TO MY FRIEND
DR. WALTHER ANDRAE
IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF HAPPY AND PROFITABLE
DAYS SPENT IN THE FIRST CAPITAL OF ASSYRIA
WHICH HAS BEEN REVEALED BY HIS
LABOUR AND RECREATED BY
HIS LEARNING
PREFACE
I have attempted in this book to bring together the materials, so far as they are known, which bear upon the earliest phases of Mohammadan architecture, to consider the circumstances under which it arose and the roots from which it sprang. No development of civilization, or of the arts which serve and adorn civilization, has burst full-fledged from the forehead of the god; and architecture, which is the first and most permanent of the arts, reflects with singular fidelity the history of its creators. Not only does their culture stand revealed in the crumbling walls which sheltered them and in the monuments raised for perpetual remembrance over their bones, but the links which bound them to that which had gone before are therein confessed, as well as their own contribution to the achievements of their predecessors, to mechanical skilfulness, to utility, and to beauty. It is the nature and the extent of this contribution which is of vital importance to the student, and it is this which lends to architecture its keenest significance. What, then, was the contribution of the first builders of Islâm?
It must be confessed that the question admits of no very striking rejoinder. The Mohammadan invaders were essentially nomadic; their dwelling was the black tent, their grave the desert sands. The inhabitants of the rare oases of western and central Arabia were content, as they are to-day, with a rude architecture of sun-dried brick and palm-trunks, unadorned by any intricate device of the imagination, and unsuited to any but the simplest needs. Even the great national shrine at Mekkah, the sacred house of the Ka’bah, was innocent of subsidiary constructions. It is true that on the northern trade-route the rock-cut tombs of Madâin Ṣâliḥ and of Petra bear witness to a higher order of artistic impulse, but it was an impulse which borrowed its power from without, from Hellenized Egypt and from Hellenized Syria. If there were an indigenous Arabian architecture worthy of the name, it can only have existed in the southern limits of the peninsula, where as yet exploration has been too imperfect to afford data for argument, nor is there evidence to show that in the seventh century of our era it can have played a part in the development of the northern tribes. Upon the northern frontiers the influence of the Byzantine and of the Sasanian empires would seem to have been predominant, and when the invaders established themselves in provinces which had been ruled from Constantinople or from Ctesiphon, they employed Greek and Persian artificers to fulfil their newly developed requirements and to satisfy their newly developed taste for architectural magnificence. The palaces of the conquerors were planned, constructed, and adorned by those whom they had conquered; their learning and their civilization were borrowed from them; even the ritual of their faith was shaped by contact with older forms of worship. No more significant example of the debt which Islâm owes to alien races can be cited than that which is afforded by the history of the mosque. Out of the mud-built courtyard of the Arab house, the open space for domestic and tribal assembly, Greek and Persian builders created an architectural type which governed the whole Mohammadan world. And the only contribution of the masters for whom they worked was the demand for just such large and open spaces, easily accessible, oriented in a certain manner, and partially shaded from the rays of the sun.
It is therefore scarcely possible to say that a specifically Mohammadan art existed during the first century after the Flight, though its germs were latent in the welding together of Hellenized with un-Hellenized, or barely Hellenized, regions under a single hand. The architecture of the first century gives evidence of the formative character of this process of compression; before the third century had ended it may be said to have been completed. If the monuments of the first century are still a faithful reflection of earlier and foreign creations, they hold the promise of further and more definitely characterized growth. But in an age and in lands where change was slow-footed, older conceptions continued to hold the field long after the political conditions under which they had arisen had vanished or had been baptized with other names. As we now know, the Mesopotamian palace builders of the ninth century of our era were guided by schemes which their Sasanian forerunners had inherited from remoter times; while the mosque builders had advanced little beyond the plan laid down in the camp-cities of the conquest. But the interchange of workmen between East and West was continuous, the intercourse unbroken; and from that intercourse, coupled with the needs of the age and the prejudices of the Faith, the arts of Islâm were born.
In the present study my eyes have been turned chiefly, and necessarily, backwards. I have not been so much concerned with the offspring as with the parentage of the buildings which I have passed under review. Of these buildings the most important is the great palace of Ukhaiḍir on the eastern side of the Syrian desert. I have given, also, the first plans and photographs of three small ruins in its vicinity, Qṣair, Mudjḍah, and ‘Aṭshân. If they do not belong to the same period as the palace, they cannot be far removed from it in date. The problems presented by Ukhaiḍir led me back to Sasanian architecture, and I publish here new plans and photographs of two vast constructions at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn. I have, further, taken this occasion to publish the plans of two mosques, the one at Diyârbekr, the other at Mayâfârqîn, both of which belong to a later period. The first of these has been known to us only through a sketch made by Texier, which I found to be inaccurate in many significant points, as it is also incomplete. The second has not previously been studied.
The palace of Ukhaiḍir was practically unknown until the winter of 1908-9, although it had been seen by European travellers as early as the seventeenth century. Della Valle passed by it in June 1625 on his way from Baṣrah to Aleppo, and described it as ‘a great ancient fabric, perfectly square, with thirteen pilasters or round columns on each side without, and other compartments of arches; within which were many chambers, with a court of no great bigness and uncovered. The Arabians call this fabric Casr Chaider. I could not conjecture whether it had been a palace or temple or castle; but I incline to believe it a palace rather than anything else.’[1] Pedro Teixeira’s account is doubtful. He says:[2] ‘At eleven in the morning we came to a dry channel which in winter they say has much water, and I thought it likely by the nature of its situation and capaciousness. Over it, on a rising ground, is still an ancient square fort, with twelve bastions, three on each side, made of burnt brick and lime, strong and well built. Without it, at about sixty paces distance, is a small Alcoran, or Tower, ten cubits high, tho’ it appears to have been higher, of the same structure, all decay’d with age; yet it appears to be a royal fabrick by its goodness and the place it stands in, where it could not be raised without mighty cost and much labour, and difficulty. It was done by an Arabian king, grandfather to Xeque Mahamed Eben Raxet, whom I said before I was carried to see, to secure the caravans going that way before the Turks possess’d themselves of Bagdat and Bazora. The Arabs call it Alcayzar or Kayzar, which signifies a palace or Cesar’s House, for so they call all that belong to kings and princes. This they reckon the half-way from Bazora to Mexat Aly, whither we were going. We found some small wells in this channel, the water of them clear and fresh, but of an intolerable ill scent, yet necessity prevail’d.’ The only item in this description which connects Teixeira’s palace with Ukhaiḍir is the name. Teixeira reached Meshhed ‘Ali (Nedjef) six days after he had passed by Alcayzar and he gives the situation of the palace as half-way between Baṣrah and Nedjef, whereas Ukhaiḍir lies to the north-west of Nedjef. There is no ‘Alcoran’, i.e. minaret, at Ukhaiḍir, neither could the building be described, even by the least careful observer, as a square fort with three bastions on each side. I am therefore inclined to suppose that there is another ruin called Ukhaiḍir further to the south. We need not linger over the derivation which he assigns to the name.
Scarcely more correct as to architectural features is Tavernier’s allusion to Ukhaiḍir. There can, however, be no doubt that it is to Ukhaiḍir that he refers, by reason of the geographical position of his ‘grand Palais’. Coming from Aleppo, he turned off at ‘Ânah into the desert and after some twenty days of journeying he observes:[3] ‘Cinq jours aprés que nous eûmes quitté ces deux familles Arabes, nous découvrîmes un grand Palais tout de brique cuite au feu; et il y a de l’apparence que le pays a esté autrefois semé, et que les fourneaux où on a cuit cette brique ont esté chauffez avec du chaume: car à quinze ou vingt lieües à la ronde il n’y a pas une brossaille ni un brin de bois. Chaque brique est d’un demi-pied en quarré et épaisse de six pouces. Il y a dans ce Palais trois grandes cours, et dans chacune de beaux bastimens avec deux rangs d’arcades qui sont l’un sur l’autre. Quoy que ce grand Palais soit encore entier, il est toutefois inhabité, et les Arabes fort ignorans de l’antiquité ne me sceurent apprendre pour qui il a esté basti, ny d’autres singularitez dont je m’informay, et dont j’aurois bien voulu qu’ils m’eussent instruit. Devant la porte de ce Palais il y a un étang accompagné d’un canal qui est à sec. Le fond du canal est de brique, de mesme que la voûte qui est à fleur de terre, et les Arabes croyent que c’a esté un conduit par lequel on faisoit passer l’eau de l’Euphrate. Pour moy je ne sçaurois qu’en juger, et ne puis comprendre comme on pouvoit faire venir de l’eau de si loin, l’Euphrate estant éloigné de ce lieü-là de plus de vingt lieües. De ce Palais nous tirâmes au nord est et après une marche de quatre jours nous arrivâmes à un méchant bourg, autrefois nommé Cufa et à present Meched-Ali.’[4]