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The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of built heritage preservation from an Islamic perspective. This study will dig out the jurisprudential principles to challenge contemporary destruction of built heritage in the Muslim contexts.

The research challenges the radicals’ opinion by revealing their evidence to destroy the various built heritage. In fact, it confronts these acts and assists the international community to understand the basic values of Islam toward the environment and built heritage specifically. This exploratory research will follow this lead and seek the objective, first, by investigating the concept of succession and the urbanization of Earth by mankind. Reassuringly, the research introduces few verses from the Holy Qur’an to support the various arguments presented and provide a qualitative understanding of the interpretations. Moreover, few speeches of the Prophet (PBUH) are added to ease synthesizing the understanding of specific principles related to the Islamic law (Shari’ah). This study provides an in-depth understanding toward the legitimacy of the act of preservation under the umbrella of the intents and objectives of the Islamic law.

This study confirms that preservation of the built heritage is legitimate from the Islamic law perspective; this is due to the fact that Islam mandates mankind to utilize wisely the resources available to shape a proper physical and economic environment. The preservation of the built heritage returns with benefit to the major society and assures that resources are recycled to serve humanity for longer generations.

This research promotes the concepts of good/benefit and avoiding harm to support the crux of built heritage preservation from an Islamic perspective. In quest of this notion, various scholars’ work throughout the Islamic civilization has been revealed to draw some shed on the rooted arguments to highlight various concepts of Islam toward preservation.

This paper fulfills an identified need to prove that Islam is against the destruction of built heritage and historic monuments and against all acts of violence and terrorism.

The regeneration of urban open spaces of traditional markets in the GCC is driven by socio-cultural intents to reconcile between tradition and modernity. This paper investigates the qualities of urban open spaces of two traditional markets in Qatar through behavioural mapping and impressionistic assessments. The paper aims to demonstrate the variations of urban open spaces in historic markets of Doha and Al Wakra cities and to investigate efficiency of use. The study utilizes both quantitative data and qualitative observations during the peak hours. Firstly, it locates the activities and functions of users on actual maps and determines their density, and secondly, presents the observations recorded through still photographs. The study reveals that Souq Waqif in Doha scored high in the functional, social, and perceptual attributes than Souq Al-Wakra. The behavioural observations demonstrated that both markets are safe, welcoming, and accommodating for their users, yet, Souq Waqif promotes engaging social experiences due to efficient management.

The city of Doha is growing rapidly with emerging urban nodes and centers, housing development. Little attention however has been paid to several growth aspects including the understanding of urban space diversity and the resulting inhabitants' spatial experience, their attitudes toward emerging urbanized spaces. Utilizing a perceptual approach in the form of an attitude survey, this paper explores urban spaces in the city of Doha as perceived and experienced by different groups. An investigation of a number of key urban spaces is undertaken through the identification of key urban nodes that are identified based on parameters that include density, commercial activity, and public accessibility. Spaces are examined from the perspective of Doha's inhabitants using 490 responses to a survey questionnaire. The results delineate that urban spaces lack key conditions amenable to creating urban diversity. Nevertheless, they corroborate the postulation that urban spaces are perceived and experienced differently by different groups based on their gender, age, and cultural background. The paper concludes with suggestions toward a more inclusive approach to the design of the city's urban spaces.

This paper aims to explore the possibilities of economic diversification in the State of Qatar through the regeneration of built heritage post the COVID-19 pandemic, promoting sustainable tourism and creating a center for cultural heritage in Qatar, thereby enhancing the sense of identity both socially and physically among the nationals and residents. In light of the strategic goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030, which is to diversify Qatar’s economy and minimize its reliance on hydrocarbon industries, if these ambitious goals are to be achieved, there is a necessity to maintain the local cultural identity, demonstrated through architecture and urbanism.

This study is an exploratory research based on qualitative methods of data gathering and investigation. The local communities who used to live in the scattered old villages were approached with surveys. At the same time, semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals in the field in Qatar and other individuals from the public, depending on their literacy levels.

This paper examines how to revive those villages and improve their current economic level. Finally, the study proposes some recommendations for these abandoned villages in an attempt to rejuvenate their built heritage and revitalize their socioeconomic status.

Economic diversification needs to be engendered through the services and products of Qatari society; this is possible by exploiting current resources such as the built heritage or historic sites in areas outside the emerging metropolitan cities. This study reveals the great potential of regenerating the old villages of the Gulf States by establishing nonprofit organizations and increasing the economic benefit of the abandoned historic structures.

Commemorating the 15th year anniversary of discourse, knowledge dissemination in architecture and urbanism through the contributions published in Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, since March 2007, this article aims to capture, unpack and categorize the key content of published research outputs during the last five years into knowledge spaces.

While referring to key statistics of various recognized databases in order to highlight the journal growth, development and performance, the approach to the analysis is inspired by Crysler's Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment. This is established through a preliminary conceptual content analysis that enables the development of specific content categories representing knowledge spaces based on the overall contributions to the journal since its inception in 2007 and then mapping the recent contributions, developed over the past five years (2017–2021), to these knowledge spaces. The thrust of the analysis is to instigate a structured understanding of Archnet-IJAR role in the development and dissemination of knowledge in architecture and urbanism.

The examination of the content and the analysis reveal two broad categories of knowledge spaces: established and evolving. Established knowledge spaces are recognized in terms of theorizing architectural and urban production; the public realm and assessment of designed environments; housing, the informal and the vernacular; urban heritage and historic environments; and architectural and urban politics. Evolving knowledge spaces were acknowledged in terms of architectural education and design pedagogy; collaborative planning and community design; architectural and urban sustainability and resilience; health, wellbeing and engaging with nature; and COVID-19 spatial and pedagogical implications. Characterized by clear definition and at the same time transparent borders, the identified knowledge spaces have the potential of generating further possibilities for future knowledge spaces.

In addition to a holistic analysis based on the scrutiny of contributions as they progressed from submissions to reviews to publishing, future work would involve more systematization, in-depth engagement with metadata and should benefit from IT applications and data mining software packages.

This article is regarded as a cognizance platform and an enabling mechanism for researchers and future contributors to identify the unique particularities of their research, the nature of the content they aim to develop and the way in which that content may contribute to one or more knowledge spaces.

Establishing an understanding of the knowledge spaces which represent contributions published in Archnet-IJAR, the knowledge spaces identified demonstrate diversity and plurality; diversity in ontological interpretations of the nature of reality and plurality and pluri-epistemology in terms of how methods are pursued and the way in which such interpretations are developed, recorded, documented and communicated. These are knowledge spaces of possibilities and anticipation of growth, evolution and development.