How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

Egypt.—In Egypt one of the oldest is the Mosque of Amru in Cairo, in which the square open court is surrounded by arcades, set at right angles to the mihrab and supported by columns taken from Byzantine and Roman buildings. Somewhat similar in plan is the Mosque of Tulun, where, however, the arcades run parallel to the mihrab wall and the wide pointed arches are supported upon massive piers.

Then follow, during the period that corresponds to the development of Gothic architecture, the Mosque of Kalaoom; that of Sultan Hassan, which is cruciform in plan; that of Sultan Barbouk, celebrated for its minarets and the beauty of the dome over the founder’s tomb; and the small but richly decorated Mosque of Kait-Bey. In the prayer-chamber (maksura) of the last-named appears, besides the stalactite embellishment of the mihrab, a distinctive decoration of the arches. In one case the arches are composed of voussoirs alternating in colour; in the other the alternation is still further emphasised by the interlocking shapes into which the voussoirs are cut, so that they fit together with the variety and the exactness of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain.—Spain offers a very favourable opportunity for the study of Muhammedan architecture. The Mosque of Cordova, begun by the Caliph Abd-el-Rahman in 786, was enlarged by successive additions, until it presents the appearance of a forest of columns and arches, apparently of unlimited extent. There are said to be 860. The arcades are in two tiers, the upper arches being supported on posts which are placed on the capitals of the lower ones and at the same time form abutments to the lower arches. In most cases the arches are of horseshoe form; but elsewhere, as in the vestibule to the mihrab chamber the upper horseshoe arches surmount a tier of cinquefoil or five-scalloped ones, and the posts on which they abut are faced with attached columns. A remarkable additional feature is the interlacing between the upper and lower arches of portions of multifoil arches; so arranged that they appear to bridge over the space between the alternate lower column and at the same time to spring over the capitals of the intermediate upper column. The arrangement is a striking instance of the Arab invention in the use of repetition of motive, a use, in this case, governed by constructive reasonableness as well as imposed by the desire for subtlety of elaboration.

The Mosque of Cordova is second in size to the Great Mosque of Mecca. Though the superb adornments of mosaics and red and gold ceilings have suffered from decay and restoration and its vista of arcades is blocked in parts by the coro (choir), erected when the edifice was converted into a cathedral, it is still a marvellous memorial of Cordova’s supremacy as the most learned, cultured, and prosperous caliphate in Islam.

In Toledo there is nothing approaching the magnificence of the Mosque of Cordova. Among the remains are the churches of S. Cristo de la Luz and Santa Maria la Bianca, which are mosques converted to the Catholic ritual.

At Seville beside the much renowned Alcazar or Castle, is the celebrated tower, Giralda, so named from the weather vane (giradillo), a figure of Faith with a banner, some 305 feet from the ground. It surmounts the Renaissance top of three stories, added in 1568 to the old tower, which, as an altarpiece in the cathedral shows, originally terminated in battlements. These suggest that the building was erected as a watch tower or, may be, as a symbol of power. Its plan is a square of 45 feet, the walls being about 8 feet thick, built of material from Roman and probably Visigothic remains. Its surface is pierced by twenty windows, many of which are subdivided by columnettes, and embellished with sunken panels, enriched with arabesques. The Giralda is under the special protection of SS. Justa and Rufina—a fact commemorated in the above-mentioned picture and in another by Murillo, now in the Provincial Museum. It was used as a model for the design of the tower of the Madison Square Garden, New York.

The Alhambra, Granada, represents the best preserved as well as the most perfect example of the Moorish-Arabic genius. It was a fortress-palace, much of it built on the brink of the rock, the steep slopes of which were used to construct the lower stories of baths, offices, and guardrooms. The exterior has no impressiveness, though the original grouping of walls and roofs must have been highly picturesque. Its halls, chambers, and remains of a mosque are clustered about two rectangular courts or patios, which are joined like the two parts of an “L”—the “Court of the Alberca” and the “Court of the Lions.” From one of the ends of the Alberca Court projects the “Hall of the Ambassadors”; from the other the “Hall of the Tribunal,” while the long sides of the Court of Lions open respectively into the “Hall of the Abencerrages” and the “Hall of the Two Sisters.”

The “Court of the Lions” is so called from the fountain in its centre, an immense marble basin supported upon twelve lions, which form a remarkable exception to the Muhammedan rule against representing the image of any living thing. Both these Courts are arcaded, the columns, set singly or in pairs, or groups, exhibiting, as do all the columns in the Alhambra, distinctive features in their capitals, which are separated by a high necking from the shaft.

It is, however, in the interior of the halls that the decoration reaches its finest pitch and nowhere more than in the “Hall of the Two Sisters,” which formed the culminating feature of the harem quarters. The name is supposed to have been derived from two slabs of marble in the pavement but may well have been suggested by the window, which occupies a bay and is divided by a small column and two arches into two lights. The walls, above a high wainscot of lustred tiles, are encrusted with flat moulded arabesques, representing a delicate lacelike tracery of leafy vines and tendrils, still tinctured with the red, blue, and gold that formerly enriched them. The arabesques melt into the stalactite embellishments which completely cover the hollow of the dome; created, as it seems, by giant bees, whose cells hang down like grape-clusters in an endless profusion of exquisite intricacy. Time was when this unsurpassable delicacy of magnificence glowed with gold touched into a thousandfold diversity of tones, by the light of hanging lamps.

As an expression of the Arabic genius in the direction of subtlety this represents finality. It embodies the culture of a race that in its learning as in its art had been devoted to the exaltation of details; and embodies also the latent instinct of a desert-wandering race whose eye had been little habituated to varieties of form, but saturated with colour and in the watches of the night had been long familiar with the mystery of vaulted sky, sown with star-clusters and hung with the jewelled lamps of planets. It was characteristic also of the Oriental fondness of abstraction that revels in subtleties and loves to merge itself in the contemplation of the infinite. It is the kind of decoration that being denied the reinforcement of nature was bound to evolve sterility.