The chapter set about their work with more splendour. They selected the three first transverse naves of the noble apartment, beginning at the re-inforcing wall, which marks the prolongation of Hakam, giving to the single nave that they opened a length of one hundred feet from the inner door of the Alms Chamber to the central apartment of the three enclosed in the old “maksurrah.” They made the Alms Chamber into a vestibule, leaving the re-inforcing wall as it was without touching the bold ultra-semi-circular arches resting on pairs of columns; they pulled down the cadi’s apartment in order to make way for the transept, and also the three transverse naves it had occupied. The three columns in front of the Arab pillars, which stood in the length from east to west, were pulled down too, and three handsomer pillars were erected in their place, fortified at right angles by walls in the manner of buttresses, which intercepted the entire width of one transverse nave. Great pointed arches sprang from pillar to pillar, corresponding with the horse-shoe arches in front; a light and graceful dome stretched from one side to the other, divided into four compartments by three great arches, of which that nearest to the sanctuary rested on high columns, and the other two on well-carved brackets, with open-work borders suspended at a regular height above the spaces. Finally, they took the central apartment of the ancient “maksurrah,” where we presume the khalif sat, and erected there the Grand Chapel.
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THE MOSQUE—FRONT OF THE TRASTAMARA CHAPEL.
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