Turkish.—When the Seljuk Turks, after occupying many parts of the Byzantine Empire, finally took Constantinople, they converted S. Sophia into a mosque, and more or less closely followed its style in the mosques they themselves erected.
Thus the Suleimaniyeh or Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, repeats the central dome and the two apses of the Christian building, preserving also the flatness of the dome-form. It is approached by a fore-court, surrounded on all its sides by cloisters, roofed with a succession of smaller domes, and embellished at the angles with minarets. These have circular shafts terminating in sharply pointed cones. In the garden of the mosque are the octagonal, dome-crowned tombs of the founder and his favourite wife, Roxelana.
The Ahmedizeh, or Mosque of Ahmed is square in plan, with a central dome, flanked by four apses, the angles being filled in with four smaller domes. The interior is lined with coloured tiles, while that of the Suleimaniyeh is veneered with marble.
The public fountains are distinctive features of the city. In one near S. Sophia, for example, the water-basin, octagonal in shape and covered with a dome-like grille of ironwork, is enclosed in an octagon of arches that support a sloping roof which extends in wide eaves and is surmounted by a dome.
Persia.—In point of time Persia enters early into the Muhammedan conquest, but we have reserved the consideration of it until later, because she did not reach the height of her renewed splendour in the arts until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then contributed to the Muhammedan art of India.
When Muhammedanism extended to Persia, it came in touch with the decaying Sassanian empire that from A.D. 226 to 641 had withstood the power of Rome and extended its sway nearly to the gates of India. The remains of its architecture consist chiefly of palaces such as those at Serbistan, Firuzabad, and Ctesiphon. In these, with an inventiveness of their own and on a great scale, the builders combined elements of Assyrian and Roman architecture—square, domed chambers, barrel-vaulted halls, and portals formed of huge arches, elliptical or horseshoe in shape.
The direct evidence of this style on the earliest Muhammedan buildings has disappeared owing to the devastation of the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan; but the Sassanian influence is conjectured from the later architecture which grew up after A.D. 1200. Important examples are to be found in Bagdad, Teheran, and Ispahan. Among the memorials in the last named city is the Great Mosque, which has an open court, surrounded by two-storied arcades. Its special features include portal-arches, rising above the highest of the adjoining walls; vaulted aisles, bulbous-shaped domes, and minarets of peculiar elegance. The walls are decorated with enamelled tiles.
India.—Persian-Muhammedan architecture, probably because of the Sassanian influence, was superior to the Arabian-Muhammedan in constructive elements and represents more fully a developed style. Many of its elements reappear in Indian-Muhammedan architecture, which by the beginning of the fifteenth century was developing a style distinguished alike by the grandeur of the whole and the structural meaning of the details. The finest example of this early period is the Jama Musjil (Principal Mosque), at Ahmedabad, which Shah Ahmed reconstructed out of a Hindu temple. The Hindu influence is still apparent in the massive detached pillars that buttress the chief entrance.
The style reached its full development of structural logic, dignity, and beauty under the Mogul dynasty (1526-1761). By this time the Muhammedan architects had developed a method of dome support, different both from the Byzantine and the Arabic pendentive, which combined corbels, ribs, vaulting surfaces, and corner squinches. The last named are arches placed diagonally at the angles to bring the square to an octagonal, which was the favourite form of plan adopted for tombs. Of these the most imposing is the Tomb of Mahmud at Bijapur.
A noble example of the earlier Mogul style is the Mosque of Akbar at Futtehpore-Sikri. Especially noteworthy are the southern and western gateways. They tower up with emphatic assertion and yet with a finely proportioned relation to the flanking arcades. This is due in a great measure to the arches of the arcades being repeated with more elaborate detail in the recess of the gateway, where also an upper tier of arches balances the architrave of the arcades. These tiers of arches, leading up to the semi-dome of the ceiling give a contrast of grace to the sterner lines of the exterior arch, and introduce gradations of refinement into its monumental scale.