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

by Gertrude Lowthian Bell

With the exception of the small palace chapels at Balkuwârâ, all the Mesopotamian mosques were laid out on the same plan, but they differed in details of construction. When columns were available they were used in the riwâqs, as at Kûfah and in the first mosque at Raqqah. Elsewhere there were either wooden columns (Baṣrah, Baghdâd), or columns of masonry (Ukhaiḍir); or the riwâqs might be built with brick piers (Manṣûr’s mosque at Raqqah, Abû Dulaf) or, where stone was easy to obtain, with stone piers (Ḥarrân). At Sâmarrâ there is an isolated example of a composite pier. The roofs also differ from one another. At Ḥarrân there must have been wooden gable roofs over the riwâqs; at Ukhaiḍir they were vaulted; at Abû Dulaf the flat wooden roof rested on arches; at Sâmarrâ, and probably at Baghdâd, it was carried directly by the piers or columns. The wide central aisle was present at Ḥarrân, at Sâmarrâ, and at Abû Dulaf; at the latter there is also a side transept, producing the same ⏊-shaped plan that has been noticed in the Tunisian mosques. The data are too scanty to admit of any but the most general conclusion. We find divergent detail but no divergence in type, and the type in Mesopotamia, as in other parts of the Mohammadan world, was derived ultimately from the Prophet’s house at Medînah. It is in Mesopotamia that we have the earliest examples of the brick pier. We do not know how far Nûr al-Dîn’s reparations at Raqqah extended, nor what was the aspect of the façades of the ṣaḥn before his time, but at Abû Dulaf the original construction is preserved and the brick piers and arches of the façades bear in their spandrel niches a characteristic Mesopotamian trait. I do not doubt that the first Egyptian mosque built with brick piers, that of Ibn Ṭulûn, was inspired by the Mesopotamian scheme; the marks of relationship are too numerous not to be convincing. The engaged quarter-columns with which his piers are provided were no new thing. Engaged half-columns are universal at Ukhaiḍir, and the oblong piers with quarter-columns in Ibn Ṭulûn’s mosque are nothing but a translation into solid masonry, along the lines indicated at Ukhaiḍir, of the octagonal piers with angle colonnettes of Sâmarrâ. More than a hundred years later this building served as a model to al-Ḥâkim, and it is interesting to note that the Mesopotamian pier was applied at a still later date to a building which seems in other respects to have been a direct imitation of the Umayyad mosque at Damascus. The great mosque at Diyârbekr (I give here a plan which I made in 1911, Plate 90) is a patchwork of older materials re-used at different times. The oldest part of the existing structure is the west wing of the ḥaram, which is dated by an inscription in the year A.D. 1091,[426]

but the west arcade of the ṣaḥn, though it is dated A.D. 1124, must preserve the memory of a plan which is older than that of the present mosque. It strikes the north wall of the ḥaram at an angle of 78°, and by reason of its oblique disposition it cuts off the north-west corner of the ṣaḥn, which is 6·24 metres shorter on the north side than it is on the south side. The east arcade of the ṣaḥn (dated A.D. 1163-1179) lies almost at right angles to the north wall of the ḥaram. Whether the orientation of the west arcade was dictated by a pre-Mohammadan building or, as Dr. Herzfeld has acutely suggested, by the plan of a mosque which stood upon this site before the year A.D. 1091,[427] cannot be determined with certainty. In its present form it is the work of Mohammadan builders of the twelfth century, though it is partly composed of pre-Mohammadan materials. Whence these materials were derived has not been ascertained. There is, however, a further proof that a building older than the existing mosque, oriented in the manner corresponding with that of the west arcade, existed on this site. On the north side of the ṣaḥn, between the two northern madrasahs, there is a lane or passage which communicates with the street beyond the precincts of the mosque. On the east side of the passage there is a fragment of wall, built of large dressed stones, entirely dissimilar from the masonry in any part of the existing mosque, and this fragment lies at the same angle as the west arcade of the ṣaḥn ([Plate 93], Fig. 1).

Not far from Diyârbekr there is another building which shows in its plan and decorations the influence of the Ulu Djâmi’ in that city. The so-called mosque of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn at Mayâfârqîn ranks, even in ruin, among the finest of Mohammadan monuments ([Plate 92]). The wide central aisle has been converted into a chamber almost square (it is not quite rectangular and averages 13·60 x 13·32 metres), which was covered by a dome set on elaborately decorated squinch arches ([Plate 93], Fig. 2). Under the dome runs an inscription assigning the building of the mosque to the Ortokid Alpi (A.D. 1152-1176). The square chamber is surrounded on three sides by a corridor consisting of eleven bays, some of which were probably domed, while the others were vaulted. The columns placed against the piers of the dome were taken from a neighbouring early Christian basilica. The wings to east and west are divided by three arcades into four transepts averaging alternately 5 metres and 2·60 metres in width, a narrow transept lying next to the qiblah wall. The eastern miḥrâb in the south wall of the east wing is dated by an inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi in the year A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. The west wing contains no date, but the very shallow miḥrâb in the south wall is proved by its decoration to belong to a period not earlier than the sixteenth century, and as the whole wing as it stands at present seems to have been rebuilt, it may well be that it all belongs to a late reconstruction or reparation. Still further west are some ruined edifices which formed part of the precincts of the mosque, and here a lintel, re-used in a doorway of a later period, bears a second inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi and the date A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. There are no remains of a minaret, and the ṣaḥn is completely ruined and filled with débris, but the north façade, which is almost entirely preserved, is of remarkable interest in the history of Mohammadan decoration. (The photograph of a section of this façade has been given on Plate 84, Fig. 3.) The wings and the north façade show many signs of reparation, and no doubt the mosque shared the fate of all great buildings in these stormy regions, and suffered frequent ruin and subsequent restoration; but it seems probable that the two wings were originally built between A.D. 1226 and 1228, and that they were added to the domed chamber with its corridor which had been erected some fifty years earlier.

In the Ayyûbid mosques at Ḥasan Kaif, all of which are dated in the first half of the fifteenth century, no suggestion of an early plan can be traced. At Môṣul, the great mosque as it exists at present dates from the time of Nûr al-Dîn Maḥmûd (A.D. 1146-1173), but the plan shows traces of an earlier riwâq constructed with piers, and lying immediately to the north of the present ḥaram; while fragmentary inscriptions in decorated Kufic must belong, according to M. van Berchem, to the eleventh century A.D.[428]

That we have no further information concerning the Mesopotamian mosque shows how insufficient are the data which bear upon its architectural history. From the facts which I have briefly summarized one conclusion may, however, be drawn. The mosque builders were guided by a scheme of extreme simplicity, the details of which were executed according to the nature of the building material which was available. When that material could be taken from older buildings the Mesopotamian artificers were not slow to profit by so fortunate a circumstance; elsewhere they reverted to the system of construction which from time immemorial had prevailed in those regions. They built with sun-dried or with burnt bricks, or where stone could be obtained they built with stone. Sometimes they imported stone from Ahwâz for the columns of their riwâqs, and sometimes wood; sometimes they raised columns of stone masonry, or again they combined brick piers with colonnettes of marble. But since imported wood and stone were expensive, and the Sasanian monuments, which had served as quarries, were speedily exhausted, there was a natural tendency to return to the old local forms, and piers of brick or stone masonry were the obvious solution for the supports of the riwâqs. Ukhaiḍir is the only example which remains to us of a mosque in which the riwâqs were covered with a vault; probably the vault was seldom employed. It is certain that all the mosques of the early Abbâsid period, of which the ruins are preserved, must have been roofed with wood.

CHAPTER VII
THE DATE OF UKHAIḌIR

There are no inscriptions by which to fix the date of Ukhaiḍir. If any record of its foundation were made, it must have been written upon the plaster which covered the walls, and in some of the more important rooms the plaster has peeled away. But it is probable that there was no such record. The laudable habit of setting the name and date of the founder upon the building which he had caused to be constructed does not seem to have been followed in the first age of Islâm, and, like Ukhaiḍir, the ḥîrahs upon the Syrian frontier have furnished us with no direct evidence as to their origin. I found in room 44 a graffito upon the plaster on the south side of the doorway which communicates with room 45. It is exceedingly ill written, and in some places the cracking of the plaster makes it almost indecipherable. The authors of Ocheïdir did not notice it and no mention of it appears in M. Massignon’s text, though he certainly saw it, since it is visible in one of his photographs.[429] The original is so indistinct that I doubt whether any photograph would reproduce it satisfactorily. After an unsuccessful attempt to take a squeeze, I made a copy—scarcely more successfully ([Fig. 35]). When I returned to Ukhaiḍir in 1911 the plaster was still more damaged, and I abandoned the attempt to re-copy the graffito. Meantime Dr. B. Moritz had noticed the characters in M. Massignon’s photograph, and he was inclined to believe that they might be ancient, possibly Nabataean. I therefore sent my copy both to him and to Professor Littmann, and the latter was so kind as to supply me with the following notes. ‘Dr. Moritz and I combined our efforts and something like the following may be suggested:

“This water from the house (?) to ... from this water. And the declaration was pronounced that there is no God but God and Muḥammad is his Prophet. And there was present at this ... Bishr, son of ‘Âdah son of ‘Îsâ son of ‘Umar, in the year of the Hidjrah 77-.”

‘If the date is correctly read we would have to choose between the years A.H. 771 and 779 = A.D. 1369-1378. The purpose of this inscription may be to reserve the rights of watering at or near Ukhaiḍir. The Beduin put their tribe marks on ruins in the desert in order to prove that the region (water and pasture) is theirs. This is their way of annexation. The whole is very doubtful; but we have made out at least something. The words that are absolutely certain are