سافر طلاب دفعة 2027 من برنامج الدراسات العليا في الدراسات الإسلامية والعلوم الإنسانية (GPISH) إلى الأندلس، إسبانيا، في إطار الرحلة الميدانية التعليمية للسنة الثانية من البرنامج. وتُقام هذه الرحلة، التي يقودها الدكتور غريغوري بيلوتو، كجزء من برنامج الإثراء الأكاديمي الخاصبالبرنامج، وتركّز على المعالم المعمارية الإسلامية في الغرب الإسلامي. وتُكمّل هذه الرحلة المقررات الأكاديمية للطلاب، وخاصة مقرر "الفنون والعمارة في المجتمعات الإسلامية"، من خلال إحياء الأماكن التي درسوها عبر النصوص والصور والمحاضرات وحلقات النقاش.
على مدار أربعة أيام، زارت المجموعة مدن مالقة وقرطبة ومدينة الزهراء وغرناطة، حيث اطلعت على بعض أهم المواقع المعمارية المرتبطة بتاريخ الحكم الإسلامي في شبه الجزيرة الأيبيرية.
وسّعت هذه الزيارة نطاق التعلّم من قاعة الدرس إلى التفاعل المباشر مع المكان. فقد كان الطلاب قد درسوا مسبقاً أشكال العمارة الإسلامية وتاريخها ودلالاتها. وفي الأندلس، تمكّنوا من التجوّل في هذه الفضاءات، ومراقبتها عن كثب، والتأمل في كيفية استمرار هذه المباني في التعبير عن أفكار تتعلق بالسلطة والإيمان والجمال والذاكرة والموروث الثقافي.
نقل العمارة إلى ما وراء الفصل الدراسي
يُعرّف مقرر "الفنون والعمارة في مجتمعات المسلمين" الطلابَ على التقاليد البصرية والمادية والمعمارية لمجتمعات المسلمين عبر مختلف العصور والمناطق. ويدعو المقرر الطلاب إلى التفكير النقدي في المباني، ليس بوصفها عناصر جمالية فحسب، بل بوصفها فضاءات تشكّلت بفعل السياق التاريخي، والرعاية، والمُعتَقد، والحياة الاجتماعية.
أتاحت الرحلة الميدانية إلى الأندلس للطلاب فرصةً لإضفاء بُعد التجربة المباشرة على دراستهم. وتأمّل عدد من الطلاب في الفرق بين دراسة العمارة عن بُعد والوقوف داخل المباني نفسها.
بالنسبة لهيا حسين، القادمة من كندا، عالجت الزيارة أحد أهم التحديات المحورية في الدراسة الأكاديمية: المسافة التي يمكن أن تنشأ أحياناً بين الأفكار والتجربة المعاشة. تقول هيا: "من أصعب ما يواجه المرء في الأوساط الأكاديمية هو أنها غالباً ما تبدو مجرّدة ومنفصلة عن العالم الحقيقي.
الرحلات مثل تلك التي قمنا بها إلى إسبانيا في إطار مقرر الفن والعمارة تضمن أن ما نتعلمه وندرسه ونبحث فيه لا يبدو مجرد مفاهيم مجردة فحسب، بل إن العمل الذي نقوم به يمكن أن يكون له تأثيرات ونتائج ملموسة في العالم الواقعي.
كان هذا الإحساس بالتعلم التجريبي مشتركًا بين جميع أفراد المجموعة. فقد تعرف الطلاب على آثار الأندلس من خلال المحاضرات والصور، لكن التواجد المباشر تجاوز ذلك ليكشف عن حجمها وأجوائها وتعقيداتها.
وكما عبّر محسن بيغ من شيترال، باكستان:
بعد أسابيع من دراسة العمارة الإسلامية في لندن، واستيعاب التواريخ والأسماء والأنماط المعمارية والصور، لم يكن هناك ما يُهيئني تمامًا للوقوف فعليًا داخل هذه الأماكن.
...حوّلت رحلتنا الجماعية التي امتدت أربعة أيام عبر مالقة وقرطبة وغرناطة، في إطار مقرر الفنون والعمارة في مجتمعات المسلمين، المعرفة النظرية إلى شيء ملموس وعملي أستطيع أن أشعر به الآن."
غيّر هذا التحوّل من النظرية إلى التجربة الطريقةَ التي تعامل بها الطلاب مع العمارة بوصفها شكلاً من أشكال المعرفة.
وأضاف محسن:
"بينما كنت أتجول في الجامع الأموي الكبير في قرطبة، متأملاً أقواسه البديعة، أو أستمتع بحدائق قصر الحمراء الخلابة في مدينة غرناطة الساحرة، أدركت أمورًا لا يمكن لأي محاضرة أن تُعلّمها بالكامل. أعتقد أن التجربة من أعمق مصادر المعرفة، وقد منحتني هذه الرحلة ذلك تمامًا."
بالنسبة لنورين لاخاني، التي تنحدر من كولكاتا في الهند، ساهمت هذه الرحلة في زيادة انتباهها للتفاصيل وتغيير علاقتها بمحتوى المقرر الدراسي.
أعتقد أنني قللت من شأن مدى تأثير رؤية هذه المباني شخصياً على تغيير طريقة فهمي لمحتوى المقرر الدراسي.
كان مسجد-كاتدرائية قرطبة من أوائل المواقع التي خالفت توقعاتها.
"كان مسجد-كاتدرائية قرطبة أول ما أثار دهشتي حقًّا. كنت قد شاهدت صورًا لتلك الأقواس مرات لا حصر لها في المحاضرات، لكن الوقوف داخلها وإدراك مدى امتدادها في كل اتجاه كان تجربة مختلفة تمامًا."
تجاوزت نتيجة هذه الرحلة حدود التقدير، لتنتقل إلى نمط نظر أكثر نشاطاً وتفاعلاً. فقد بدأ الطلاب بقراءة المباني بوصفها مصادر تاريخية: يتساءلون عمّا تكشفه، وما تخفيه، وكيف تتغير معانيها عبر الزمن.
Reading buildings as historical texts
Across Córdoba, Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, and Granada, students encountered spaces shaped by different forms of patronage, political ambition, religious transformation, and cultural memory.
The trip invited them to consider architecture as a historical text: something that can be read, questioned, and interpreted. Buildings do not merely survive from the past. They are altered, reused, restored, contested, and reinterpreted by each generation that inherits them.
For Nurain, the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba raised questions that became more immediate because she was physically inside the space.
“What I kept thinking about was the decision to build the cathedral directly through the mosque rather than demolish it. It says something complicated about power and coexistence, and being physically inside that space made those tensions feel very immediate rather than abstract.”
This movement from abstraction to immediacy shaped several student reflections. The site was experienced as a layered space where histories of power and adaptation remain visible.
Shabnaz Wali, from Chitral, Pakistan, also reflected on this complexity through the relationship between architecture and authority.
“Architecture has rarely functioned as a politically neutral enterprise. Ruling powers have consistently deployed the built environment as an instrument of legitimation, constructing spaces that encode ideology, assert dynastic continuity, and project authority in ways that written proclamations seldom achieve.”
For Shabnaz, Andalusia offered a powerful setting in which to explore these ideas.
Our cohort’s visit to Andalusia as part of the Arts and Architecture module offered a rare opportunity to walk through these contested spaces and reckon with what they reveal about power, memory, and cultural continuity.
Visiting these monuments helped to place them within broader histories of rule, succession, and transformation. Rather than viewing architecture as a static inheritance, she approached it as a record of competing claims.
The Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, in her view, remains a particularly significant example:
“The building’s present condition, in which Qur’anic inscriptions coexist with active Christian liturgical practice, resists singular narratives of supersession and operates instead as a living archive of contested legitimacy.”
This idea of the building as a “living archive” speaks to one of the central learning outcomes of the trip: how to interpret the visible traces of historical change. Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ extended these questions in a different direction. For Nurain, it was one of the most engaging parts of the trip because of the site’s ongoing excavation and the questions it raised about reconstruction.
“Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ was where I felt most engaged. There is something about a site still being uncovered that makes you more aware of what you are actually looking at. Getting access to the Royal Hall, which is not open to the public, was the part of the trip I keep coming back to.”
The experience encouraged her to think carefully about preservation and interpretation.
“The carved stone decoration that has survived is so refined and deliberate, and seeing it in an unrestored state made me think more carefully about how we interpret and reconstruct the past. It raised questions for me about what gets prioritised in restoration and why.”
Shabnaz also reflected on Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ as a space where architecture and political ambition meet.
“Moving through the site’s surviving pathways and entering that ceremonial hall, I was confronted simultaneously with the ambition of the civilisation that produced it and the totality of its collapse.”
For students, such encounters opened up questions that reached beyond architectural form. The sites invited reflection on the fragility of power, the survival of material culture, and the responsibilities involved in interpreting the past.
Beauty, meaning, and the built environment
The visit to Granada and the Alhambra prompted a different set of reflections. Students considered how the elements of spatial design work together within Islamic architectural traditions.
The Alhambra became a space through which students could think about the relationship between concept and execution, theory and experience, and the spiritual and the everyday.
Nurain reflected:
“The Alhambra felt almost overwhelming at first. The Nasrid Palaces in particular pushed me to think about how Islamic architectural theory actually works in practice, how geometry, light, water and surface decoration are not separate elements but part of a single, unified intention.”
This changed how she understood the material studied in class.
That connection between concept and execution is something I had read about but not really internalised until standing inside it.
Mubashir Artas, from Gilgit, Pakistan, also reflected on the limitations of written sources when studying architecture and history.
There is a profound difference between reading history in textbooks and encountering it in tangible form.
For him, the visit revealed architecture as a record of values and intellectual ambition.
“I came to appreciate a living archive that records the values, beliefs, and intellectual ambitions of a civilisation in ways that written sources alone cannot.”
His reflection also challenged the tendency to separate religious and worldly categories when discussing Islamic art and architecture.
“Standing before the Alhambra and walking through the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, I was struck by how seamlessly the spiritual and the everyday were woven together.”
He continued:
“A key learning for me was that much contemporary scholarship on Islamic art and architecture imposes a dichotomy between the religious and the worldly, yet the builders and patrons of these spaces likely did not perceive such a divide. For them, beauty, faith, knowledge, and daily life were a single, integrated whole, a perspective worth recovering.”
This insight connects closely with the aims of the GPISH curriculum, which encourages students to think across disciplines and to question inherited categories.
Learning to see differently
Taken together, the reflections show how the field trip changed students’ ways of seeing. For Mohsin, this shift was personal and lasting.
“What changed most was my confidence. I no longer just look at architecture and admire it from a distance. Now I study it, its patterns, its proportions, its meaning. That shift will stay with me for life.”
For Haya, the trip brought together different strands of GPISH learning.
“Because this module is different from a lot of the GPISH curriculum in that it is built on different ways of thinking and approaching texts and contexts, having the physical experience of being inside the architecture that we had been discussing for so many sessions was especially important.”
The experience of Córdoba, in particular, became a point where areas of study seemed to converge.
“While standing in the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, I couldn’t help but be in awe of how the city was a maze of palimpsests, and that came through in the experience itself. While the city was a mix of cultures, religions, and empires, all of our GPISH courses to date were culminating in our experience of it.”
This is where the significance of the field trip becomes clearest. It allowed students to bring together historical study, textual analysis, material culture and religious studies through lived observation. Such experiences are central to the wider educational purpose of GPISH. The programme prepares students to engage critically with Muslim histories, societies, and intellectual traditions. Field trips extend that learning by placing students in direct contact with the material and cultural environments through which those histories are preserved, contested, and remembered.
Nasr Zain, who comes from Salamiyah, Syria, approached Andalusia through music. Having grown up loving the guitar, he connected the trip to one of the first difficult pieces he learned, “Recuerdos de la Alhambra”.
“This now makes a whole lot of sense after visiting Andalucia, where every scene and every background look like a guitar piece.”
His reflection offers a different but equally powerful way of understanding place through rhythm and movement.
“Córdoba was a beautiful, lively tune that carries you alongside the Muslim architecture. Granada was the slow, entangled, and sometimes ascending music with each and every Calle.”
He added:
“And with all the hustle and travelling, time went slowly as I passed from one memorable place to another.”
This closing reflection captures something shared across the cohort. The trip was intellectually demanding, but it was also personal, with a sense of wonder.
A continuing encounter with the past
The GPISH 2027 cohort’s field trip to Córdoba, Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, and Granada showed how direct engagement with place can deepen academic study. The visit allowed students to extend their understanding of architecture as a living archive of power, culture and faith. They also described a shift in themselves: from looking at buildings to reading them, and from studying the past to encountering its material presence.
