How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the mosques became an aggregation of buildings, including the tomb of the founder, residences for priests, schools and hospitals. They correspond, in fact, to mediæval monasteries, and the evolution of their styles presents a certain parallel to the contemporary evolution of Gothic architecture.

Syria.—Among the existing mosques in Syria are those of El-Aksah on the Temple platform at Jerusalem and of El-Walid in Damascus, both of which are planned like a basilica. Also on the Temple platform is the Dome of the Rock, misnamed the Mosque of Omar, the central feature of which is a circular space, crowned by a dome, which was rebuilt by Saladin in 1189.

Egypt.—In Egypt one of the oldest is the Mosque of Amru in Cairo, in which the square open court is surrounded by arcades, set at right angles to the mihrab and supported by columns taken from Byzantine and Roman buildings. Somewhat similar in plan is the Mosque of Tulun, where, however, the arcades run parallel to the mihrab wall and the wide pointed arches are supported upon massive piers.

Then follow, during the period that corresponds to the development of Gothic architecture, the Mosque of Kalaoom; that of Sultan Hassan, which is cruciform in plan; that of Sultan Barbouk, celebrated for its minarets and the beauty of the dome over the founder’s tomb; and the small but richly decorated Mosque of Kait-Bey. In the prayer-chamber (maksura) of the last-named appears, besides the stalactite embellishment of the mihrab, a distinctive decoration of the arches. In one case the arches are composed of voussoirs alternating in colour; in the other the alternation is still further emphasised by the interlocking shapes into which the voussoirs are cut, so that they fit together with the variety and the exactness of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain.—Spain offers a very favourable opportunity for the study of Muhammedan architecture. The Mosque of Cordova, begun by the Caliph Abd-el-Rahman in 786, was enlarged by successive additions, until it presents the appearance of a forest of columns and arches, apparently of unlimited extent. There are said to be 860. The arcades are in two tiers, the upper arches being supported on posts which are placed on the capitals of the lower ones and at the same time form abutments to the lower arches. In most cases the arches are of horseshoe form; but elsewhere, as in the vestibule to the mihrab chamber the upper horseshoe arches surmount a tier of cinquefoil or five-scalloped ones, and the posts on which they abut are faced with attached columns. A remarkable additional feature is the interlacing between the upper and lower arches of portions of multifoil arches; so arranged that they appear to bridge over the space between the alternate lower column and at the same time to spring over the capitals of the intermediate upper column. The arrangement is a striking instance of the Arab invention in the use of repetition of motive, a use, in this case, governed by constructive reasonableness as well as imposed by the desire for subtlety of elaboration.

The Mosque of Cordova is second in size to the Great Mosque of Mecca. Though the superb adornments of mosaics and red and gold ceilings have suffered from decay and restoration and its vista of arcades is blocked in parts by the coro (choir), erected when the edifice was converted into a cathedral, it is still a marvellous memorial of Cordova’s supremacy as the most learned, cultured, and prosperous caliphate in Islam.

In Toledo there is nothing approaching the magnificence of the Mosque of Cordova. Among the remains are the churches of S. Cristo de la Luz and Santa Maria la Bianca, which are mosques converted to the Catholic ritual.

At Seville beside the much renowned Alcazar or Castle, is the celebrated tower, Giralda, so named from the weather vane (giradillo), a figure of Faith with a banner, some 305 feet from the ground. It surmounts the Renaissance top of three stories, added in 1568 to the old tower, which, as an altarpiece in the cathedral shows, originally terminated in battlements. These suggest that the building was erected as a watch tower or, may be, as a symbol of power. Its plan is a square of 45 feet, the walls being about 8 feet thick, built of material from Roman and probably Visigothic remains. Its surface is pierced by twenty windows, many of which are subdivided by columnettes, and embellished with sunken panels, enriched with arabesques. The Giralda is under the special protection of SS. Justa and Rufina—a fact commemorated in the above-mentioned picture and in another by Murillo, now in the Provincial Museum. It was used as a model for the design of the tower of the Madison Square Garden, New York.

The Alhambra, Granada, represents the best preserved as well as the most perfect example of the Moorish-Arabic genius. It was a fortress-palace, much of it built on the brink of the rock, the steep slopes of which were used to construct the lower stories of baths, offices, and guardrooms. The exterior has no impressiveness, though the original grouping of walls and roofs must have been highly picturesque. Its halls, chambers, and remains of a mosque are clustered about two rectangular courts or patios, which are joined like the two parts of an “L”—the “Court of the Alberca” and the “Court of the Lions.” From one of the ends of the Alberca Court projects the “Hall of the Ambassadors”; from the other the “Hall of the Tribunal,” while the long sides of the Court of Lions open respectively into the “Hall of the Abencerrages” and the “Hall of the Two Sisters.”

The “Court of the Lions” is so called from the fountain in its centre, an immense marble basin supported upon twelve lions, which form a remarkable exception to the Muhammedan rule against representing the image of any living thing. Both these Courts are arcaded, the columns, set singly or in pairs, or groups, exhibiting, as do all the columns in the Alhambra, distinctive features in their capitals, which are separated by a high necking from the shaft.

It is, however, in the interior of the halls that the decoration reaches its finest pitch and nowhere more than in the “Hall of the Two Sisters,” which formed the culminating feature of the harem quarters. The name is supposed to have been derived from two slabs of marble in the pavement but may well have been suggested by the window, which occupies a bay and is divided by a small column and two arches into two lights. The walls, above a high wainscot of lustred tiles, are encrusted with flat moulded arabesques, representing a delicate lacelike tracery of leafy vines and tendrils, still tinctured with the red, blue, and gold that formerly enriched them. The arabesques melt into the stalactite embellishments which completely cover the hollow of the dome; created, as it seems, by giant bees, whose cells hang down like grape-clusters in an endless profusion of exquisite intricacy. Time was when this unsurpassable delicacy of magnificence glowed with gold touched into a thousandfold diversity of tones, by the light of hanging lamps.

As an expression of the Arabic genius in the direction of subtlety this represents finality. It embodies the culture of a race that in its learning as in its art had been devoted to the exaltation of details; and embodies also the latent instinct of a desert-wandering race whose eye had been little habituated to varieties of form, but saturated with colour and in the watches of the night had been long familiar with the mystery of vaulted sky, sown with star-clusters and hung with the jewelled lamps of planets. It was characteristic also of the Oriental fondness of abstraction that revels in subtleties and loves to merge itself in the contemplation of the infinite. It is the kind of decoration that being denied the reinforcement of nature was bound to evolve sterility.

Turkish.—When the Seljuk Turks, after occupying many parts of the Byzantine Empire, finally took Constantinople, they converted S. Sophia into a mosque, and more or less closely followed its style in the mosques they themselves erected.

Thus the Suleimaniyeh or Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, repeats the central dome and the two apses of the Christian building, preserving also the flatness of the dome-form. It is approached by a fore-court, surrounded on all its sides by cloisters, roofed with a succession of smaller domes, and embellished at the angles with minarets. These have circular shafts terminating in sharply pointed cones. In the garden of the mosque are the octagonal, dome-crowned tombs of the founder and his favourite wife, Roxelana.

The Ahmedizeh, or Mosque of Ahmed is square in plan, with a central dome, flanked by four apses, the angles being filled in with four smaller domes. The interior is lined with coloured tiles, while that of the Suleimaniyeh is veneered with marble.

The public fountains are distinctive features of the city. In one near S. Sophia, for example, the water-basin, octagonal in shape and covered with a dome-like grille of ironwork, is enclosed in an octagon of arches that support a sloping roof which extends in wide eaves and is surmounted by a dome.

Persia.—In point of time Persia enters early into the Muhammedan conquest, but we have reserved the consideration of it until later, because she did not reach the height of her renewed splendour in the arts until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then contributed to the Muhammedan art of India.

When Muhammedanism extended to Persia, it came in touch with the decaying Sassanian empire that from A.D. 226 to 641 had withstood the power of Rome and extended its sway nearly to the gates of India. The remains of its architecture consist chiefly of palaces such as those at Serbistan, Firuzabad, and Ctesiphon. In these, with an inventiveness of their own and on a great scale, the builders combined elements of Assyrian and Roman architecture—square, domed chambers, barrel-vaulted halls, and portals formed of huge arches, elliptical or horseshoe in shape.

The direct evidence of this style on the earliest Muhammedan buildings has disappeared owing to the devastation of the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan; but the Sassanian influence is conjectured from the later architecture which grew up after A.D. 1200. Important examples are to be found in Bagdad, Teheran, and Ispahan. Among the memorials in the last named city is the Great Mosque, which has an open court, surrounded by two-storied arcades. Its special features include portal-arches, rising above the highest of the adjoining walls; vaulted aisles, bulbous-shaped domes, and minarets of peculiar elegance. The walls are decorated with enamelled tiles.

India.—Persian-Muhammedan architecture, probably because of the Sassanian influence, was superior to the Arabian-Muhammedan in constructive elements and represents more fully a developed style. Many of its elements reappear in Indian-Muhammedan architecture, which by the beginning of the fifteenth century was developing a style distinguished alike by the grandeur of the whole and the structural meaning of the details. The finest example of this early period is the Jama Musjil (Principal Mosque), at Ahmedabad, which Shah Ahmed reconstructed out of a Hindu temple. The Hindu influence is still apparent in the massive detached pillars that buttress the chief entrance.

The style reached its full development of structural logic, dignity, and beauty under the Mogul dynasty (1526-1761). By this time the Muhammedan architects had developed a method of dome support, different both from the Byzantine and the Arabic pendentive, which combined corbels, ribs, vaulting surfaces, and corner squinches. The last named are arches placed diagonally at the angles to bring the square to an octagonal, which was the favourite form of plan adopted for tombs. Of these the most imposing is the Tomb of Mahmud at Bijapur.

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