FIG. 85.—TOMB OF MAHMUD, BIJAPUR. SECTION.
The Mohammedan monuments of India are characterized by a grandeur and amplitude of disposition, a symmetry and monumental dignity of design which distinguishes them widely from the picturesque but sometimes trivial buildings of the Arabs and Moors. Less dependent on color than the Moorish or Persian structures, they are usually built of marble, or of marble and sandstone, giving them an air of permanence and solidity wanting in other Moslem styles except the Turkish. The dome, the round minaret, the pointed arch, and the colossal portal-arch, are universal, as in Persia, and enamelled tiles are also used, but chiefly for interior decoration. Externally the more dignified if less resplendent decoration of surface carving is used, in patterns of minute and graceful scrolls, leaf forms, and Arabic inscriptions covering large surfaces. The Arabic stalactite pendentive star-panelling and geometrical interlace are rarely if ever seen. The dome on the square plan is almost universal, but neither the Byzantine nor the Arabic pendentive is used, striking and original combinations of vaulting surfaces, of corner squinches, of corbelling and ribs, being used in its place. Many of the Pathan domes and arches at Delhi, Ajmir, Ahmedabad, Shepree, etc., are built in horizontal or corbelled courses supported on slender columns, and exert no thrust at all, so that they are vaults only in form, like the dome of the Tholos of Atreus ([Fig. 24]). The most imposing and original of all Indian domes are those of the Jumma Musjid and of the Tomb of Mahmud, both at Bijapur, the latter 137 feet in span (Fig. 85). These two monuments, indeed, with the Mogul Taj Mahal at Agra, not only deserve the first rank among Indian monuments, but in constructive science combined with noble proportions and exquisite beauty are hardly, if at all, surpassed by the greatest triumphs of western art. The Indo-Moslem architects, moreover, especially those of the Mogul period, excelled in providing artistic settings for their monuments. Immense platforms, superb courts, imposing flights of steps, noble gateways, minarets to mark the angles of enclosures, and landscape gardening of a high order, enhance greatly the effect of the great mosques, tombs, and palaces of Agra, Delhi, Futtehpore Sikhri, Allahabad, Secundra, etc.
The most notable monuments of the Moguls are the Mosque of Akbar (1556–1605) at Futtehpore Sikhri, the tomb of that sultan at Secundra, and his palace at Allahabad; the Pearl Mosque at Agra and the Jumma Musjid at Delhi, one of the largest and noblest of Indian mosques, both built by Shah Jehan about 1650; his immense but now ruined palace in the same city; and finally the unrivalled mausoleum, the Taj Mahal at Agra, built during his lifetime as a festal hall, to serve as his tomb after death (Fig. 86). This last is the pearl of Indian architecture, though it is said to have been designed by a European architect, French or Italian. It is a white marble structure 185 feet square, centred in a court 313 feet square, forming a platform 18 feet high. The corners of this court are marked by elegant minarets, and the whole is dominated by the exquisite white marble dome, 58 feet in diameter, 80 feet high, internally rising over four domical corner chapels, and covered externally by a lofty marble bulb-dome on a high drum. The rich materials, beautiful execution, and exquisite inlaying of this mausoleum are worthy of its majestic design. On the whole, in the architecture of the Moguls in Bijapur, Agra, and Delhi, Mohammedan architecture reaches its highest expression in the totality and balance of its qualities of construction, composition, detail, ornament, and settings. The later monuments show the decline of the style, and though often rich and imposing, are lacking in refinement and originality.
FIG. 86.—TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.
TURKISH. The Ottoman Turks, who began their conquering career under Osman I. in Bithynia in 1299, had for a century been occupying the fairest portions of the Byzantine empire when, in 1453, they became masters of Constantinople. Hagia Sophia was at once occupied as their chief mosque, and such of the other churches as were spared, were divided between the victors and the vanquished. The conqueror, Mehmet II., at the same time set about the building of a new mosque, entrusting the design to a Byzantine, Christodoulos, whom he directed to reproduce, with some modifications, the design of the “Great Church”—Hagia Sophia. The type thus officially adopted has ever since remained the controlling model of Turkish mosque design, so far, at least, as general plan and constructive principles are concerned. Thus the conquering Turks, educated by a century of study and imitation of Byzantine models in Brusa, Nicomedia, Smyrna, Adrianople, and other cities earlier subjugated, did what the Byzantines had, during nine centuries, failed to do. The noble idea first expressed by Anthemius and Isidorus in the Church of Hagia Sophia had remained undeveloped, unimitated by later architects. It was the Turk who first seized upon its possibilities, and developed therefrom a style of architecture less sumptuous in color and decoration than the sister styles of Persia, Cairo, or India, but of great nobility and dignity, notwithstanding. The low-curved dome with its crown of buttressed windows, the plain spherical pendentives, the great apses at each end, covered by half-domes and penetrated by smaller niches, the four massive piers with their projecting buttress-masses extending across the broad lateral aisles, the narthex and the arcaded atrium in front—all these appear in the great Turkish mosques of Constantinople. In the Conqueror’s mosque, however, two apses with half-domes replace the lateral galleries and clearstory of Hagia Sophia, making a perfectly quadripartite plan, destitute of the emphasis and significance of a plan drawn on one main axis (Fig. 87). The same treatment occurs in the mosque of Ahmed I., the Ahmediyeh (1608; Fig. 88), and the Yeni Djami (“New Mosque”) at the port (1665). In the mosque of Osman III. (1755) the reverse change was effected; the mosque has no great apses, four clearstories filling the four arches under the dome, as also in several of the later and smaller mosques. The greatest and noblest of the Turkish mosques, the Suleimaniyeh, built in 1553 by Soliman the Magnificent, returned to the Byzantine combination of two half-domes with two clearstories (Fig. 89).
