Mosques as monuments : an inter-Asian perspective on monumentality and religious landscapes

This article examines monumental mosques and particularly those that are built to be and function
more as monuments than as places for worship. We consider the role of monumentality in
religious landscapes by way of six exemplary mosques in three different world regions – Central
Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Southeast Asia. Tracing their unique histories and the identity
narratives inscribed in their built form, we stress three broader commonalities among these
mosques-as-monuments: (1) each is the result of top-down, state-funded planning infused with
strong nationalist or ideological symbolism, (2) each was designed to be an iconic architectural
showpiece in the country’s capital city, and (3) each represents a stark contrast to other places
of worship within that national or regional context. In this unique comparative study, we use an
interpretive approach designed to push the research on monuments and monumentality into new
directions and new empirical contexts, and specifically to ask why and with what effect some
religious sites are primarily monuments and only secondarily places of worship.