Hybrid ‘Artyficiality’

Text and Photography: M. Sayem Ghayur

Right at the time when our country is witnessing the worst social conditions in its short history as a free state, with a looming energy crisis, religious confusion, political instability and an insatiable onslaught of inflation, I decided to take a break. To be factual more than fictional, I actually planned to go to Indonesia via Dubai but gave up the idea the moment I realized that my travel dates had actually coincided with DSF (Dubai Shopping Festival). Saving on the Indonesia trip altogether would have given me a larger budget for shopping that I had never done with an open heart before, and going to a shopping festival sounded like just the right thing to do.

So I embarked upon the experience after reading and listening to opinions of many just to observe how opinions contrasted with personal experience. Dubai fifty years back was just a desert comprising primarily of fishermen and their camels, and a few decades later, its not only a desert but has the best shore lines, islands, hotels, night clubs, resorts, shopping malls, and all the best of the globe. To the eye it looks like a shot out of the “fast and the furious”, where speedy cars, stretching highways, winding bridges and the out of scale skyscrapers teach you the lifestyle, but actually just like the manifold and eclectic influences, the Emirate is a lot more than just that too.

Dubai is one of the seven Emirates of the UAE (United Arab Emirates), other being Abu Dhabi, Al-Ain, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, Ajman and Sharjah. The total population of UAE is around 4.4 million out of that only 1.4 million are UAE nationals and the rest are expatriates from all around the world. Indian community is the biggest with a population of around 1.4 million; the second largest community is that of around half a million Pakistanis. The multi-ethnic demographics and the transit nature of Dubai give it a very global appeal. To make it more global it is thematically planned and designed to have the best characteristics of the entire globe. Multiple culture influenced development is coupled with corresponding events and festivities to put it all in the befitting limelight. This multi-ethnic characteristic of UAE is evident not only in its built spaces and development but even in the way people use and inhabit these places. Dubai reflects the presence of all these expatriates in its events and architecture.

Overall Dubai, a tax-free port city, looks like a big shopping mall in itself. It has huge shopping malls at the corner of every street, in fact all along every street, and all of them are cities in themselves; cities of commodities, designer-ware and food courts. Just to attest the presence of a global culture and not taking precedence in local history, art, crafts and culture, these malls take on themes based on foreign cities and their respective histories and cultures. Dubai relies deeply upon borrowed ideas and themes to make the borrowed manpower from these foreign lands interested in a land as such. Besides giving these expatriates a reason to feel at home and environments to relate to, these global influences and artificial environments make the Emirate itself rich and full of variety, and above all prove to be business friendly for the tourism industry.
These thematic shopping malls along with their pseudo-environments make shopping experience not only fun for window-shopping but sight-seeing too. Mercato Shopping Mall is designed to look like a Mediterranean town during the Renaissance era. Wafi City complex is a mixed-use development in Dubai, including a mall, hotel, restaurants, residences, and a nightclub. This “city’s” environment is themed after ancient Egypt by the help of pharaoh statues, hieroglyphics embossed columns, hieroglyphics painted glass pyramids and entire building plans derived out from a pyramid form.  Mall of the Emirates is currently the largest shopping mall in the Middle East. Its biggest claim to fame is the Middle East’s first indoor ski slope, Ski Dubai, that gives you a feel of the northern hemisphere in the land of sweltering sand and dusty winds.

Ibn Battuta Mall is one of Dubai’s most visited sites due to its astounding architectural design, its concept and the way it combines retail, entertainment, historical education, eating-out and various other family activities within a distinctively themed environment. This fabricated environment aptly reflects the very essence of Dubai in the combination of Middle Eastern heritage and cosmopolitan lifestyle. It encapsulates the true spirit of 21st Century Shopping in the 14th Century World, besides bringing to life the adventures and excitement of the life of Ibn Battuta, the famous Arabian traveler and scholar.


The said mall takes its name and design concepts from the travels of the renowned 14th century explorer, Ibn Battuta, a man who traveled over 75,000 miles during his lifetime. He set out to go on Haj, and before returning home, he toured many countries for the next 25 years. This experience resulted in a travelogue called Rihla, in which he penned down his worldwide encounters in a comprehensive manner. And finally, Ibn Batuta mall presents the same adventures in an interactively illustrative way.

The Mall is divided into six main courts reflecting the most influential places Ibn Battuta traveled. The six courts: China, India, Egypt, Tunisia, Persia and Andalusia, not only allow visitors an invaluable glimpse into the past but conceptually enable people to follow the footsteps of the legendary Moroccan explorer. No expense has been spared in order to ensure that each court is able to maintain the look and feel of the represented regions through the attention to detail in the architecture.

Furthermore, the mall offers ‘edutainment’ features that combine entertainment and education. Visitors can benefit from storytelling tours at the mall providing an exciting opportunity for the public to better understand the historic value of the architecture, theme, and the life of Ibn Battuta. “1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered” is a unique and historical exhibition which is open for viewing in different parts of the mall. It aims to increase awareness on 1000 years of Muslim contribution in science and technology to modern civilization and is the first of its kind in the World. The exhibition consists of 27 historical inventions, discoveries and innovations all by Islamic scholars. Visitors have the opportunity to view and read about all of the exhibits free of charge, as they stroll through the mall’s six courts. However, more than anything else, the concept of having super-incorporated an interactive science centre and a museum in a place as commercial as a shopping mall seems possible only in a place like Dubai.

Starting with the China Court, it is quintessentially red and its major attraction is the life-size Chinese junk boat that is positioned in the centre of the court. This boat is similar to the one used by Ibn Battuta during his voyage through China. Ibn Battuta’s boat had crashed off the shores of China, thus the one at Ibn Battuta mall actually happens to be a replica of the wrecked boat. Intelligently enough, the wreck is turned into a virtual 3-D aquarium; the visitors can walk through this opening in the front of the boat. The Chinese inventions of Zheng He, a Muslim who was the Admiral of the vast Chinese fleet which traversed the oceans in the 15th Century, can also be viewed in this court. The China court houses a 21 screen cinema including UAE´s very first IMAX theatre. One of the two larger food courts also happens to be in the China court. The other one is at the other end, the Andalusia Court. Both the food courts offer a diverse range of international cuisine.

The Indian Court takes its decoration from the embellishments of the 17th-century Taj Mahal but meant to be conceived plainly as Mughal Architecture (or 14th Century Tughluqid); its scintillating white is enhanced by laser lights in the centre of all the motif carvings. Coming right after the red China court, it tends to appear much more majestic than it could have, being on its own. The pivot of attention in this court happens to be a modern full-size working reproduction of an elephant clock, an Islamic invention consisting of a water-powered clock in the form of an elephant. This eight-meter tall replica of the elephant clock devised by the 12th century Mesopotamian engineer Ibn Ismail Ibn Al Razzaz Al Jazari is made using the same materials as of the original. Mall visitors can watch the mechanism ticking over, the dragon-serpent, falcon, and elephant rider moving and the clock dial shifting every 10 minutes. The Mughal court with its carved arches, jali screens, columns and extravagant chandeliers looks regal as relived.

Persian Court highlights the theme of Ibn Battuta’s discovery of a hidden cave of gold and other treasures and personally I found it to be the most beautiful of all the courts with its highly ornate tiled dome, a replication of the dome of the Shaykh Lutf Allah Mosque in Isfahan, ironically enough this dome hovers above an outlet of Starbucks Coffee. It will be interesting to note that Shaykh Lutf Allah Mosque in Isfahan was not even built when Ibn Battuta traveled there, however it is borne on piers borrowed from Baghdad’s Mustansiriyyah Madrassa, a building he did see. The ancient astronomical computer called the Islamic Astrolabe is one of the four astro-tools exhibited in Persia Court. The astrolabe was used by Muslims to determine prayer times and the direction of Mecca. They remained popular until 1800 AD. The Islamic Celestial Globe, a 3 dimensional map of the stars, the quadrant and armillary sphere are interactive astronomical tools which are based around the Mini Observatory in the Persia Court.

After coming into the Egyptian Court you get a feel that it is designed naively to look just Egyptian more than the Egypt at the time of Battuta’s travel. A more cynical look at the designing of the mall would make you realize that all designing has been inspired by Ibn Battuta’s travels for sure but it doesn’t actually document the styles of architecture of that era specifically and has not all to do with his travel experience alone but the commercial catch of it. Some parts of the Egyptian court depict a 14th century Cairo, while others are themed with hieroglyphic friezes alone. The arches, ceilings, overall lighting along with suspended fixtures and ornamentation of all the courts is worth observing for most of the time. The Egypt Court is home to many fascinating inventions, including the 8m tall armillary sphere, an accurate reconstruction of a manuscript from the 14th Century.

By the time you come to Tunisia you are already hyper bombarded with visuals and information to take anything into notice, and its time that you have already realized that it all changes too much too quick. I had my fascination fixed with the Persian court and I wanted to go back to it to have coffee there, so Tunisia was not as well appreciated by me as it could have, if the Persia court fascination hadn’t stung the very best of me. However, the major difference between this area and the rest was clearly visible. All the other courts take you inside the famous architecture of the specified territories; Tunisia takes you around its architecture. Thus, shows you a fake sky with spurious impression of winds gently unsettling the leaves of plastic palm trees. It felt quite “modern” to experience the primitiveness of a 14th century city.  The exhibition hosts eight fully operational interactive exhibits representing ingenious devices of a 13th Century Muslim mechanic and engineer Al Jazari, known as the father of modern day engineering. Six of Al Jazari’s Water Raising Devices that he created to help farmers increase their agricultural area by irrigating arid soils, can be explored in the Tunisia Court at the Mall in the middle of a grand food court.

Andalusia happens to be the last of all the courts, seventh in the line, yet doesn’t have the feel of a culmination point. Considering the fact that you have to walk all the way back to the court you entered from, this becomes the start of the end, so a culmination would have been redundant. This court sees all sorts of arches used in Moorish architecture, tre-foil, horse-shoe, and others. A Court of Lions fountain is found there too, totally out of the original context, and thus holding no significance at all. Yet, it made me realize one thing quite strongly, all the design work done to create environments of the different parts of the world that Ibn Battuta traveled, was based on architectural styles and styles of ornamentation to be exact; flat ceilings, against a dome or a cylindrical one, different styles of columns in different courts, or the arches, or the lighting devices. The moment they reproduced an actual architectural element from history, like the Shaykh Lutf Allah Mosque dome or the court of lion fountain from the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, it proved a disgrace to the effect of the original. I do not doubt the level of actuality with which these architectural wonders have been replicated but the context in which they are placed, amidst food courts and retail outlets of branded wares i.e. What if all the courts had such lifted monuments rather than lifted and contemporized design elements?
Besides the conceptual, historical, thematic, and aesthetic distinction of the six courts, the single level mall covering 3.1 million square feet is also subjected to retail zoning in its shopping experience planning. The shopping zones are divided into three sections, the first being Family Convenience, then Major Department Stores, Up-Market Brands & Lifestyles and finally the Entertainment World. In doing so, a consumer can shop with ease rather than rush around the mall in search of a particular product or service, giving him a trouble-free shopping experience. The mall can be entered into different courts too, it is not necessary to take the sequence of the experience. For the first time when you come for sight seeing purpose it makes sense, but if you come for shopping, taking the whole trip just doesn’t make sense. To aid entry into different parts of the mall, a total of ten car parks with a capacity of 5000 parking spaces are provided.

The mall when viewed from the outside seems much larger than it is experienced, and this happens due to the fact that the retail outlets take much of the space of the mall, if you don’t go into each an every corner of all the outlets, you avoid a major chunk of the mall from walking it. So after going from one corner of the mall to the other, coming back doesn’t feel as much as it should be, logically speaking that is.

The meticulous job of art directors, designers, engineers and architects, is much evident in the way the culture of each individual place is reflected throughout the shopping mall. The team of experts responsible for such an extensive experience actually managed to transform the traditional souk concept into a modern mall experience quite successfully. Though, it could have been disturbing for Ibn Battuta himself to see how his 120,000km journey has been shrunk into an extravagant and commercial yet exuberant and fast tour of a 1.3km-long shopping mall décor, but in the end it couldn’t stop me from recalling Ibn Battuta’s own words describing his dream of a glided tour that this 21st century shopping mall has somehow tried to provide to its customers in an entertaining way:

“I dreamed I was on the wing of a huge bird which flew me in the direction of the qiblah, then to Yemen … then far to the east.”

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