Definition of Mashrabiya
Mashrabiya is the prominent window that overlooks the street or the courtyard of traditional Arab houses. In the past Mashrabiya was the name given to space, which is enclosed with wooden lattice openings (Figure 2.1), where jars of drinking water were putto cool. Coolair was created by the evaporation which is caused by the movement of air through the lattice openings(Fathy, 1986).
Figure 2.1:The cooling effect of Mashrabiya (Dayyoub, 2001)
Later, the name Mashrabiya was only given to the lattice screen, which is made of wooden balusters with a circular section (Figure 2.2), as a perfect condition to provide smoother airflow which contributes to the evaporation factor. This screen was completely hand-made and the design of the balusters was varied in different, artistic ways (Figure 2.3) for example, geometric and floral decorative forms or Arabic inscriptions (Figure 2.4) (Fathy,1986)
Figure2.2: Traditional Mashrabiya typology (Samuels, 2011)
Figure 2.3: An old Mashrabiya in Pakistan decorated with floral forms (Orfali, 2015)
Figure 2.4: Mashrabiya with Arabic inscriptions and calligraphy designs from the Quranon theterrace of Gayer Anderson House in Cairo, Egypt (Alothman, 2016)
It can be seen that the Mashrabiya differs from other prominent windows or any random lattice screens; it was designed to respond specifically, effectively and dynamically to people’s physical, environmental, social, physiological and religious requirements.