Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture

by Gertrude Lowthian Bell

CHAPTER V
THE FAÇADE

The breaking up of the wall-face into horizontal zones was a device familiar to the ancient East. In the main gateway of Sargon’s palace at Khorsâbâd the wall is divided into a high orthostatic podium, decorated with reliefs, and a brick superstructure diversified by vertical flutes and rectangular recesses.[271] In the interior of the palace, the court of the ḥaram shows a similar disposition, except that the podium is of enamelled brick, not of stone.[272] The upper part of the walls is in no case preserved. On Assyrian reliefs it is not uncommon to find a horizontal band along the top of the walls below the crenellations;[273] but the nature of the upper zone or zones in decorated façades such as those of Khorsâbâd is a matter of conjecture. Concerning Chaldaean wall decoration we have little evidence. The building on the Wuswas mound at Warka, of which Loftus published a sketch,[274] has recently been re-examined by Dr. Jordan, who believes it to be post-Babylonian.[275] The walls of the temple of Bel at Niffer were decorated with shallow buttresses, while the gates bore resemblance, both in plan and decoration, to the gates of Khorsâbâd.[276] The gateway of Gudea at Tellôh has the same doubly recessed rectangular niches that have been noted at Khorsâbâd, but they do not seem to have been grouped in panels, and the plinth is reduced to insignificant proportions.[277] It is significant that in the post-Babylonian construction at Tellôh both the rectangular niche and the flute are present, and it may be surmised that the walls of Wuswas, with their recessed and fluted panels placed one above the other, represent an ancient scheme. It is a scheme which may be compared with that of the façade of Ctesiphon (see below, [p. 134]). At intervals groups of recessed niches are carried up continuously to the height of two registers of panels, just as in the two lower zones at Ctesiphon the engaged columns embrace two registers of arched niches. But at Ctesiphon we have architectural forms borrowed from Hellenism instead of the surface decoration (recess and flute) of Chaldaea and Assyria.

The orthostatic construction was used in Hittite architecture at Zindjirli, Boghâz Keui, and Sakcheh Geuzu. Mr. Hogarth has found it at Carchemish and Baron Oppenheim at Râs al-’Ain.[278] But in all these buildings, Babylonian, Hittite, and Assyrian, there was no attempt to ornament the façade with the similitude of plastic architectural forms. The elements of such ornament were not indeed lacking, but they appear in isolated examples and were not applied to the wall-face in a continuous decorative system. Side by side with stelae and altars adorned with fluted motives akin to those of the façades[279] there are instances of mock architecture in relief. An Assyrian stela upon a slab found at Quyundjik and now in the British Museum will serve as an illustration ([Fig. 11]). Two pilasters carry an architrave consisting of a double fillet and a band of crenellations; between and behind the pilasters an arched niche, placed in counterfeited perspective, frames a hunting scene. It is an early example of the application of the third dimension to architectural ornament, and it conveys the impression of plastic architecture in two planes. As Professor Delbrück observes, by the addition of free-standing columns placed before the pilasters, we should have here a motive familiar to Graeco-Roman façades.[280] The archivolt, of which the enrichment is expressed at Quyundjik in the terms of a shallow fillet, appears at Khorsâbâd, with enamelled brick enrichment, over a doorway,[281] and also upon reliefs.[282] All the methods of decorating the face of the arch which were known to antiquity are found on the Assyrian monuments. The podium façade is oriental, for it was used in Assyria and in Persia. Pre-Greek is the employment of blind openings; in the Persepolitan palaces a blind niche is placed in every intercolumniation, and in plastic architecture an open gallery or loggia was common to Egypt and to Assyria.[283] In pre-Hellenic Egypt and western Asia there is, however, no example of a continuous series of arches in relief, though the continuous treatment of decoration on the wall-face is typical of Babylonian architecture from the earliest time, and it remained only to apply it to true architectural motives instead of to the purely decorative motives of Chaldaea and Assyria. That these last were mainly based upon the outward aspect of primitive wooden structures, I do not doubt, but at the remote date at which we first know them they had already lost all structural significance. The step from pattern to imitative architecture must have been taken at an early stage in the Hellenistic East. Seleucid buildings which have vanished are reflected in the stupas of Hellenistic India, where the surfaces are adorned with blind openings between engaged piers, and in the rock-cut temples, where the decorative scheme of the façade is a podium carrying a colonnade in relief.[284]

In Egypt rows of niches are present in the interior of tombs,[285] and an early example of the same motive can be seen in the gateway at Perge, a city which lay under the direct influence of Antioch.[286] The lightening of the massive wall by means of niches and blind openings can be traced through pre-Greek architecture in Mesopotamia (Assyrian palaces and temples) and in Egypt (from the Eighteenth Dynasty and even earlier) down to the Achaemenid period. The systematic application of this principle to the wall-face, and its union with imitative architecture in relief as a decorative scheme took place, as far as can be determined at present, in the Hellenistic age.

In the third and in the second century B.C. the division of the wall into two zones by means of a moulding appears at Delos, Priene, Magnesia, and other parts of western Asia,[287] and a little later it is found in what is known as the incrusted style at Oscan Pompeii. The lower zone consists of unpainted stucco decoration representing a stone wall, composed of one or of two rows of orthostatae, and above them several courses of dressed stones. The upper zone, which was at first undecorated (it represented space, the upper air), takes on later the semblance of a colonnaded gallery[288] in imitation of the open galleries characteristic of Eastern Hellenistic architecture.[289] The podium façade carrying an open arcade is, as Professor Delbrück is careful to point out, in origin different from the galleried wall, but in façade schemes the two run together so as to be almost indistinguishable. The theme is represented in relief upon the façade of the Bouleuterion at Miletus[290] and frequently in Pompeii, where, however, the engaged columns do not stand upon a podium.[291] Behind the columns, both at Delos and in the Pompeiian examples, the wall is still divided into two zones by a moulding. In all cases it is a theme which stands as a representation in relief of plastic architecture, of deep colonnades such as those which were to be seen on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.[292] The blind order of the Ephebeum at Priene may be cited as another striking example of imitative architecture.[293] Similarly the superimposition of one blind order upon another, a decorative motive so familiar in Roman theatres and amphitheatres, finds its prototype in the colonnades of Hellenistic stoae, such as those erected by Attalus in Athens and in Pergamon.[294]

Professor Delbrück is of opinion that the impulse towards decorating the wall-face with the similitude of plastic architecture was quickened by Greek painting, which, from the fourth century B.C. onward, gained an increasing mastery in the representation of spatial dimensions. Plastic examples of the phase of development represented by the Boscoreale frescoes might be expected in the second century B.C., and in fact there were at that period mock colonnades in relief, such as the Ephebeum at Priene. The cutting away of the wall-face by means of niches was foreshadowed in Hellenistic art; the lightening of the wall-mass by niches has been noticed in the gate at Perge and the tombs of Alexandria, while windows in the intercolumniations were of frequent occurrence.[295] It is possible, as Professor Delbrück suggests, that in Hellenistic Mesopotamia decoration by means of blind openings, whether doors, windows, or niches, won a great popularity because it was based on pre-Hellenic tradition, and it is interesting to observe that the only early examples of the arched niche, which is the leading motive at Ukhaiḍir, are to be found in western Asia.[296] But the systematic application of these principles to the façade was accomplished only in the latest phases of Hellenistic art, and we may perhaps owe it to Roman builders. In the intercolumniations of the decorated zone niches, arcades and windows take the place of the traditional moulding,[297] and the upper wall is broken by a row of arches or of windows.[298] On inner walls a double row of niches is sometimes accompanied by stucco incrustation,[299] while the podium is decorated with engaged columns.[300]

It remained for the Imperial period to complete the development. Orders of columns were placed in zones one above the other; niches of richer type occupied the surface of the wall, and not infrequently they were placed one within the other; rounded and rectangular niches followed one another in a rhythmic sequence; columns and piers stood out in higher relief and the podium and architrave were broken above and below them. Gradually the orders and niches lost their original significance; they were looked upon merely as decorative motives, and as such followed a development of their own. They lent to the wall-surface an ever-increasing movement and rhythm as their forms grew richer and freer. This evolution can be seen upon the walls of Roman buildings which are yet standing; if in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean most of the monuments have fallen, the elements of their composition have been found and put together, as in the Nymphaeum at Miletus,[301] or the theatre at Ephesus,[302] and similar decoration can still be studied upon the walls of Ba’albek.[303] But in western Asia, and notably in Syria, the old classical love of unbroken wall-surfaces died hard—perhaps it may be said to have survived long into the Middle Ages in the smooth faces of dressed stone which give so much dignity to the Mohammadan buildings of Damascus and Aleppo. Older and simpler decorative forms continued to rule when in Rome the evolution had gone on to other stages. The façade of the Nabataean temple at Sî’, for example, echoes in free-standing architecture the features of the relief decoration of the Ephebeum at Priene.[304] In the temenos of the basilica at Apamea (second century A.D.) the solid outer wall has disappeared, and its place is taken by a series of piers with rectangular openings between, but in the basilica itself the treatment of the wall is still of an extremely simple character.[305] The temenos wall of the temple at Palmyra is treated with the old formal severity. At Bâqirḥâ and at Isriyyeh the walls are unbroken save by shallow pilasters,[306] a simplicity which rivals that of the pre-Roman tomb of Ḥamrath at Swaidâ.[307] At Mushennef and at Qanawât pilasters are set at the angles, and the rest of the wall is undecorated.[308] In the pre-Roman temple at Swaidâ, niches, in imitation of small doors, are placed on either side of the single entrance;[309] at ‘Atîl a double order of niches, the lower rectangular, the upper rounded and arched, occupy the same position, but the walls of the cella are without even the customary pilasters;[310] in the Qaisariyyeh at Shaqqâ a genuine opening flanks the doorway on either side, but the façade is otherwise unadorned.[311] In the Philippeion at Shahbâ the side niches are omitted and there are no pilasters except at the angles; rounded and rectangular niches are employed on the interior walls of the palace, and on either side of the interior doorways of the bath, but in all other respects the latter building is noticeable for the entire absence of decoration upon its walls;[312] and as late as the sixth century angle pilasters set upon a podium were considered a sufficient decoration for the walls of the exquisite tomb at the southern Dânâ,[313] while the porticoes of house and stoa are models of severity.[314]

The fantastic variety which characterized the late Hellenistic and the Roman Imperial age must be sought for in south-west Asia in another group of monuments. The influence of Alexandria dominates over the tomb façades of Petra, and was felt even in the earlier tombs at Madâin Ṣâliḥ.[315] With the latter I am not immediately concerned, except in so far as they help to determine the date of the Petra tombs. It is enough to notice that the local oriental forms, the pylon tombs with a band or bands of crenellated ornament, or with a staircase motive at the angles, dropped out of fashion during the first half of the first century after our era, and that in the first century A.D. Hellenistic forms had invaded the Ḥedjr tombs.[316] The gable tomb and the columned façade, which Domaszewski has christened the Roman temple tomb, do not indeed appear at Madâin Ṣâliḥ, but the fully developed aedicula, with quarter-columns in the antae, is found there as early as the year A.D. 31 in the tabernacle which frames the doorway,[317] and the tabernacle, both with a gable and with an archivolt, was employed in Arabia at an early date for votive niches.[318] It is therefore unnecessary, as Puchstein has pointed out, to assign such gable tombs at Petra as date from a period before the Roman occupation (i.e. before A.D. 106) to some fortuitous Greek influence,[319] since the type was familiar to the stone-cutters of an earlier period. Not later than the middle of the first century A.D. a second order of dwarf columns was placed in the attic (the earliest dated example is tomb F 4 at Madâin Ṣâliḥ, A.D. 63-64), but it is instructive to note that the appearance of a new form does not imply the elimination of older types. At Madâin Ṣâliḥ all the different variations continue to exist side by side, and there is an example of the primitive pylon tomb with a single band of crenellations, the unmitigated copy of an Arabian house for the living turned into a house for the dead, which is dated as late as the year A.D. 74,[320] just as the Egyptian gorge is found side by side with, and indeed upon the same tombs as, a fully developed Ionic entablature. The Roman temple tomb of Petra is predicted in the dwarf piers of the attic (which are of frequent occurrence at Madâin Ṣâliḥ) inasmuch as they imply a corresponding series of engaged piers in the wall below. A single example of this so-called temple tomb exists at Madâin Ṣâliḥ, but without the piers in the attic; it is probably to be dated in the middle of the first century A.D.[321] The engaged column, in contradistinction to the engaged pier, is employed at Madâin Ṣâliḥ only in the antae of the tabernacles; at Petra it takes its place among the main supports of the façade. At Petra, too, the plastic freedom of late Hellenistic architectural forms makes itself felt. Broken podiums are found upon wall paintings of the second style at Boscoreale, though their architectural counterpart cannot be pointed out at so early a date; broken entablatures are present in late Hellenistic work at Alexandria, but not elsewhere in the Greek cultural sphere at the same period.[322] Both these features, together with the preference for engaged columns instead of piers, are common at Petra, and they are like sign-posts pointing to the source whence the stone-cutters of Petra drew their inspiration. There are, it is true, early examples of the broken architrave in Italy in the triumphal arches of Rimini (27 B.C.) and Aosta (25 B.C.), but the systematic use of broken podium and entablature is one of the distinctive features of the later Imperial period. In the Lion Tomb at Petra, which recalls the tabernacle of the tomb F 4 at Madâin Ṣâliḥ, architrave, frieze, and cornice are broken over the angle columns and piers. In the tombs of the second century the principle is carried further; architrave, frieze, and cornice are all broken, and the system is extended to the plinth-like member which is interposed between the entablature and the dwarf order of the attic, and, when the façade reaches a second story, to the upper entablature also.[323] In the Corinthian tomb, the Dair, and the Khazneh a second order is superimposed upon the first. In each case a tholos occupies the centre of the upper story and the pairs of flanking columns are crowned by a broken pediment. In the Dair an engaged pier and quarter-column fill out the façade on either side ([Plate 82], Fig. 2). In the Corinthian tomb the lower zone is complete in itself ([Plate 82], Fig. 1). The engaged columns stand upon a high plinth and carry a broken architrave composed of frieze and cornice only; the dwarf piers are placed upon a broken plinth with a moulded cornice, which is interrupted above the central door by a moulded archivolt. The dwarf columns carry a complete entablature, architrave, frieze, and cornice, and a low broken pediment occupies the centre of the façade. Above this structure the second order, with its tholos, stands upon a moulded plinth. In the Storied tomb the lower order carries a complete entablature and a broken attic which contains the gables and archivolts of the doors; upon a plinth with a moulded cornice rises a second order bearing an entablature; a second plinth, itself divided by a horizontal moulding, carries a dwarf order which is crowned by a third entablature ([Fig. 30]). Yet another order crowned the tomb, but it was built, not rock-cut, and little of it remains. The tholos in these façades is a Hellenistic motive, though it is known to us at an early period only from wall paintings and from literary sources.[324] To the multiplication of horizontal decorations earlier Nabataean tombs had shown a strong inclination. The double band of crenellations in the pylon tombs of Madâin Ṣâliḥ and of Petra, the double attic of the so-called Ḥedjr tombs in both places, point the way to such compositions as the Storied tomb. Everywhere a strong centralization rules the scheme of the façade. It is rare to find more than one door; where doors are placed in the flanking intercolumniations they are insignificant in size, as in the Corinthian tomb. In the Dair ([Plate 82], Fig. 2), mock windows occupy the outer intercolumniations. In the Storied tomb, where there are four doors, the two central entrances are higher than the others, and, in the upper story, the central intercolumniation is wider than those on either side. But the long unbroken lines of the horizontal mouldings give an exceptional monotony to this façade. Usually a gable or archivolt, breaking into the attic, emphasizes the centre of the façade and is re-echoed in the pediment, with its central acroterion which crowns the whole, while in the tholos tombs the centralization is even more strongly underlined. The angles are commonly in antis, with a quarter-column set against the corner pier. The archivolt is conspicuous by its absence. It is never used except in exchange for the pediment over aediculae, and, exceptionally, over mock windows, as for example in the lower zone of the Dair.