The Mihrab in the Home?

[The Seeker]

Every time I go to a new masjid I am drawn to the mihrab. There is just something about it that I love, and I was thinking about it tonight and how it would be cool to have a small box of some sort that could be designed in a similar manner for use for prayer in the home. I figured this was probably something that was widely done, only because it seems so neat to me and I find it hard to believe that many others haven't had a thought along similar lines in the past. I had assumed when I thought of it that there are probably hundreds or thousands of various designs available for purchase as well as a slew of instructional website and videos on how to make your own.... and wow was I wrong. In fact I couldn't find a single one. I found plenty of beautiful images of amazing mihrabs in Islamic architecture but nothing small and portable that captures something of that same feeling. Have any of the RF Muslims out there ever seen or heard of something like this? And if so, do you have any tips on making one?

[karimium]

taking a complete pop shot here, but I think the mihrab was built ito the wall so that the followers of the imam don't accidently step past the imam during prayer, which can be the case when the prayer room is wide.

So if you build a cave into a wall and allow the imam to pray from there, the other reason is [i suspect the stronger reason] is that days before speakers and microphones the mihrab to bounce the recitation back to the followers.

If you were to do it for your home I would imagine you will need to build it into the wall, secondly it should really be used for prayers so needs to face qibla. Because otherwise if you have visitors they may accidently pray towards the mihrab if it's not place towards the qibla.

[Abz2000]

you could always design your bookcases on two sides of a Qiblah facing space in a quite area of the house and another bookshelf above you and a nice poster of the ka'bah during hajj in front of you, then it would have meaning and the atmosphere when praying would be that of God, community, knowledge and wisdom surrounding you.