Sahn
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A sahn (Arabic: صحن, ṣaḥn), in Islamic architecture, is a courtyard. Almost every mosque has a sahn, which is surrounded by an arcade from all sides. In Persian architecture, the sahn usually contains a howz, a symmetrical pool, where ablutions are performed. Some also contain drinking fountains.
The use of the sahn is very old, ruins of houses in Ur with sahns have been found. It is probably the unifying element in almost all buildings throughout the Arab world from Iraq to Morocco; used in urban, rural and Bedouin communities. Originally, it was used for residential buildings, mainly houses and palaces, as a private internal garden; later on it was used for every building.
House sahns are the most used and the most private. The design details may differ in urban, rural and Bedouin as well as from place to place but the basic functions remain the same. The sahn is used as a private garden for the family, a service yard during the day and in the summer it would be used as a family room. Usually the entrance of the house does not lead to the sahn directly, rather it would lead to the sahn through a broken or curved corridor called a majaz (Arabic: مجاز, mağāz), this allowed the residents to open the main door and allow guests into the reception room, called the majlis(Arabic: مجلس, mağlis) without seeing the sahn.
In urban settings, the sahn is usually surrounded by a colonnade, and has a howz, or pool of water, in the middle. The iwan, which is a family room with only three walls, usually overlooks the sahn, sometimes at two floors, as well as the stairwell. If the house has two floors, the upper floor may either have an additional colonnade or a row of mashrabiya, or lattice-work windows.
The idea of a private open space in the middle is mirrored even in the design of the cities: in addition to a central open area in the centre of city (used as a market), when designing neighbourhoods the plot of land dedicated would be built around the perimeter leaving the centre open, called the saha (Arabic: ساحة, sāḥä). The difference between this area and the concept of the agora and forum is that the latter is public for all to use while the former is private only for the neighbourhood residents, which usually consisted of members of the same tribe.
The use of sahn in Arabic architecture continued until the mid-twentieth century when modernism in architecture began to affect the design of both houses and public buildings, although a number of uses remained constant; specifically the mosque sahn.
Almost every mosque has a sahn, in which it is surrounded by an arcade from all sides. The use of the sahn in mosques has been exported to almost all Islamic countries. The howz in the sahn of the mosque was used for wudu (ablution) until mosques started to have separate toilets and washrooms in the twentieth century. The sahn in the mosque is not a religious necessity, hence some mosques do not have a sahn.
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