The Effect of Coordination as a Criterion of Aesthetics with Regard to Islamic Philosophy on the Spirituality of the Interior Space of Mosques

The quality of interior space of each building should be amenable to the life type according to which its structure has been created. Mosques as distinctive structures of Islamic Architecture, observe this princi ple, as well. The main activity occurring in the mosques, i.e. praying, has not changed during the history and their aesthetic characteristics as a funda mental concept in Islamic Architecture have always been under attention in all stages. With this back ground, this paper tries to study how Aesthetics and the quality of interior space of mosques are related and how coordination as one of the aesthetic criteria with regard to Islamic philosophy affects the quality of interior space of mosques. It seems that the rela tionship between these two concepts should be con sidered both in parts and as a whole. So the main hypothesis of this study is that “coordination affects the spirituality of interior space of mosques by influ encing the elements of space and the interaction that exists between these elements”. Since the historical mosques are the most prominent instances of Islamic art and architecture, Sheikh Lotfollah mosque is con sidered in this study. In order to determine the extent to which coordination affects the spirituality of inte rior space, 40 specialists in architecture and Islamic architecture in Tabriz, who had previously visited Sheikh Lotfollah, participated in this study. The data gathering instrument was a questionnaire, consisting of two parts. In the first part, 15 direct questions were asked in order to examine the impacts of coordination between the elements of space on the spirituality of the mosque, and in the second part, 20 indirect questions were asked to evaluate the interaction between the elements of interior space of Sheikh Lotfollah mosque. Moreover, some photos of interior space of Sheikh Lotfollah with high resolution and great quality were given to the participants along with the ques tionnaires. Then all the questionnaires were analyzed by the SPSS software and the results were discussed using qualitative methods. The results indicate that not only is there a significant relationship between coordination and the spirituality of the interior space of mosques, but also coordination significantly affects individual elements that create the spirituality of the interior space of mosques as well as the interaction that exists between these elements. It means that, individual elements cannot create the framework of a building by themselves, rather, the interaction be tween the elements and the effects they have on each other is essential in this regard.
 Considering the coordination of each element of interior space, it can be claimed that the items of ma terial and color have the most influence on the spirit uality of the space and when the interaction between the elements and their coordination is being exam ined, proportion and color have the most impact on the spirituality of the space.