AhlulBayt News Agency: A senior Iranian cleric said Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) has the methodological capacity to generate theory in architecture and urban planning.
Ayatollah Ahmad Moballeghi, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts and a senior lecturer at the Qom seminary, warned, however, that this goes beyond simply collecting scattered religious rulings or copying historical designs.
He made the remarks while speaking at an academic meeting at the University of Qom on Monday.
Organized by the university's Research Institute for Islamic Architecture and Urban Planning, the event was titled “An Introduction to Deriving Islamic Theory in Architecture and Urban Planning”.
Ayatollah Moballeghi said architecture and urban planning cannot be treated as purely technical fields, adding that because of their direct connection to individual and social human life, these fields must be examined in a scientific and methodical framework in relation to Islamic principles and values.
He distinguished between deriving a single religious ruling and deriving a broader theory. “Deriving a theory requires understanding not only the relevant rulings and propositions, but also the relationships between them, their shared foundations, and the principles governing the whole set of rulings,” he said.
Collecting rulings on buildings, roads, neighbors’ rights, and public spaces is not enough on its own to produce an Islamic theory of architecture and urban planning, he said, adding that the goal is to move from scattered issues to a coherent theoretical structure.
Ayatollah Moballeghi said Islamic jurisprudence and its principles of legal methodology offer significant methodological tools for theory-building.
“However, using these capacities requires a precise explanation of the method for deriving theory and a clear definition of its relationship to the conventional method of deriving religious rulings,” he stated.
He also cautioned against equating the historical architecture of Muslim societies with an Islamic theory of architecture.
“It is not possible to directly attribute all the elements and features of architecture formed in different historical periods to Islam without examining their foundations and the conditions of their emergence.”
The architectural heritage of Islamic civilization, he added, is historically and culturally valuable but does not necessarily reflect the full theoretical potential of Islamic teachings.
An Islamic theory of architecture and urban planning, he argued, must go beyond outward forms and symbols. “It must address the principles governing the organization of space, individual rights, social relations, justice, privacy, and the quality of human life, and explain how these components relate to Islamic teachings.”
Ayatollah Moballeghi stressed that architecture and urban planning are interdisciplinary by nature.
Islamic sciences cannot produce comprehensive and reliable results in this field without a precise understanding of the subject matter and input from professional architects and urban planners, he said, calling for cooperation among jurists, Islamic scholars, and architecture and urban planning researchers.
He linked the need for new theoretical work to rapid changes in urban life. Shifting housing patterns, expanding urbanization, and new forms of social relations have made it more urgent to revisit the capacities of Islamic sciences, he said.
He stressed that a distinction must be made between fixed Islamic principles and the changing forms they take in different times and places. Otherwise, he warned, Islamic theory-building will be limited to repeating past models or offering vague, impractical recommendations.
On methodology, Ayatollah Moballeghi said the credibility of an Islamic theory depends not only on its internal coherence and explanatory power, but also on how it is grounded in authoritative religious sources and whether it follows scholarly standards of inference. “Attributing any architectural view or model to Islam requires a clear argumentative and methodological basis,” he said.
He concluded by calling for expanded scientific dialogue between Iran’s religious seminaries and universities and emphasized the need for foundational and interdisciplinary research in Islamic architecture and urban planning.
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