Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/897

Rh and horse-shoe. Fig. 1 gives its plan as a good typical specimen of this normal type of mosque. The mosque at Kairawan, Tunis, said to have been founded by Okba (see supra, pi 567), follows the normal plan, with 439 fine antique marble columns, horse-shoe arches, some pointed and others round, and fiat ceiling of dark wood, once magnificently painted. Its sanctuary is ten aisles deep by seventeen wide. In the centre of the court is a marble fountain over the sacred well, said to communi cate with the spring Zemzem at Mecca. Its minaret, a rather later addition, is very massive and stately ; it is square, in three stories, each battlemented, the walls battering considerably. The sanctuary is domed, and the Mikrdb is decorated with magnificent tiles. Adjoining the sanctuary is a small room for a library. The other great mosque of Sidi- Okba, built soon after his death in 682, and containing his tomb, is in Algeria near Biskra ; it much resembles the Kairawan mosque, but is less splendid, some of the columns being not of marble but of baked clay decorated with painting. The great mosque of Fez, about the same date, is also very large and magnificent, with Mimbar and Mihr&b richly ornamented with minute mosaics ; it has also a fine inlaid and painted wood ceiling, and some elaborately-carved doors. It still possesses a fine library. (See Amici, Journey to Fez, 1878.) The great mosque of Damascus was built on the site of a Christian basilica, erected by Theodosius in 395-408. From 636, when the Arabs conquered Damascus, until 708 this basilica was used jointly both by the Christians and the Moslems. The basilica was then pulled down, and the present mosque built by the caliph Walid. It has the normal plan, and is 508 feet by 320 feet. Its sanctuary is only three aisles deep ; it has a central dome on the south or Mecca side, and on the east and west a large porch. Samhudi records that one of the conditions of peace con cluded between the Byzantine emperor and Walid was that the emperor should furnish a certain number of workers in mosaic for the decoration of the mosques at Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Damascus. The mosque of Ahmed Ibn Tulun, in Cairo, completed in 879, has the normal plan, with the exceptional addition of an outer court, or wide passage, running round three sides of the rectangle, probably to cut it off completely from the noise of the surrounding streets. It is built of brick, coated with delicate reliefs in stucco, once enriched with painting. The Mihrdb has beautiful mosaics, and the Mimbar is a marvel of delicate carving and inlay. The pillars and arches are of brick enriched with elaborate stucco-work. It has a very remarkable minaret on the west side, with a spiral external staircase. The architect was a Copt, an Egyptian Chris tian. It is perhaps the earliest important building in which the pointed arch is largely used. The mosque Al-Azhar, &quot; The Splendid,&quot; was built in the centre of New Cairo about 970 and, though frequently restored, has in the main been little altered. It is on the normal plan, with ranges of pointed and slightly horse-shoe arches, supported on more than 400 fine antique columns of marble and porphyry, chiefly from Roman buildings. Among its later decorations are magnificent wall-coverings of the most beautiful Persian tiles. It has a special interest in being the chief university of the Moslem world, con taining some thousands of students (mujdwirin], for whom certain parts of the mosque (Riwak) are screened off, according to the country from which they come. Thus special parts are reserved for natives of the various provinces of Egypt, of Morocco, Syria, Arabia, India, Turkey, &c. Each student can, if he is too poor to hire lodgings, live, eat, and sleep in the mosque. Each has a large chest in which to keep his clothes and books ; these are piled against the walls to a height of seven or eight feet. The students pay no fees, but the richer ones give presents to the lecturers, who sit on the matting in various parts of the sanctuary or cloister, while the students sit round each lecturer in a circle. The usual course of study lasts for three years, though some students remain for much longer. The chief of the lecturers, called the Sheikh al-Azhar, receives about 100 a year, the others little or nothing, as regular pay. The Koran, sacred and secular law, logic, poetry, and arithmetic, with some medicine and geography, are the chief subjects of study. Of mosques which are not built on the normal plan the earliest and most important are the two in the Haram al-Sherif (High Sanctuary) at Jerusalem (see vol. xiii. p. 642). The Kubbet al-Sakhra (Dome of the Rock), popularly, but wrongly, called the &quot;Mosque of Omar,&quot; is not, strictly speaking, a mosque at all. It belongs rather to the class of &quot; shrines,&quot; generally small square, circular, or octagonal buildings erected over some sacred spot or tomb. It is a very beautiful building, with high central dome, and double ambulatory round it, the outer wall being octa gonal, and the dome, with the pillars that carry it, circular in plan. It is decorated in a very sumptuous way by inlay of rich marbles and very splendid glass mosaics. The outer wall and most of the internal mosaics are later than the dome itself. Its windows of mosaic-like stained glass are very beautiful, and are almost the only 865 Moslem example of the use of lead &quot; cames,&quot; instead of the bits of glass being fitted into marble or stucco tracery ; this, as well as the glass wall-mosaics, was probably the work of Byzantine artificers. 1 The mosque within the same enclosure, called Al-Aksa, is entirely roofed, with many aisles and columns, having no open court, quite unlike the usual arrangement of a mosque. The finest and largest group of mosques is at Cairo. Many of them are very complicated buildings, with no resemblance to the normal plan before described. In some cases a hospital, a school, a court of justice, a monastery, or very frequently a tomb, forms part of the building, and causes considerable modifications in its plan. The finest of these is the mosque of the sultan Hasan, built between 1356 and 1359 (fig. 2), a good specimen of a mosque built in a crowded site with a wing for a tomb. In plan it is cruciform, the central part being open to the sky ; the eastern arm of the cross is the sanctuary, and farther east is the stately domed tomb of the sul tan himself. All four arms of the cross are vaulted in stone with a plain waggon vault. Its magnificent entrance on the north, with an en ormously high arch, de corated with stalactite reliefs in stone, is set somewhat askew to fol low the line of the old street. It has two mi narets, one of great height and grandeur. The Muristan Kalaun is a combination of hospital, tomb, and mosque, an enormous buildingcovering a very large area. It was built by Sultan Kalaun at the beginning of the 14th century ; his tomb, built 1320, which forms part of this great building, is Fto - 2. -Plan of Mosque of Sultan Hasan, Cairo, a massive square edifice 1,2. Main entrance, s. Court open to sky. with a very grand and 4, 5. Fountains. 6, 6. North and south vaulted vpll rlpqirmorl r&amp;gt;rfao-mnl transepts (the dotted lines show the curve of the ignecl octagonal yault) ^ 8, Da kka. 10. Sanctuary. 11. Mimbar. dome. Its wall-mosaics 12. Kibla. 13. Door to tomb. 14. Domed tomb- in pearl and precious chamber. 15. Tomb within screen. 16. Kibla. stones are uimsuallv 17 &amp;gt; 17&amp;gt; Minarets. 18, 19, 20. Various entrances to ri - mosque. 21. Small rooms connected with service magnificent. Even a of ^ mos&amp;lt;iue. stones _ are unusually of the mosque. 22. Sultan s private entrance, bare list of the mosques of Cairo would occupy a large space ; they are over four hundred in number, and are mostly remarkable for some beauty in design or richness in their ornament and material. The mosque of Ibrahim Agha should specially be noted for the splendid Persian tiles which cover the east wall of its sanctuary ; these are of the end of the 16th century, and are unrivalled in beauty both of drawing and colour. The tiles are 9 inches square, and work into large designs with very graceful sweeping curves of foliage, drawn with the greatest skill, and painted in the most brilliant yet harmonious colours perfect masterpieces of coloured decoration. See MURAL DECORATION. The so-called &quot;Tombs of the Caliphs,&quot; really tomb-mosques of Egyptian sultans, are a large group of very fine buildings, less than a mile outside the walls of Cairo. The largest is that of Sultan Barkuk, with a superb dome and two stately minarets. In addi tion to an extensive open court, it has on each side of the sanctuary a magnificent tomb-chamber containing the bodies of the sultan himself, who died in 1399, and various members of his family. The most beautiful and graceful of all these mosques is that which contains the tomb of Sultan K ait- Bey. who died in 1496 ; its dome is entirely covered externally with beautiful and delicate reliefs carved in stone. Its minaret is a masterpiece of invention and extreme grace of outline, combined with the richest and most exquisite detail ; like most of the Cairo mosques, its exterior is ornamented by bands of red stone alternating with the yellow Mokattam limestone. Inside, marble inlaid pavements and mosaic on the walls, with decorations in painted stucco and wood carved and inlaid give extreme splendour to the building. Fig. 3 gives its plan as a typical example of the combined mosque and tomb, the latter the more important. The mosque inside the walls of 1 See De Vogue, Temple de Jerusalem, 1S64 ; Texier, Asit Mineure, 1862. XVI. -- 109