Position of Architecture in the Muslim Classification of Sciences during the First Islamic Centuries: with an Emphasis on Fārābi’s Thought

One of the ways of studying architecture in the premodern Islamic world is to approach it epistemically, especially with regard to its relationship with the formal sciences. Since the very beginning of the intellectual movement in the mid-second century AH/eighth century AD, Muslim philosophers paid attention to the classification of sciences. In this article, we examine the most important primary sources on science classification in the first phase of the history of science in the Islamic world, that is, from the mid-second/eighth century to the fifth/eleventh century, with an emphasis on Fārābi’s works. Using the techniques of “conceptual history”, we trace the concept of architecture in the sources—regardless of its different manifestations as in words, terms, or systems of classification -̶ to identify its position in relation to other sciences. For this purpose, after a brief historical survey and introducing our sources that are six primary books written in the first Islamic centuries we observe the different manifestations of the concept of architecture. The most straightforward word in the conceptual field of architecture found in the sources is ṣināʿat al-bināʾ (the art/craft of building). This term mostly appears in Fārābi’s and Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’s works in the field of civil practical arts/crafts in relation to other sciences and arts/crafts. Fārābi also addresses another art/craft in the conceptual field of architecture as ṣināʿat al-riʾāsat al-bināʾ and describes its relation to ṣināʿa al-bināʾ. Some layers and parts of architecture are also found in sciences such as the al-ʿilm al-ḥiyal, al-ʿilm al-masāḥah, and al-ʿilm al-naql al-miyāh. After Ikhwān, consideration of arts/crafts including architecture gradually declined in the works of Muslim philosophers.