Although Arabia was the birthplace of the founder of Islam, there are few Saracenic buildings of importance in it. The so-called great Mosque at Mecca, which has been a goal of pilgrimage from all points of the Mahommedan world for so many centuries, has been since its foundation completely rebuilt, not assuming its present form until the middle of the 16th century. It has little that can be called architectural style about it, consisting as it does of an arcaded enclosure in the centre of which is the Kaaba, a heathen shrine that existed long before the time of Mohammed, the whole surrounded by a wall with several gateways and minarets.
In Jerusalem various characteristic buildings bear witness to the prevalence of the Mahommedan faith in the Holy City of the Christians, including the 7th century Mosque el Aksah, originally a Christian church transformed into what it now is by Calif Omar, and the 8th century shrine erroneously named after him, also known as the Dome of the Rock, both of which rise from the site of the Jewish Temple. The latter is of octagonal plan, and, though its details are of a somewhat hybrid character, many of the columns having been filched from other buildings, whilst the decorations of the great dome and of the exterior were added in the 16th century, is of very singular charm on account of the symmetry of its proportions and the richness of its colouring, the walls being cased in Persian tiles and the windows filled with stained glass.
It appears to have been in Egypt that Saracenic architecture, strictly so-called, first attained to the structural dignity and appropriateness of ornamentation that were to distinguish it in Persia, Spain, and India. In the 7th century Mosque of Amru and that of Ibn Touloun, dating from the 9th century, both at Cairo, the earlier phases of the style can be studied, whilst the later development is illustrated in the same city by the 13th century Mosque of Kalaoon, the 14th century Mosque of Sultan Hassan, that has the rare feature in a Mahommedan building of a cruciform plan, the contemporaneous Mosque of Sultin Barkook, and the small 15th century Mosque of Kait-Bey, the last specially noteworthy on account of its beautiful internal decoration and its graceful minaret.
In Persia the finest mosques are the 13th century one at Tabrez known as the Blue, and that at Ispahan dating from the 16th century, which has a grand dome and noble gateways with pointed arches, whilst at Serbistan, Firanzabad, Ukheithar, Kasir-i-Shirin, and elsewhere in the same country are remains of palaces and other secular buildings, ranging in date from the 4th to the 9th century, that give proof of great structural and decorative skill on the part of the architects who worked for the fire-worshippers, who, though they required no temples in which to worship their gods, lavished vast sums on their own homes.
Beautiful as are the relics of Saracenic architecture in Egypt, Syria, and Persia, they are excelled by many remarkable buildings in Spain, where, after the conquest of the country by the Moors in the 8th century, the style reached its fullest development. The most remarkable examples of it are the Mosque at Cordova, begun in 786 by Abd-el-Rahman and added to from time to time by his successors, with the result that it affords an excellent illustration of the modification of details that took place as time went on; the 12th century Giralda or Tower at Seville, noteworthy for its fine proportions and effective surface decoration, the 13th century Alcazar or castle in the same town, and above all the Palace of the Alhambra, that dominates Granada from a lofty height above the city, which was begun in 1248 by the Moorish King, Ibn-l-Ahmar and added to by his successors. Of the original buildings that, when first completed, must have been one of the grandest and most finely situated groups in the world, all that now remain are the towers of the north wall, in one of which is the vast hall of the Ambassadors, and various colonnaded rooms and porticoes ranged round two spacious courts, one called that of the Fishpond, the other that of the Lions. The delicate grace of the columns and arches, with the richness of their decoration and of every inch of surface, has never been surpassed either in beauty of design or harmony of colour, whilst the effects of perspective from the doorways and other points of view are equally unrivalled. No single detail is superfluous or without its special meaning in relation to the whole, and even what to the uninitiated appear mere geometrical designs on the walls, lintels, &c., are quotations from the Koran and classic Arabic poetry.
When through the breaking up of the power of the Moors in Spain, the architecture introduced by them seemed fated to share their decline, a kind of revival of it took place in Constantinople through the conquest of that city by the Turks in 1453. Unfortunately however the style made no real progress there, the mosques and other buildings erected by the new owners being rather Byzantine than Saracenic, even that known as the Suleimanyeh, built between 1550-1556, and the Ahmediyeh, dating from 1608-1614, greatly resembling St. Sophia.
In India the mosques and palaces erected by the Mahommedan conquerors and their successors are even more beautiful and impressive than the Buddhist and Hindu buildings described in the section on Asiatic architecture. Their distinctive characteristics, as in Egypt, Persia, and Spain, are the skilful combination of the dome, the arch and the minaret, and the lavish surface decoration of the interior, with certain other peculiarities that were the outcome of local tradition. More attention was given, for instance, to external appearance, huge recessed gateways and colonnaded cloisters surmounted by rows of purely decorative domes on pilasters, being of frequent occurrence. At the same time, stalactite vaulting was rarely employed, whilst horizontal courses of corbels or arches in which each stone projects slightly beyond that on which it rests, were used as supports for the domes instead of pendentives.
