How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

Muhammed’s self-imposed task of subjugating and uniting Arabia for the Arabians was begun after his flight from Mecca to Medina, the celebrated Hejira (Arab hijra) which occurred on the Jewish Day of Atonement, Sept. 30, A.D. 622. The further work of conquering the countries on which the Arab tribes had been dependent, Syria, Abyssinia, Persia, was continued by his followers.

Of great importance in the history of architecture was the conquest of Persia (632-651), for here the Muhammedan influence developed a style that was distinguished by fine structural as well as aesthetic qualities and generally developed a beautiful revival of the various arts of decorative design. And it was Persian Muhammedan that strongly influenced the architecture of India, where Muhammedan conquest was established about A.D. 1000.

Meanwhile, the Arabic Muhammedans had founded a dynasty under the Ommayads with its capital in Damascus and a later one under the Abassids, whose most celebrated caliph was Haroun-el-Raschid of Bagdad, made famous by the “Thousand and One Nights.” Conquest was extended westward, gradually comprising Egypt, the north of Africa, Sicily, and Spain.

In 1453 the Crescent displaced the Cross in Constantinople.

Yet, notwithstanding the divisions of the Muhammedans and the immense distances separating them, a unity not only religious but also intellectual was maintained. The Muhammedans learned rapidly from the peoples they conquered and established for the diffusion of learning a sort of university system of travelling scholarships. Aided by Arabic as the universal language of learning, students journeyed from teacher to teacher, from the Atlantic to Samarcand, gathering hundreds of certificates. The education was designed to turn out theologians and lawyers; but theology included studies in metaphysics and logic, and the canon law required a knowledge of arithmetic, mensuration, and practical astronomy.

Technical education was maintained by gilds who perpetuated the “mysteries” of the craft through a system of apprenticeships. And it is to be noted that there was no distinction made between so-called arts and so-called crafts. The gild-system covered all kinds of constructive work from engineering to the making of a needle, and if the work permitted elements of beauty and decoration these were, as a matter of course, included. Hence the proficiency and inventiveness and exquisite perfection of workmanship displayed by the Muhammedan craftsmen.

But their Koran enjoined a literal obedience to the Mosaic law against “the making of any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in Heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth.” Accordingly, there were no sculptors or painters in the full sense of the term; only decorators of moulded, engraved, or coloured ornament, the motives of which were confined to conventionalised flower and leaf forms and to geometric designs of practically endless variations of the straight line and curve, in meander, interlace, and fret, into which they often wove texts from the Koran or the sacred name of Allah. It is to these designs by Arab artists, influenced to some extent by Byzantine, that the term arabesque was first applied.

Meanwhile it was the practice of Muhammedanism to absorb as far as possible the traditions of each nation it conquered. Gradually, therefore, the strictness of its orthodoxy was modified. In Persia, for example, the representation of animals was permitted in the arts of design, and the representation of human beings followed.

Similarly, the architectural style of each locality was affected by the previously existing architecture. The examples which remain are chiefly of mosques, tombs, houses, and palaces.

The word mosque comes to us through the French mosquée; the Spanish equivalent is mesquita, while the Arabs call the “place of prostration”—masjid. The nucleus of every one is the mihrab or niche in a wall, indicating the kibleh or direction of the Great Mosque at Mecca, with its shrine, the Kaaba. Beside the mihrab was a pulpit, mimbar, for preaching, and sometimes in front of it, for the reading of the Koran, stood a dikka or platform raised upon columns. Shelter for the worshippers was provided by arcades, which in the immediate vicinity of the mihrab were often enclosed with lattice work, thus forming a prayer-chamber—maksura. The size of the mosque was indefinitely enlarged by the addition of more arcades, surrounding usually an open court, in the centre of which, as in the atrium of the Early Christian basilicas, was a fountain for ritual ablution.