Maqsurah

Maqsurah (Arabic مقصورة, literally "closed-off space"), an enclosure, a box or wooden screen near the mihrab or the center of the qibla wall, which was originally designed to shield a worshipping ruler from assassins.[1] The imam officiating inside the maqsurah typically belonged to the same school of law to which the ruler belonged.[2]

Not to be confused with Zarih.
A wooden maqsura in the Great Mosque of Kairouan.
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There also may have been some spiritual connotation similar to the chancel screen in churches. They were often wooden screens decorated with carvings or interlocking turned pieces of wood (similar to a mashrabiya).[3] Sometimes, Muslim saints were buried behind the Maqsura in a similar way to a zarih.

Historically, it was first used by the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, where the so-called "Mihrab of the Companions (of the Prophet)" belonged to the "Maqsura of the Companions".[4]

References
  1. "Maqsurah", Encyclopædia Britannica Online
  2. Gibbs, H.A.R. The Travels of Ibn Battuta (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1999) p127
  3. Dictionary of Islamic Architecture Archived 2011-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
  4. "The Great Ummayad Mosque"
  • Media related to Maqsura at Wikimedia Commons
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