Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/521

Rh I'.K. I. Ch. II. MOSQUE AT DAMASCUS. 505 differs so essentially in every detail that it is impossible the two could have been erected within several centuries from one another. The perfection of the internal arrangements of the last-named church, and the beauty of its late classical details, make up a whole so nearly perfect that there are few buildings that would not suffer by the com- parison, more especially one built by so unarchitectural a people as the Arabs, at so early a part of their career. Mosque at Damascus. As an architectural object the great mosque at Damascus is even more important than the Aksah, and its history is as interesting. The spot on which it stands was originally occupied by one of those smal Syrian tem2:)les, surrounded by a square teinenos^ of which those at Palmyra and Jerusalem are well-known examples.' The one in question was, however, smaller, having been apparently only 450 ft. square ; and we do not know the form of the temple which occupied its centre.^ This temple was converted into a Christian church by Theodosius (395-408), and dedicated to St. John the Baptist, whose chapel still exists within the precincts of the mosque. According to Jelal ed-Deen,^ tlie church remained the joint property of the Christians and Moslems, both praying together in it — or, at least, on the east and west sides of a partition run through it — from the fall of the city in the year of the Hejira 14 (a.d. 6.36) to the time of the Caliph Walid in the year 86. He offered the Christians either four desecrated churches in exchange for it, or thi-eatened to deprive them of one which they held on sufferance. As soon as the matter was settled, it is said he pulled down the Christian church, or at least part of it, and in ten years completed the present splendid mosque on its site, having first procured from the emperor at Constantinople fit and proper persons to act as architects and masons in its con- struction. If the building were carefully examined by some competent person, it might even now be possible to ascertain what parts belonged to the Heathen, what to the Christians, and what to the Moslems. At first sight it might appeal- that the covered part of the mosque is only the Christian church, used laterally like that at Ramleh ; but its dimen- ^ons — 126 ft. by 446 — are so much in excess of any three-aisled church of that age that the idea is hardly tenable. On the whole, it seems probable that we must consider that the materials which had first been collected for the Temple, and were afterwards used in the ' Ante, p. 219. 2 I state these dimensions veiy doubt- fully, the ground outside the present mosque never having been carefully sur- veyed by any one competent to restore the original plan. ^ " History of .Jerusalem," translated by the Rev. M. Reynolds, p. 409 et seq.