The excellent preservation which characterizes the Moorish monuments of the Peninsula after centuries of spoliation and neglect attests the substantial nature of their foundations, and the care and skill which must have been employed in their erection. Many of these structures, from their massive proportions, their projecting buttresses, their elevated towers and bristling ramparts, suggested rather a defensive fortress than the abode of princely luxury or a temple dedicated to the God of mercy and of peace. While no creed was so much abhorred by the Arab as that of the Magi, still he did not disdain to crown the summits of his mosques and minarets with the flame-shaped battlements of Persia, emblematic of the adoration of Fire. The Mosque of Cordova, the Giralda of Seville, and many of the edifices of Northern Africa display this striking and favorite ornament, which was preserved throughout the entire Moslem domination in the Peninsula, and glitters alike in the mosaics of the Alhambra, in the golden embroidery of textile fabrics, and among the rich and splendid illuminations of the Koran.
In both the strengthening and the embellishment of his work, no artist ever made use of the arch with greater effect than did the Moslem. The variations of its curve indicate successively the different phases assumed by Hispano-Arab architecture from the eighth to the fifteenth century. Some of its adaptations, for instance, that of the ajimez, or double window divided by slender columns, probably originated in Moorish Spain, whose buildings offer exquisite examples of its employment for the combined purposes of utility and decoration. The earliest arch, and the one most frequently adopted during the Ommeyade Khalifate, was the horseshoe form, whose symbolic derivation ascends to the primitive ages of phallicism and recalls the homage once paid to the vivifying principles of Nature. The emblems of that worship, a worship whose impressions Christianity could modify but was unable to extirpate, were, from the earliest times, regarded as potent talismans against every species of malign or demoniac influence. In the Middle Ages, European Christians wore these emblems as amulets; they carved them upon the altars of their shrines; they perpetuated them in their spires and the pinnacles of their cathedrals; they revered them in the sacred forms of the cross and the crucifix. It has been from time immemorial a custom in Northern Africa to place by the entrances of houses, as a security against the evil-eye, the symbol familiar to Hindu superstition as the Yoni. From this ancient practice was derived the sweeping curve of the ultra-semicircular arch, which occupies such an important place in Arab architecture, and whose appearance was considered an augury of good fortune to all who passed the portals of Moslem palace, mosque, or private residence. The facility of modification which this object affords has caused it to be represented under a great variety of forms; and the persistence of a custom whose origin is popularly unknown and whose peculiar significance has long been forgotten is demonstrated by the practice of fixing a horseshoe above the doors of dwellings, as a sign of auspicious greeting, still prevalent in many parts of the world.
The other Indian symbol, the Lingam, sculptured upon the eternal rock-temples of Hindustan, carried by the Egyptian priests in solemn procession during the festivals of Osiris, carved upon the Roman Termini, and fashioned into the crest of the cap peculiar to the Doges of Venice, it may be added, appears, to-day, delineated with startling fidelity to nature upon the coinage of the most practical and progressive of modern nations,—the United States of America.
The survival of the emblems and ceremonies of phallicism in both the Christian and Mohammedan systems demonstrates the ineradicable influence that worship has always maintained over the superstitious of every class, a class whose members are generally the most zealous for those observances which they do not comprehend; and presents one of the most curious and entertaining episodes in the annals of human inconsistency and unquestioning devotion.
The employment of the arch, at first solely utilitarian, with the progressive development of artistic conceptions, became in the end merely a means of architectural adornment. The effect of the delicate filigree arcades of the Alhambra, whose fragile materials seem inadequate to support the cornices and entablatures apparently resting upon them, is illusory; they are mere structural fictions of the Moorish designer. A regular series of progressions is traceable from the bold horseshoe sweep of the early khalifate, through the engrailed, the slightly pointed, the polyfoil, the ogival arches, to the highly ornate and graceful curves of the palace of the Alhamares. Throughout all its modifications, however, certain characteristics survived; among them the spring of one or several arches from a bracket formed by the moulding of the capital, an arrangement peculiar to Arab architecture, and preserved long after the arch had ceased to be an essential element of its construction. Every variation of the segment of a circle which human ingenuity could devise furnished new resources to the Arab. The horseshoe form was more or less pronounced; the Roman received fresh embellishment at his hands; the ogival was plain, festooned, or serrated. The columns were unusually slender, after their type had been definitely established; in the edifices first erected, they were necessarily dissimilar in dimensions, in material, in form, in color, and in ornamentation, constituting, as they did, the spoil of a hundred edifices, collected in many and widely separated countries. In the Mosque of Cordova, the most striking instance of this indiscriminate employment of the plunder of antiquity, the columns had no bases, and were disposed at random without regard to the rules of architectural symmetry.
The weight of evidence seems to fully justify the opinion that the ogival or pointed arch, whose adaptation is so prominent a feature of Gothic construction, was introduced into Europe either through Sicily or Spain. Its invention cannot be attributed to the Arabs. It was known in Asia long before the time of Mohammed. It appears in the ruined palace of the Persian kings at Ctesiphon. It is by no means certain that it was not used in Sicily before the invasion of the Arabs. The latter were familiar with its form before the ninth century, for it was employed extensively in the Mosque of Tulun at Cairo.
The capital offers as great a variety in form and decoration as the arch; in some, the Corinthian, in others, the Composite order, prevailed; many again presented the most ornate and fantastic patterns, examples of the florid and decadent taste of Constantinople; in the last period golden inscriptions from the Koran in the graceful Arabic script replaced the Ionian volute and the classic acanthus.
In the art of mural decoration the Arab stands alone and unrivalled. The exterior of his edifices, as a rule, was bare and sombre, but within, the glowing imagination of the artist revelled in a myriad forms of exquisite taste and beauty. A religious system, whose simple doctrines appealed rather to the heart than to the senses; social customs, whose jealous observance forbade even the appearance of publicity, screened from the eyes of the curious the celebration of religious ceremonies and the instructive exhibition of domestic life and manners. For these reasons, few openings appeared in Moslem dwellings; windows were discouraged by the traditions of the harem; a single door was generally considered sufficient; and even the approaches to the mosques, whose crowds of worshippers necessitated many entrances, were so contrived that the interiors were not visible from the street.
In some cases where the peculiar sacredness of the structure appeared to justify a prodigality of adornment, the Spanish Arab departed from the rule which he ordinarily observed. The twenty-one portals of the great temple of Cordova were surmounted by ornamental panels, composed of bricks and stucco disposed in arabesque designs, one of the earliest forms of this charming method of mural decoration. Here also are exhibited the first examples of the marble lattice, whose interstices admit the air but exclude the light; and of the ajimez, or niche-shaped window, with its sweeping border and diminutive columns of verde-antique and alabaster. Carved in the lattices and mingled with the Persian ornaments of the doorways is to be seen the ancient suastika, or Sanskrit cross, symbolic of happiness and moral regeneration, and revered by the Aryan race as a precious talisman more than a thousand years before the Christian era. The recurrence of this emblem upon the walls of a Semitic temple—now dedicated to a worship to which the tenets of both Mohammedan and Hindu are equally abhorrent—is ironically suggestive of the instability of religious institutions. Another singular circumstance is the appearance of the Latin cross upon some of the capitals, unquestionably sculptured there before the erection of the building. When the antipathy of Moslems to the Christian emblem of salvation is remembered, this fact becomes not only extraordinary, but inexplicable. The Giralda of Seville, now believed to have been raised as a memorial of conquest, and to have served the double purpose of minaret and observatory, in the eyes of the Andalusian Moslems only inferior in sanctity to the Djalma of Cordova, displays, to a remarkable degree, the talent of the Moorish artist in the work of mural embellishment. Its majestic proportions, the unique and lavish character of its ornamentation, extended its renown to the uttermost regions of the East and made it the architectural pride and glory of Mohammedan Spain. Both it and the Mosque of Cordova are known to have been painted; the interstices of the elegant tracery of brick arabesques which covers its sides are said to have presented the brilliant hues of scarlet and azure, while the projecting designs were gilded, the whole forming a blazing mass of color whose combinations must have produced an inconceivably gorgeous effect.
The Byzantine derivation of many of the characteristics of early Hispano-Arab architecture is emphasized in the Giralda, whose construction, aside from its decorations, is almost the counterpart of that of the Campanile of Venice, with which it was practically contemporaneous. Inclined planes, or ramps, instead of stairways, afford, in both, access to the summit; and, while the Giralda is by far the more beautiful, their general similarity in plan, dimensions, and appearance cannot fail to impress the most heedless observer.