(ARABIAN, MORESQUE, PERSIAN, INDIAN, AND TURKISH.)
Books Recommended: Bourgoin, Les Arts Arabes. Coste, Monuments du Caire; Monuments modernes de la Perse. Cunningham, Archæological Survey of India. Fergusson, Indian and Eastern Architecture. De Forest, Indian Architecture and Ornament. Flandin et Coste, Voyage en Perse. Franz-Pasha, Die Baukunst des Islam. Gayet, L’Art Arabe; L’Art Persan. Girault de Prangey, Essai sur l’architecture des Arabes en Espagne, etc. Goury and Jones, The Alhambra. Jacob, Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details. Le Bon, La civilisation des Arabes; Les monuments de l’Inde. Owen Jones, Grammar of Ornament. Parvillée, L’Architecture Ottomane. Prisse d’Avennes, L’Art Arabe. Texier, Description de l’Arménie, la Perse, etc.
GENERAL SURVEY. While the Byzantine Empire was at its zenith, the new faith of Islam was conquering Western Asia and the Mediterranean lands with a fiery rapidity, which is one of the marvels of history. The new architectural styles which grew up in the wake of these conquests, though differing widely in conception and detail in the several countries, were yet marked by common characteristics which set them quite apart from the contemporary Christian styles. The predominance of decorative over structural considerations, a predilection for minute surface-ornament, the absence of pictures and sculpture, are found alike in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Indian buildings, though in varying degree. These new styles, however, were almost entirely the handiwork of artisans belonging to the conquered races, and many traces of Byzantine, and even after the Crusades, of Norman and Gothic design, are recognizable in Moslem architecture. But the Orientalism of the conquerors and their common faith, tinged with the poetry and philosophic mysticism of the Arab, stamped these works of Copts, Syrians, and Greeks with an unmistakable character of their own, neither Byzantine nor Early Christian.
ARABIC ARCHITECTURE. In the building of mosques and tombs, especially at Cairo, this architecture reached a remarkable degree of decorative elegance, and sometimes of dignity. It developed slowly, the Arabs not being at the outset a race of builders. The early monuments of Syria and Egypt were insignificant, and the sacred Kaabah at Mecca and the mosque at Medina hardly deserve to be called architectural monuments at all. The most important early works were the mosques of ’Amrou at Cairo (642, rebuilt and enlarged early in the eighth century), of El Aksah on the Temple platform at Jerusalem (691, by Abd-el-Melek), and of El Walid at Damascus (705–732, recently seriously injured by fire). All these were simple one-storied structures, with flat wooden roofs carried on parallel ranges of columns supporting pointed arches, the arcades either closing one side of a square court, or surrounding it completely. The long perspectives of the aisles and the minute decoration of the archivolts and ceilings alone gave them architectural character. The beautiful Dome of the Rock (Kubbet-es-Sakhrah, miscalled the Mosque of Omar) on the Temple platform at Jerusalem is either a remodelled Constantinian edifice, or in large part composed of the materials of one (see [p. 116]).
The splendid mosque of Ibn Touloun (876–885) was built on the same plan as that of Amrou, but with cantoned piers instead of columns and a corresponding increase in variety of perspective and richness of effect. With the incoming of the Fatimite dynasty, however, and the foundation of the present city of Cairo (971), vaulting began to take the place of wooden ceilings, and then appeared the germs of those extraordinary applications of geometry to decorative design which were henceforth to be the most striking feature of Arabic ornament. Under the Ayûb dynasty, which began with Salâh-ed-din (Saladin) in 1172, these elements, of which the great Barkouk mosque (1149) is the most imposing early example, developed slowly in the domical tombs of the Karafah at Cairo, and prepared the way for the increasing richness and splendor of a long series of mosques, among which those of Kalaoun (1284–1318), Sultan Hassan (1356), El Mu’ayyad (1415), and Kaîd Bey (1463), were the most conspicuous examples (Fig. 80). They mark, indeed, successive advances in complexity of planning, ingenuity of construction, and elegance of decoration. Together they constitute an epoch in Arabic architecture, which coincides closely with the development of Gothic vaulted architecture in Europe, both in the stages and the duration of its advances.
FIG. 80.—MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN, CAIRO: SANCTUARY.
a, Mihrâb, b, Mimber.
The mosques of these three centuries are, like the mediæval monasteries, impressive aggregations of buildings of various sorts about a central court of ablutions. The tomb of the founder, residences for the imams, or priests, schools (madrassah), and hospitals (mâristân) rival in importance the prayer-chamber. This last is, however, the real focus of interest and splendor; in some cases, as in Sultan Hassan, it is a simple barrel-vaulted chamber open to the court; in others an oblong arcaded hall with many small domes; or again, a square hall covered with a high pointed dome on pendentives of intricately beautiful stalactite-work (see below). The ceremonial requirements of the mosque were simple. The-court must have its fountain of ablutions in the centre. The prayer-hall, or mosque proper, must have its mihrâb, or niche, to indicate the kibleh, the direction of Mecca; and its mimber, or high, slender pulpit for the reading of the Kôran. These were the only absolutely indispensable features of a mosque, but as early as the ninth century the minaret was added, from which the call to prayer could be sounded over the city by the mueddin. Not until the Ayubite period, however, did it begin to assume those forms of varied and picturesque grace which lend to Cairo so much of its architectural charm.
ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. While Arabic architecture, in Syria and Egypt alike, possesses more decorative than constructive originality, the beautiful forms of its domes, pendentives, and minarets, the simple majesty of the great pointed barrel-vaults of the Hassan mosque and similar monuments, and the graceful lines of the universally used pointed arch, prove the Coptic builders and their later Arabic successors to have been architects of great ability. The Arabic domes, as seen both in the mosques and in the remarkable group of tombs commonly called “tombs of the Khalîfs,” are peculiar not only in their pointed outlines and their rich external decoration of interlaced geometric motives, but still more in the external and internal treatment of the pendentives, exquisitely decorated with stalactite ornament. This ornament, derived, no doubt, from a combination of minute corbels with rows of small niches, and presumably of Persian origin, was finally developed into a system of extraordinary intricacy, applicable alike to the topping of a niche or panel, as in the great doorways of the mosques, and to the bracketing out of minaret galleries (Figs. 81, [82]). Its applications show a bewildering variety of forms and an extraordinary aptitude for intricate geometrical design.