Materials for the study of early Mohammadan decoration are still so scanty that the difficulty of assigning exact dates to such as we possess is great. It is enhanced by the fact that the workmen of the first khalifs must have been of non-Arab extraction. The Arab invaders, pouring in out of deserts which were innocent of monumental constructions, had nothing to contribute to architecture or to the arts. So far as we know them in the pre-Mohammadan period they had not created an art of their own. Along the trade-routes, the rock-cut tombs of Madâin Ṣâliḥ and of Petra exhibit, without salient divergence, the artistic principles of Hellenized Egypt and Hellenized Syria, while concerning the older Arab civilizations in the southern parts of the peninsula we have as yet no evidence save that of inscriptions. The Mohammadan conquerors employed the workmen of their predecessors, and according to the nature of their own traditions, these workmen might raise a palace with a basilical hall, like Mshattâ, or a palace entirely composed of lîwân groups like Ukhaiḍir; they might cover their walls with Hellenistic fresco, as at Qṣair ‘Amrah, or with ornament derived mainly from the ancient East, as again at Ukhaiḍir. The variations of this period were due to individual idiosyncrasy, or rather to individual training; there is no reason why they should be taken to denote a chronological distinction. A hundred and fifty years later this heterogeneous material had been welded together and the Islâmic Weltkunst was beginning to take shape. Sâmarrâ, in the eastern part of the Abbâsid dominions, the mosque of Ibn Ṭulûn in the western part, re-echo one another; artistic conceptions are not only interchangeable, they are the same; and though, all through the history of the arts of Islâm, local peculiarities, based on local conditions and traditions, continue to differentiate one region from another, it is not the differences but the similarities which are the most striking. They go hand in hand with the singular solidarity of Islâm, with the uninterrupted intercourse between remote parts of the Mohammadan world, with the ceaseless passage of travellers and scholars from the western limits of Europe on the one hand to the eastern limits of Asia on the other. This intercourse was quickened, as the Prophet had intended that it should be, by the institution of the annual pilgrimage. The mosque of Ibn Ṭulûn is not an isolated example of a direct borrowing by one region from another. The gates of al-Mehdiyyeh in Tunis were copied from the gates of Raqqah.[371] It is impossible to explain the curious niching of the walls of the eleventh-century palace of the Menâr, to take another Tunisian example, except by a comparison with the wall-surface decoration of Babylonia and Assyria.[372] I am fully aware that a long period of time had elapsed between the fall of the Mesopotamian empires and the erection of the Menâr, and that it would be vain to attempt to establish a continuous sequence of buildings between them, but I would point out that the Parthians, when they reconstructed the Babylonian palace at Tellôh, reproduced the Babylonian wall decoration so closely that de Sarzec was persuaded that the ruins of their palace belonged to the Chaldaean age.[373]
Turn again to the fortress of the Bani Hammâd and you will find the cusp motive of Syria and Mesopotamia repeated on its arches;[374] and at the palace of Medînat al-Zahrâ in Spain (end of the tenth century) we have the plaster decorations of the walls of Sâmarrâ carried out in a style which betrays their Coptic and classical parentage,[375] though they are not devoid of characteristic motives, such as the palmette tree and the continuous pattern, which are rooted in oriental tradition.[376] In the same ruins the workers in stone have borrowed alike from Byzantium and from Mesopotamia; some of the continuous geometrical patterns are closely allied to those of Sâmarrâ,[377] while the free use of the crenellated motive may be compared with its use at Ukhaiḍir ([Plate 87]). The earliest Mesopotamian examples of such patterns as these are Parthian ([Plate 86], Fig. 1).
One of the structural features of Ukhaiḍir has a value which is not only structural but also decorative. I allude to the use of masonry tubes between parallel barrel vaults. Obviously it is a scheme which was born of the systematic use of the vault. It is to be found at Hatra, where it appears in some of the tombs.[378] The same system is present at Firûzâbâd, where there was a masonry tube between the barrel vaults of the side chambers of the entrance lîwân and the domed chamber.[379] In later Mohammadan architecture I have found masonry tubes at Khân al-Khernîna above Tekrît.[380] A second device for the lightening of the wall mass between parallel barrel vaults is employed at Ukhaiḍir in the east annex and in the buildings to the north of the palace. It takes the form of a number of narrow tubes. I saw it also in a fourteenth-century khân at the foot of the Djebel Sindjâr ([Plate 88], Fig. 1), a khân which is famous for the dragon reliefs on its doorway,[381] and in a mosque of the early fifteenth century at Ḥasan Kaif ([Plate 88], Fig. 2). The decorative importance of the first scheme, the large single tube, lies in the effect which its opening produces on the façade. This can be observed in the courts on the ground floor at Ukhaiḍir, as well as in the court on the upper story of the gate-house. The arched openings of the tubes between the arched doors of the lîwân and its side chambers form an essential part of the façade, and they are retained when vault and tube are alike absent. The existence of tube openings in the façades round the central court, the ṣaḥn, of the mosque of Ibn Ṭulûn is sufficient to show that the Egyptian mosque was copied from a vaulted prototype ([Plate 89], Fig. 1). I do not doubt that it was modelled on the vaulted buildings of Mesopotamia, though vault and tube are absent from its structure. The great mosque at Sâmarrâ was not vaulted; unfortunately the data are insufficient to determine the scheme of the façades of its ṣaḥn. Nor was the mosque of Abû Dulaf vaulted; it had a flat roof carried on arches, like Ibn Ṭulûn; but the tube openings appear in the form of niches on the façades of the ṣaḥn ([Plate 89], Fig. 2). As at Ibn Ṭulûn, they have become purely decorative. I do not know whether there are tubes between the vaults of the Bait al-Khalîfah at Sâmarrâ, but the openings are simulated upon the façade by shallow blind niches. The same system holds good in the ṣaḥn façades of the Azhar at Cairo, a building which has no other connexion with Mesopotamian architecture than this traditional use of a decorative motive, the true significance of which had long been forgotten.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOSQUE
The mosque of Ukhaiḍir has an exceptional interest. It is one of the earliest mosques known to us which retains its original form and decoration, and its plan may be regarded as one of the first examples which we possess of the systematized architectural scheme which, in slightly varying types, ruled the Mohammadan world until the fourteenth century of our era. It was a scheme which was derived from the inaugural sanctuary of the Faith, the Prophet’s house at Medînah.
Recent research has made it abundantly clear that Muḥammad, when he constructed his new dwelling after the flight to Medînah in A.D. 622, had no other object in view than the purely domestic. It was not a mosque which he set himself to build, but a living-house, and he laid it out in the fashion which was customary in his day. It may indeed be doubted whether he contemplated the need of a temple of any kind.[382] In the view of the founder of Islâm there were but two sanctuaries in the world, the mosque of the Ka’bah at Mekkah and the mosque of the Aqṣâ at Jerusalem, the former being at that period an open space, bounded only by the buildings of the city, with the house of Abraham in its midst, the latter an area on the edge (aqṣâ = extremity) of the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem, an area actually occupied by the ruins of Justinian’s Church of the Virgin, which had been destroyed by the Persians in A.D. 614. For the rest God could be worshipped in every place, and the nomads of Arabia could perform their religious exercises as satisfactorily in the open wilderness as in any other spot. But, as has been well pointed out,[383] even in the Days of Ignorance, the madjlis, the place of assembly—that is to say the courtyard of the Arab house—was itself invested with a kind of sanctity; the meetings held in it were conducted with gravity and order, and it may also have been used for cult purposes. To it the terms ‘madjlis’ and ‘masdjid’ were applied impartially, and it was not until after the advent of the Prophet that the word ‘masdjid’ was narrowed down so as to signify only such places of assembly as were connected with religious observances.[384] These places were not, however, used exclusively for cult purposes. In Muḥammad’s masdjid at Medînah, the court of his house was necessarily the centre of his domestic life; in it he lived and entertained his wives and took counsel with his friends, and, since he was the head of his community, it was the meeting-place of the Faithful, whether for religious or for secular needs. The homeless among his adherents found a lodging in it, and the wounded were tended there. Nor did the masdjid al-djamâ’ah, the mosque of assembly, lose its secular character until more than a hundred years had passed after the Hidjrah. For the mosque, as Wellhausen has put it (and the phrase cannot be bettered), was the forum of primitive Islâm. When the conquerors founded their camp-cities, the misrs of Mesopotamia and of Egypt, their first step was to mark out the area of the mosque, to provide, that is to say, a central place of assembly for the people. To it the khalif repaired on his accession and the governor on his appointment, and the discourses which they pronounced on these occasions were political rather than religious.[385] Thither, too, they summoned the people when questions of importance were to be discussed, or weighty tidings to be communicated.[386]
Muḥammad’s house at Medînah, which was to play so influential a part in the architectural history of Islâm, consisted of a courtyard 100 ells square (circa 60 metres) enclosed by a wall, the lower part of which was stone and the upper of sun-dried brick. The qiblah, the direction in which the worshippers turned in prayer, was towards Jerusalem, i.e. it lay to the north; there was, however, no niche to mark it, and the word ‘qiblah’ did not carry with it any architectural connotation, but merely the sense of a moral order. That the congregation might be protected from the burning sun, this side of the court was covered by a roof of woven palm-leaves, supported on columns made of palm-trunks. The roof was so low that a man could touch it with his hand. On the east side, two rooms, for the two wives, Saudâ and ‘A’ishah, were placed outside the wall at its southern extremity. In the opposite corner (the south-west) a primitive lodging was provided for the poorest of those who had followed the Prophet in his flight. It was covered by a roof (ṣuffah) similar to that of the qiblah, and those who inhabited it were known as the Aṣḥâb al-Ṣuffah, the people of the portico. There were three doors into the courtyard. That which lay to the south was the principal entrance; a subsidiary door was placed on the west side, and on the east side was the door used by the Prophet. At a subsequent date, owing to quarrels with the Jews, the qiblah was turned away from Jerusalem and placed in the direction of Mekkah. This necessitated the closing of the south door and the opening of a door in the north wall. Moreover, the Aṣḥâb al-Ṣuffah were moved to the north-east angle of the court and their roof was re-erected there.[387] In addressing those who were present, the Prophet was accustomed to lean against the trunk of a palm-tree, but in the year seven or eight of the Hidjrah he caused a wooden minbar to be erected. It consisted of two steps and a seat. On or before it he conducted the prayers.[388] The khalif ‘Umar enlarged the mosque at Medînah, but the new building scarcely exceeded the old in architectural pretension. The wall was of sun-dried brick, the columns of palm-trunks (or according to one account of sun-dried brick also) supporting a palm-leaf roof. It is not clear whether this roof was carried all round the court or was confined to the south side. The court, which in Muḥammad’s day was without any kind of pavement, was given by ‘Umar a floor of pebbles beaten into the ground.[389] Further improvements were carried out by ‘Uthmân, but it was not until the time of the Umayyad khalif Walîd ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (A.D. 705-715) that the old simplicity of construction was abandoned. In the year A.H. 87 or 88 he pulled down the mosque and rebuilt it. The workmen whom he employed were Greeks and Copts from Damascus and Egypt.[390] The walls and columns of the new edifice were of cut stone; gold, silver, and mosaic were used to adorn it; the miḥrâb and the maqṣûrah were of teak.[391] The maqṣûrah, the enclosure reserved for the khalif, had already, according to Balâdhuri, been introduced into the mosque by Marwân (A.D. 683-685), but his maqṣûrah was of stone. The miḥrâb was a new feature: ‘the first who introduced the novelty of a concave miḥrâb was ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Azîz when he restored the mosque of the Prophet’ (by order of the khalif Walîd).[392] Both maqṣûrah and miḥrâb were borrowed from Christian usage; the maqṣûrah was copied from the Imperial enclosed dais of Byzantine churches, the miḥrâb from the Christian apse—it was ‘min shân al-kanâ’is’, an attribute of churches, and was adopted with some reluctance by Islâm.[393] Concerning the Medînah mosque Professor Becker quotes an exceedingly suggestive anecdote. Walîd, boasting of his construction to a son of the khalif ‘Uthmân, who had been the last before him to restore the mosque, said: ‘How far our building excels yours.’ ‘True,’ replied his interlocutor, ‘we built after the manner of mosques, but you after the manner of Christian churches.’
Elsewhere the development followed similar lines. The Ḥaram of Mekkah stands apart; its arrangement could never be the same as that of ordinary mosques. Yet it is interesting to observe that it was at first innocent of any building except the Ka’bah. The khalif ‘Umar enlarged the area by pulling down adjacent houses, and enclosed it with a wall lower than a man’s stature; ‘Uthmân is said to have been the first to furnish it with riwâqs. Again here, as at Medînah, it was Walîd who first beautified the mosque with marble columns and with mosaic.[394]
The accounts of the foundation of the misrs of Baṣrah, Kûfah, and Fusṭâṭ throw a vivid light upon the requirements, spiritual and architectural, of primitive Islâm. It is recorded that the khalif ‘Umar gave orders to the respective governors of the three places, Abû Mûsâ, Sa’d ibn abi Waqqâs, and ‘Amr ibn al-’Âṣ, that a masdjid al-djamâ’ah should be provided, while each tribe was to have a small mosque for its particular use. At Baṣrah the mosque was marked out (ikhtaṭṭa) but not built, and Balâdhuri is careful to add that the people prayed in it without buildings.[395] It was subsequently enclosed with a fence made of reeds, and this fence Abû Mûsâ replaced by a wall of sun-dried brick and roofed it (presumably the qiblah side) with reeds. Ziyâd ibn Abîhi, Mu’âwiyah’s powerful viceroy, enlarged it considerably. His building was of burnt brick and gypsum mortar, and he roofed it with teak.[396] Five columns (the word used is sawâri = masts, the columns were therefore presumably of wood) supported the roof of the qiblah wall; the side walls were of stone, and columns are not mentioned there. The columns were probably of teak like the roof; some of them had four ’uqûd = ties, which I take to mean the metal collars which were used to fasten together the different sections of wooden or marble columns. Ziyâd was the first to introduce a maqṣûrah, and he is said to have built a minaret of stone. Al-Hadjdjâdj or his son put in columns made of stone from the mountains of Ahwâz.[397] At Kûfah the mosque was marked out on a high spot before any part of the city had been built. On three sides the ṣaḥn was bounded by a ditch; on the fourth, that which faced towards Mekkah (the front side as it is called by the Arab writers), there was a covering roof (ẓullah) which had neither side nor end walls; it was 200 ells long, and was supported by columns of marble which were taken from churches built by Chosroës. The ceiling was like the ceiling of Greek churches.[398] ‘And such’, says Ṭabari, ‘was the mosque (at that time), with the exception of the mosque at Mekkah which they would not imitate.’
The first mosque at Kûfah therefore consisted of a great ṣaḥn surrounded on three sides by a ditch and on the fourth, the qiblah side, by an open colonnade carrying a roof, and the arrangement was exactly the same as that of Muḥammad’s house, except that the qiblah wall and the palm-trunk columns were replaced by marble columns. Balâdhuri gives a tradition that the mosque at Kûfah was built out of part of the materials taken from the palaces of al-Mundhir at Ḥîrah,[399] and Ṭabari says that the castle at Kûfah was of burnt brick taken from Persian buildings at Ḥîrah. Ziyâd rebuilt the mosque. He summoned, according to Ṭabari,[400] Persian builders, and expounded to them the plan of the mosque and its extent, and that which he desired regarding the length of its roof, saying that he wished to erect an edifice which should not have its parallel. To which a man, who had been one of the builders of Chosroës, replied that could only be accomplished by using columns from the Jebel Ahwâz which should be carved and polished and filled with lead and iron clamps (safâfîd = skewers). The ceiling should be 30 ells high (circa 17 metres!), and it should be roofed. The mosque should also have side and end walls. This scheme was adopted by Ziyâd. Balâdhuri mentions that he placed a maqṣûrah in this mosque also, and that both at Baṣrah and at Kûfah he strewed pebbles on the ṣaḥn to prevent the people from getting dusty.[401]