Mediterranean structures displayed
19500-472: The needs of the new Islamic society and Islamic facilities were inserted into the existing urban fabric after the conquest. In the case of Damascus and Aleppo, for example, the cities were largely of Roman-Byzantine heritage and their topography changed slowly. The Islamic presence was signaled at first only by the presence of a mosque (and, in Damascus, the royal palace). This transformation, which resulted in what
19656-532: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of
19812-407: The orientation of the building itself. Mosques and religious structures are built to have one side aligned with this direction, usually marked by a visual feature called a mihrab . The layout of some Muslim cities may have also been influenced by this orientation. In practice, however, the qibla alignments of mosques built in different periods and locations do not all point to the same place. This
19968-472: The origins of the minaret are uncertain, it is believed that the first true minarets appeared in this period. Several of the Abbasid mosques built in the early ninth century had minaret towers which stood at the northern ends of the building, opposite the central mihrab . Among the most famous of these is the Malwiyya minaret, a stand-alone tower with a "spiral" form built for the Great Mosque of Samarra. After
20124-854: The overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate in 750 by the Abbasids, a new branch of the Umayyad dynasty succeeded in taking control of Al-Andalus in 756, creating the Emirate of Córdoba and reaching the apogee of its power during the Caliphate of Córdoba in the 10th century. The Great Mosque of Córdoba , built in 785–786, marks the earliest major monument of Moorish architecture in the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus). This style of architecture established in Al-Andalus
20280-578: The palace are a symbolic indication of the presidency's ceremonial superiority to other public and national institutions. The Bangabhaban is a mix of Moghul architecture with touches of British era designs that typify numerous buildings of the British-era (1857–1947) in Dhaka. With the reconstruction between 1961 and 1964, many elements of Islamic architecture and Bangla styles were incorporated. The palace has high boundary walls on all four sides. The main building
20436-514: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming
20592-424: The period of the sultanate of Bengal , a Sufi saint, Hazrat Shahjalal Dakhini of Dhaka , and his followers were killed by agents of the sultan and buried on the site of Bangabhaban. The site soon became famous as a mazhar ( mausoleum ) for the devotees of the saint. It is conjectured that it belonged to a zamindar during the early period of British rule. Later Nawab of Dhaka Sir Khwaja Abdul Ghani bought
20748-594: The powerful vizier Badr al-Jamali (r. 1073–1094), the city walls were rebuilt in stone along with several monumental gates, three of which have survived to the present-day: Bab al-Futuh , Bab al-Nasr , and Bab Zuweila ). In the architecture of the Muslim world courtyards are found in secular and religious structures. A hypostyle , i.e., an open hall supported by columns, is considered to be derived from architectural traditions of Achaemenid period Persian assembly halls ( apadana ). This type of building originated from
20904-467: The present day, features an exterior ribbed profile with a band of muqarnas around its drum. However, domes of this shape and style were likely constructed earlier, as evidenced by the Sultaniyya Mausoleum in Cairo, which was built earlier in the 1350s and appears to have copied this same design from the Iranian tradition. The "non-radial rib vault", an architectural form of ribbed vaults with
21060-508: The province of East Bengal was restructured and renamed East Pakistan as part of the One Unit Scheme . The building was damaged by a storm in 1961; substantial reconstruction was completed by 1964. After the independence of Bangladesh, on 23 December 1971, in the nation's first ever cabinet meeting held at the Governor's House presided over by Acting President Syed Nazrul Islam , a decision
21216-479: The residents were organized according to tribal origins. Rather than maintaining their original purpose to serve as a military base, many amṣār developed into urbanized administrative and commercial centers. In particular, this happened in the case of the Iraqi cities of Kufa and Basra (which became known as al-miṣrān , "the two forts" ), as well as Fustat and Kairouan in North Africa. Basic facilities like
21372-451: The rest of the building. They are found in many types of buildings including mosques, madrasas, palaces, and caravanserais. A common layout is the four-iwan plan . The related Persian term, pishtaq , means the entrance portal (sometimes an iwan) projecting from the façade of a building, often decorated with calligraphy bands, glazed tilework , and geometric designs . Because of its long history of building and re-building, spanning
21528-487: The same time as the city (970), which became the spiritual center for the Ismaili Shi'a branch of Islam. Other notable monuments include the large Mosque of al-Hakim (founded in 990 under al-'Aziz but completed around 1013 under al-Hakim ), the small Aqmar Mosque (1125) with its richly-decorated street façade, and the domed Mashhad of Sayyida Ruqayya (1133), notable for its mihrab of elaborately-carved stucco. Under
21684-436: The site and built a bungalow there, which he named as Dilkusha Garden . With the partition of Bengal in 1905 by Lord Curzon , the government of the newly created province of Eastern Bengal and Assam bought the site and constructed a palatial house for the lieutenant-governor and his officers. On 14 February 1906, Sir Joseph Bamfylde Fuller , the first lieutenant-governor of the province , started his official work at what
21840-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent
21996-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where
22152-550: The time from the Abbasids to the Qajar dynasty , and its excellent state of conservation, the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan provides an overview over the experiments Islamic architects conducted with complicated vaulting structures. The system of squinches , which is a construction filling in the upper angles of a square room so as to form a base to receive an octagonal or spherical dome,
22308-412: The visible material world. Figural motifs, such as animals, humans, and imaginary creatures, have a rich tradition in Islamic art, though they generally more stylized than naturalistic. However, because of the religious taboo on figural representations , non-figural decoration remained more dominant overall and figural motifs were generally excluded from religious buildings entirely. The importance of
22464-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on
22620-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory
22776-405: The west continues Syrian traditions of the sixth and seventh century, eastern Islamic architecture was mainly influenced by Sasanian styles and forms. In their vaulting structures, Umayyad period buildings show a mixture of ancient Roman and Persian architectural traditions. Diaphragm arches with lintelled ceilings made of wood or stone beams, or, alternatively, with barrel vaults, were known in
22932-449: The written word in Islam ensured that epigraphic or calligraphic decoration played a prominent role in architecture. Epigraphic decoration can also indicate further political or religious messages through the selection of a textual program of inscriptions. For example, the calligraphic inscriptions adorning the Dome of the Rock include quotations from the Qur'an that reference the miracle of Jesus and his human nature (e.g. Quran 19 :33–35),
23088-442: Was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what
23244-423: Was added on the south side, facing towards that city. Muhammad and his family lived in separate rooms attached to the mosque, and Muhammad himself was buried in one of these rooms upon his death in 632. Over the rest of the 7th century and in the 8th century the mosque was repeatedly expanded to include a large flat-roofed prayer hall supported by columns (a hypostyle hall) with a central courtyard. It became one of
23400-404: Was already known in Sasanian architecture. The spherical triangles of the squinches were split up into further subdivisions or systems of niches, resulting in a complex interplay of supporting structures forming an ornamental spatial pattern which hides the weight of the structure. The tradition of double-shelled brick domes in Iran has been traced back to the 11th century. At the beginning of
23556-431: Was also largely shared with the architecture of western North Africa (the Maghreb ), from which later empires in the region would also emerge and contribute to its artistic evolution. The original Great Mosque of Cordoba was noted for its unique hypostyle hall with rows of double-tiered, two-coloured, arches, which were repeated and maintained in later extensions of the building. The mosque was expanded multiple times, with
23712-427: Was completed in 879. It was strongly influenced by Abbasid architecture in Samarra and remains one of the most notable and best-preserved examples of 9th-century architecture from the Abbasid Caliphate. In Iran and Central Asia, a number of other local and regional dynasties held sway prior to the arrival of the Seljuks in the 11th century. By the 10th century, central Iran and the Abbasid heartland of Iraq were under
23868-436: Was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of
24024-400: Was more an astronomical calculation, rather than a mathematical one. Early mosques were constructed according to either the calculations of what direction qibla was approximately, or with the mihrab facing south, as that was the direction that Muhammad was facing when he prayed in Medina, which is a city directly north of Mecca. The mihrab is a niche or alcove, typically concave, set into
24180-641: Was published in 2006. One of the most important symbols of the Bangladeshi government, the Bangabhaban holds a status akin to the official residence and office of heads of states around the world. The palace is an important historical landmark and the centre of media and tourist attraction. Special public ceremonies are held during Independence Day of Bangladesh on 26 March every year. The Bangladesh president frequently holds meetings, conferences and state dinners for all occasions representing Bangladesh, including national leaders, intellectuals and visiting foreign heads of states and ambassadors. The traditions and pomp of
24336-508: Was still widely evident because political power and patronage was centered in Syria, a former Roman/Byzantine province. Some former Ghassanid structures also appear to have been reused and modified during this period. However, a significant amount of experimentation occurred as Umayyad patrons recruited craftsmen from across the empire and architects were allowed, or even encouraged, to mix elements from different artistic traditions and to disregard traditional conventions and restraints. Partly as
#755244