How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

arts and so-called crafts. The gild-system covered all kinds of constructive work from engineering to the making of a needle, and if the work permitted elements of beauty and decoration these were, as a matter of course, included. Hence the proficiency and inventiveness and exquisite perfection of workmanship displayed by the Muhammedan craftsmen.

But their Koran enjoined a literal obedience to the Mosaic law against “the making of any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in Heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth.” Accordingly, there were no sculptors or painters in the full sense of the term; only decorators of moulded, engraved, or coloured ornament, the motives of which were confined to conventionalised flower and leaf forms and to geometric designs of practically endless variations of the straight line and curve, in meander, interlace, and fret, into which they often wove texts from the Koran or the sacred name of Allah. It is to these designs by Arab artists, influenced to some extent by Byzantine, that the term arabesque was first applied.

Meanwhile it was the practice of Muhammedanism to absorb as far as possible the traditions of each nation it conquered. Gradually, therefore, the strictness of its orthodoxy was modified. In Persia, for example, the representation of animals was permitted in the arts of design, and the representation of human beings followed.

Similarly, the architectural style of each locality was affected by the previously existing architecture. The examples which remain are chiefly of mosques, tombs, houses, and palaces.

The word mosque comes to us through the French mosquée; the Spanish equivalent is mesquita, while the Arabs call the “place of prostration”—masjid. The nucleus of every one is the mihrab or niche in a wall, indicating the kibleh or direction of the Great Mosque at Mecca, with its shrine, the Kaaba. Beside the mihrab was a pulpit, mimbar, for preaching, and sometimes in front of it, for the reading of the Koran, stood a dikka or platform raised upon columns. Shelter for the worshippers was provided by arcades, which in the immediate vicinity of the mihrab were often enclosed with lattice work, thus forming a prayer-chamber—maksura. The size of the mosque was indefinitely enlarged by the addition of more arcades, surrounding usually an open court, in the centre of which, as in the atrium of the Early Christian basilicas, was a fountain for ritual ablution.

The tomb was usually distinguished by a dome and during the lifetime of its founder served the purpose of a pleasure-house; corresponding somewhat to the Roman nymphæum, and, as in the case of the Taj Mahal, set in the midst of a beautiful system of gardens, water-basins, and terraces.

In his house also the Muhammedan jealously guarded his domestic privacy. He followed the Romans in leaving the exterior of his house plain, while centering all its luxury and comfort around an open interior court. Special quarters were provided for the women and the seclusion of their lives within the harem led to two features which are characteristic of Oriental houses, the balcony and the screen. That the occupants might take the air, balconies were built out from the walls both of the court and the exterior; and screened with lattice work, on the designs of which great skill and beauty were expended.

The palaces represented the extension of the house-plan by the addition of halls of ceremony. Sometimes, as in the case of the Alhambra, they combined the character of a citadel, and were always generously supplied with water, as well for the ablutions enjoined in the Koran, as for purposes of beauty. The Arabs, in fact, readily learned the Roman methods of engineering and hydraulics and in their houses and cities and in the irrigation of land carried the system to a high degree of perfection.

The system by which learning and culture circulated throughout the Muhammedan world was illustrated in the spread of the arts of design. Persia, for example, was a centre of the ceramic art, and wherever the Muhammedan civilisation spread, the art of pottery was revived and took on new and distinctive splendour. Enamel colours of the purest tones and finest translucence were developed and the glazes were distinguished by extraordinary lustre. They were lavished not only on vessels of practical service but also on tiles for the decoration of walls.

With equal originality the Muhammedan artists developed the metal crafts both in the direction of tempering the metal and in its decoration; introducing and carrying to a wonderful pitch of perfection the engraving, encrusting and inlaying of the surfaces with ornamental designs; a process known as damascening, since Damascus was the earliest important centre of the craft.

Further, in weaving they developed a corresponding skill and feeling for design. Rugs and carpets, laid on the floor or spread over doorways, were the chief furnishing of a Muhammedan home, while a small rug was carried by the worshipper or his servant to the Mosque to protect his bare feet while he prayed. These “prayer rugs” were frequently embellished with a representation of a mihrab, enclosed in borders bearing Koran texts, and were of silk of finest weave; that is to say, with an extraordinary number of knots to the square inch. There is a fragment of silk weave in the Altman collection at the Metropolitan Museum, of Indian craftsmanship, each square inch of which embraces 2500 knots.

In a way, however, the very exquisiteness of Muhammedan craftsmanship prepared the way for its decay. It originated in the limitation of motives permitted to the decorator, who in consequence had to satisfy his love of perfection by resort to delicacies and intricacies of design beyond which there was no further possibility of creative invention.

CHAPTER IV

MUHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE

The Koran prescribed that every believer when praying should face toward Mecca. This could be done as readily in the open desert as in a building, so the early mosques were probably of little importance. It was only as the Arab tribesmen extended their conquests to the neighbouring civilisations and came in touch with the temples of antiquity and the churches of the present, that they began to raise handsome places of worship for their own religion.

As Muhammedanism spread eastward through Syria to Persia and later to India and westward into Egypt, along the northern shore of Africa into Spain and finally occupied Constantinople and Turkey, it absorbed much of the civilisation of each country and employed the constructive methods, the workmen, and the materials which it found ready to hand. Consequently, the architectural expression of Muhammedanism, while retaining everywhere certain essential characteristics, varies locally. It offers notable distinctions according as it is found in Syria, Persia, India, Egypt, Spain, and Turkey.

Mosque of Mecca.—The Great Mosque of Mecca, called by Moslems the Haram El Masjid el Haram, or Baisullahi el Haram, the “House of God, the Prohibited,” represents a succession of additions, extending from early Muhammedan times to the middle of the sixteenth century. It comprises an enclosure, 300 yards square, the walls of which are pierced with nineteen gateways and