International Association for semiotics of space and time, Finland, Helsinki, leeheesook@hotmail.com
Mosques are built according to cultural traditions throughout the world, but communal prayers in Indonesia were novel. The Holy Koran contains few regulations about a mosque’s form. Javanese architects can interpret its requirements following an individual meditation from Hindu-Buddhist temples. Pre-Islamic traditions underline the form and setting of the site; thus, mystical Sufis borrowed these elements based on their belief that mosques are holy, creating indigenous and Islamic ideas and forms in the structural arrangements of the site. Existing forms could encourage non-Muslims to enter the building and receive Islamic teachings for conversion. The Javanese mosque’s character is its culture. Muslims consider Hindu-Buddhist elements a mystical approach to God, and Islam teaching is their primary obligation, validating Allah’s creation of this world as a mosque. These debates changed from a narrowed concern for the physical form to comprehensive incorporation of Islam’s spiritual-symbolic aspects of the mosque. Questions concern liminal encounters in different parts of mosque spaces. When does the border between sacredness and profanity occur? How does it get formed? Who is the signifier? This paper adopts Lotman’s semiosphere of the “alien” and “centre” concept to define the sacred temporal space through Javanese Muslims’ cognitive mindsets, inherited from local traditions.
Lotman’s semiosphere; syncretic Javanese mosques; Agung Demak; sacred-profane spaces; cognitive mindset
Download textFor citing: Lee-Niinioja Hee Sook. (2023). Semiotic Spaces of Javanese Muslims’ Cognitive Mindset in the Syncretic Agung Demak Mosque, Indonesia. Human being: Image and essence. Humanitarian aspects. Moscow: INION RAN. Vol. 1(53): Spatial semiotics: architecture, place and sign, pp. 90-109. DOI: 10.31249/chel/2023.01.05