One of the major purposes of the mashrabiya is the privacy, an essential aspect of Arabic culture. From the mashrabiya window, occupants can obtain a good view of the street without being seen.
The mashrabiya was an integral part of Arab lifestyle. Typically, people did not sleep in any assigned room; rather they would take their mattresses and move to areas that offered the greatest comfort according to the seasons - to the mashrabiya (or shanashil) in Winter, to the courtyard in Spring or to vaulted basements in Summer.
The wooden screen with openable windows gives shade and protection from the hot summer sun, while allowing the cool air from the street to flow through. The designs of the latticework usually have smaller openings in the bottom part and larger openings in the higher parts, hence causing the draft to be fast above the head and slow in lower parts. This provides a significant amount of air moving in the room without causing it to be uncomfortable. The air-conditioning properties of the window is typically enhanced by placing jars of water in the area, allowing air to be cooled as it passes over the jars.
The projection of the mashrabiya achieves several purposes. It allows air from three sides to enter, even if the wind outside is blowing parallel to the house façade; it serves the street and in turn the neighborhood, as a row of projected mashrabiyas provides shelter for those in the streets from rain or sun. The shade in normally narrow streets will cool the air in the street and increase the pressure as opposed to the air in the sahn, which is open to the sun making it more likely that air would flow towards the sahn through the rooms of the house. The mashrabiya also provides protection and shade for the ground floor windows that are flat and usually unprotected.
One of the major architectural benefits is correcting the footprint shape of the land. Due to winding and irregular streets, plots of land are also commonly irregular in shape, while the house designs are regular squares and rectangles. This would result in irregular shapes of some rooms and create dead corners. The projection allows the shapes of the rooms on the upper floors to be corrected, and thus the entire plot of land to be utilised. It also increases the usable space without increasing the plot size. On the street side, in addition to their ornamental advantage, mashrabiyas served to provide enclosure to the street and a stronger human scale.
