THEN the Byzantine Christians, after overthrowing the temples of
Paganism, meditated re-building and re-modelling them, poverty of
invention and artistic impotence reduced them to group the spoils in a
heterogeneous mass.[FN#1] The sea-ports of Egypt and the plains and
mountains of Syria abounding in pillars of granite, syenite and
precious marbles, in Pharaonic, Grecian, and Roman statuary, and in all
manner of structural ornaments, the architects were at no loss for
material. Their Syncretism, the result of chance and precipitancy, of
extravagance and incuriousness, fell under eyes too ignorant to be hurt
by the hybrid irregularity: it was perpetuated in the so-called
Saracenic style, a plagiarism from the Byzantine,[FN#2] and it was
reiterated in the Gothic, an offshoot from the Saracenic.[FN#3] This
fact accounts in the Gothic style for its manifold incongruities of
architecture, and for the phenomenon,-not solely attributable to the
buildings
[p.91]having been erected piecemeal,-of its most classic period being
that of its greatest irregularity.
Such "architectural lawlessness," such disregard for symmetry,-the
result, I believe, of an imperfect "amalgamation and enrichment,"-may
doubtless be defended upon the grounds both of cause and of effect.
Architecture is of the imitative arts, and Nature, the Myriomorphous,
everywhere delighting in variety, appears to abhor nothing so much as
perfect similarity and precise uniformity. To copy her exactly we must
therefore seek that general analogy compatible with individual variety;
in fact, we should avoid the over-display of order and regularity. And
again, it may be asserted that, however incongruous these disorderly
forms may appear to the conventional eye, we find it easy to surmount
our first antipathy. Perhaps we end in admiring them the more, as we
love those faces in which irregularity of feature is compensated for by
diversity and piquancy of expression.
There is nothing, I believe, new in the Arab Mosque; it is an
unconscious revival of the forms used from the earliest ages to denote
by symbolism the worship of the generative and the creative gods. The
reader will excuse me if I only glance at a subject of which the
investigation would require a volume, and which, discussed at greater
length, would be out of place in such a narrative as this.
The first Mosque in Al-Islam was erected by Mohammed at Kuba, near
Al-Madinah: shortly afterwards, when he entered Meccah as a conqueror,
he destroyed the three hundred and sixty idols of the Arab Pantheon,
and thus purified that venerable building from its abominations. He had
probably observed in Syrian Bostra the two forms appropriated by the
Christians to their places of worship, the cross and the
parallelogramic Basilica; he therefore preferred for the prayers of the
"Saving Faith" a square,-some authors say, with, others
[p.92]without, a cloister. At length in the reign of Al-Walid (A.H. 90)
the cupola, the niche, and the minaret made their appearance; and what
is called the Saracenic style became for ever the order of the Moslem
world.
The Hindus I believe to have been the first who symbolised by an
equilateral triangle their peculiar cult, the Yoni-Linga: in their
temple architecture, it became either a conoid or a perfect pyramid.
Egypt denoted it by the obelisk, peculiar to that country; and the form
appeared in different parts of the world: thus in England it was a mere
upright stone, and in Ireland a round tower. This we might expect to
see. D'Hancarville and Brotier have successfully traced the worship
itself, in its different modifications, to all people: the symbol would
therefore be found everywhere. The old Arab minaret is a plain
cylindrical or polygonal tower, without balcony or stages, widely
different from the Turkish, modern Egyptian, and Hijazi combinations of
tube and prism, happily compared by a French traveller to "une
chandelle coiffee d'un eteignoir." And finally the ancient minaret,
made solid as all Gothic architecture is, and provided with a belfry,
became the spire and steeple of our ancestors.
>From time immemorial, in hot and rainy lands, a hypaethral court,
either round or square, surrounded by a covered portico, was used for
the double purpose of church and mart,-a place where God and Mammon
were worshipped turn by turn. In some places we find rings of stones,
like the Persian Pyroetheia; in others, circular concave buildings
representing the vault of heaven, where Fire, the divine symbol, was
worshipped; and in Arabia, columnar aisles, which, surmounted by the
splendid blue vault, resemble the palm-grove. The Greeks adopted this
idea in the fanes of Creator Bacchus; and at Pozzuoli, near Naples, it
may be seen in the building vulgarly called the Temple of Serapis. It
was equally well known
[p.93]to the Kelts: in some places the Temenos was a circle, in others
a quadrangle. And such to the present day is the Mosque of Al-Islam.
Even the Riwak or porches surrounding the area in the Mosque are
revivals of older forms. "The range of square buildings which enclose
the temple of Serapis are not, properly speaking, parts of the fane,
but apartments of the priests, places for victims, and sacred utensils,
and chapels dedicated to subordinate deities, introduced by a more
complicated and corrupt worship, and probably unknown to the founders
of the original edifice." The cloisters in the Mosque became cells,
used as lecture rooms, and stores for books bequeathed to the college.
They are unequal, because some are required to be of larger, others to
be of smaller, dimensions. The same reason causes difference of size
when the building is distributed into four hyposteles opening upon the
area: the porch in the direction of the Ka'abah, where worshippers
mostly congregate, demands greater depth than the other three. The
wings were not unfrequently made unequal, either from want of building
materials, or because the same extent of accommodation was not required
in both. The columns were of different substances; some of handsome
marble, others of rough stone meanly plastered over, with dissimilar
capitals, vulgarly cut shafts of various sizes; here with a pediment,
there without, now turned upside down, then joined together by halves
in the centre, and almost invariably nescient of intercolumnar rule.
This is the result of Byzantine syncretism, carelessly and ignorantly
grafted upon Arab ideas of the natural and the sublime. Loving and
admiring the great, or rather the big in plan,[FN#4]} they care
[p.94]little for the execution of mere details, and they have not the
acumen to discern the effect which clumsy workmanship, crooked lines,
and visible joints,-parts apparently insignificant,-exercise upon the
whole of an edifice. Their use of colours was a false taste, commonly
displayed by mankind in their religious houses, and statues of the
gods. The Hindus paint their pagodas, inside and outside; and rub
vermilion, in token of honour, over their deities. The Persian Colossi
of Kaiomars and his consort on the Balkh road and the Sphinx of Egypt,
as well as the temples of the Nile, still show traces of artificial
complexion. The fanes in classic Greece have been dyed. In the Forum
Romanum, one of the finest buildings, still bears stains of the Tyrian
purple. And to mention no other instances, in the churches and belfries
of Modern Italy, we see alternate bands of white and black material so
disposed as to give them the appearance of giant zebras. The origin of
"Arabesque" ornament must be referred to one of the principles of
Al-Islam. The Moslem, forbidden by his law to decorate his Mosque with
statuary and pictures,[FN#5] supplied their place with quotations from
the Koran, and inscriptions, "plastic metaphysics," of marvellous
perplexity.
[p.95]His alphabet lent itself to the purpose, and hence probably arose
that almost inconceivable variety of lace-like fretwork, of
incrustations, of Arabesques, and of geometric flowers, in which his
eye delights to lose itself.[FN#6]
The Meccan Mosque became a model to the world of Al-Islam, and the
nations that embraced the new faith copied the consecrated building, as
religiously as Christendom produced imitations of the Holy
Sepulchre.[FN#7] The Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, of Amru at Babylon on
the Nile, and of Taylun at Cairo were erected, with some trifling
improvements, such as arched cloisters and inscribed cornices, upon the
plan of the Ka'abah. From Egypt and Palestine the ichnography spread
far and wide. It was modified, as might be expected, by national taste;
what in Arabia was simple and elegant became highly ornate in
Spain,[FN#8] florid in Turkey, sturdy in Syria, and effeminate in
India. Still divergence of detail had not, even after the lapse of
twelve centuries, materially altered the fundamental form.
[p.96]Perhaps no Eastern city affords more numerous or more accessible
specimens of Mosque architecture than Cairo. Between 300 and 400 places
of worship;[FN#9] some stately piles, others ruinous hovels, many new,
more decaying and earthquake-shaken, with minarets that rival in
obliquity the Pisan monster, are open to the traveller's inspection.
And Europeans by following the advice of their hotel-keeper have
penetrated, and can penetrate, into any one they please.[FN#10] If
architecture be really what I believe it to be, the highest expression
of a people's artistic feeling,-highest because it includes all
others,-to compare the several styles of the different epochs, to
observe how each monarch building his own Mosque, and calling it by his
own name, identified the manner of the monument with himself, and to
trace the gradual decadence of art through one thousand two hundred
years, down to the present day, must be a work of no ordinary interest
to Orientalists. The limits of my plan, however, compel me to place
only the heads of the argument before the reader. May I be allowed to
express a hope that it will induce some learned traveller to
investigate a subject in every way worthy his attention?
The desecrated Jami' Taylun (ninth century) is simple and massive, yet
elegant, and in some of its details peculiar.[FN#11] One of the four
colonnades[FN#12] still remains unoccupied
[p.97]by paupers to show the original magnificence of the building; the
other porches are walled up, and inhabited. In the centre of a
quadrangle about 100 paces square is a domed building springing from a
square which occupies the proper place of the Ka'abah. This
"Jami'[FN#13]" Cathedral is interesting as a point of comparison. If it
be an exact copy of the Meccan temple as it stood in A.D. 879, it shows
that the latter has greatly altered in this our modern day.
Next in date to the Taylun Mosque is that of the Sultan al-Hakim, third
Caliph of the Fatimites, and founder of the Druze mysteries. The
minarets are remarkable in shape, as well as size: they are unprovided
with the usual outer gallery, they are based upon a cube of masonry,
and they are pierced above with apertures apparently meaningless. A
learned Cairene informed me that these spires were devised by the
eccentric monarch to disperse, like large censers, fragrant smoke over
the city during the hours of prayer. The Azhar and Hasanayn[FN#14]
Mosques are simple and artless piles, celebrated for sanctity, but
remarkable for nothing save ugliness. Few buildings, however, are
statelier in appearance,
[p.98]or give a nobler idea of both founder and architect than that
which bears Sultan Hasan's name. The stranger stands awe-struck before
walls high towering without a single break, a hypaethral court severe
in masculine beauty, a gateway that might suit the palace of the
Titans, and a lofty minaret of massive grandeur. This Mosque (finished
about A.D. 1363), with its fortress aspect, owns no more relationship
to the efforts of a later age than does Canterbury Cathedral to an
Anglo-Indian "Gothic." For dignified beauty and refined taste, the
Mosque and tomb of Kaid Bey and the other Mamluk kings are admirable.
Even in their present state, picturesqueness presides over decay, and
the traveller has seldom seen aught more striking than the rich light
of the stained glass pouring through the first shades of evening upon
the marble floor.
The modern Mosques must be visited to see Egyptian architecture in its
decline and fall. That of Sittna Zaynab (our Lady Zaynab), founded by
Murad Bey, the Mamluk, and interrupted by the French invasion, shows,
even in its completion, some lingering traces of taste. But nothing can
be more offensive than the building which every tourist flogs donkey in
his hurry to see-old Mohammed Ali's "Folly" in the citadel. Its Greek
architect has toiled to caricature a Mosque to emulate the glories of
our English "Oriental Pavilion." Outside, as Monckton Milnes sings,
"The shining minarets, thin and high,"
are so thin, so high above the lumpy domes, that they
[p.99]look like the spindles of crouching crones, and are placed in
full sight of Sultan Hasan the Giant, so as to derive all the
disadvantages of the contrast. Is the pointed arch forgotten by man,
that this hapless building should be disgraced by large and small
parallelograms of glass and wood,[FN#15] so placed and so formed as to
give its exterior the appearance of a European theatre coiffe with
Oriental cupolas? Outside as well as inside, money has been lavished
upon alabaster full of flaws; round the bases of pillars run gilt
bands; in places the walls are painted with streaks to resemble marble,
and the wood-work is overlaid with tinsel gold. After a glance at these
abominations, one cannot be surprised to hear the old men of Egypt
lament that, in spite of European education, and of prizes encouraging
geometry and architecture, modern art offers a melancholy contrast to
antiquity. It is said that H. H. Abbas Pasha proposes to erect for
himself a Mosque that shall far surpass the boast of the last
generation. I venture to hope that his architect will light the "sacred
fire" from Sultan Hasan's, not from Mohammed Ali's, Turco-Grecian
splendours. The former is like the genuine Osmanli of past ages,
fierce, cold, with a stalwart frame, index of a strong mind-there was a
sullen grandeur about the man. The latter is the pert and puny modern
Turk in pantaloons, frock coat and Fez, ill-dressed, ill-conditioned,
and ill-bred, body and soul.
[p.100]We will now enter the Mosque Al-Azhar. At the dwarf wooden
railing we take off our slippers, hold them in the left hand, sole to
sole, that no dirt may fall from them, and cross the threshold with the
right foot, ejaculating Bismillah, &c. Next we repair to the Mayza'ah,
or large tank, for ablution, without which it is unlawful to appear in
the House of Allah. We then seek some proper place for devotion, place
our slippers on some other object in front of us to warn the lounger,
and perform a two-bow prayer in honour of the Mosque.[FN#16] This done,
we may wander about, and inspect the several objects of curiosity.
The moon shines splendidly upon a vast open court, paved with stones
which are polished like glass by the feet of the Faithful. There is
darkness in the body of the building, a large oblong hall, at least
twice too lengthy for its height, supported by a forest of pillars,
thin, poor-looking, crooked marble columns, planted avenue-like, upon
torn and dirty matting. A few oil lamps shed doubtful light over scanty
groups, who are debating some point of grammar, or are listening to the
words of wisdom that fall from the mouth of a Wa'iz.[FN#17] Presently
they will leave the hypostyle, and throw themselves upon the flags of
the quadrangle, where they may enjoy the open air and avoid some fleas.
It is now "long vacation": so the holy building has become a kind of
Caravanserai for travellers;
[p.101]perhaps a score of nations meet in it; there is a confusion of
tongues, and the din at times is deafening. Around the court runs a
tolerably well-built colonnade, whose entablature is garnished with
crimson arabesques, and in the inner wall are pierced apartments, now
closed with plank doors. Of the Riwak, as the porches are called, the
Azhar contains twenty-four, one for each recognised nation in Al-Islam,
and of these fifteen are still open to students.[FN#18] Inside them we
find nothing but matting and a pile of large dingy wooden boxes, which
once contained the college library; they are now, generally speaking,
empty.[FN#19]
There is nothing worth seeing in the cluster of little dark chambers
that form the remainder of the Azhar. Even the Zawiyat al-Umyan (or the
Blind men's Oratory), a place where so many "town and gown rows" have
emanated, is rendered interesting only by the fanaticism of its
inmates, and the certainty that, if recognised in this
[p.102]sanctum, we shall run the gauntlet under the staves of its
proprietors, the angry blind.
The Azhar is the grand collegiate Mosque of this city,-the Christ
Church, in fact, of Cairo,-once celebrated throughout the world of
Al-Islam. It was built, I was told, originally in poor style by one
Jauhar al-Kaid,[FN#20] originally the slave of a Moorish merchant, in
consequence of a dream that ordered him to "erect a place whence the
light of science should shine upon Al-Islam."
It gradually increased by "Wakf[FN#21]" (entailed bequests) of lands,
money, and books; and pious rulers made a point of adding to its size
and wealth. Of late years it has considerably declined, the result of
sequestrations, and of the diminished esteem in which the purely
religious sciences are now held in the land of Egypt.[FN#22] Yet it is
calculated that between 2000 and 3000 students of all nations and ages
receive instruction here gratis.
[p.103]Each one is provided with bread, in a quantity determined by the
amount of endowment, at the Riwak set apart for his nation,[FN#23] with
some article of clothing on festival days, and a few piastres once a
year. The professors, who are about 150 in number, may not take fees
from their pupils; some lecture on account of the religious merit of
the action, others to gain the high title of "Teacher in Al
Azhar.[FN#24]" Six officials receive stipends from the government,-the
Shaykh al-Jami' or dean, the Shaykh al-Sakka, who regulates the
provision of water for ablution, and others that may be called heads of
departments.
The following is the course of study in the Azhar. The school-boy of
four or five years' standing has been taught, by a liberal application
of the maxim "the Green Rod is of the Trees of Paradise," to chant the
Koran without understanding it, the elementary rules of arithmetic,
and, if he is destined to be a learned man, the art of writing.[FN#25]
He then registers his name in Al-Azhar, and applies
[p.104]himself to the branches of study most cultivated in Al-Islam,
namely Nahw (syntax), Fikh (the law), Hadis (the traditions of the
Prophet), and Tafsir, or Exposition of the Koran.
The young Egyptian reads at the same time Sarf, or Inflexion, and Nahw
(syntax). But as Arabic is his mother-tongue, he is not required to
study the former so deeply as are the Turks, the Persians, and the
Indians. If he desire, however, to be a proficient, he must carefully
peruse five books in Sarf,[FN#26] and six in Nahw.[FN#27]
[p.105]Master of grammar, our student now applies himself to its proper
end and purpose, Divinity. Of the four schools those of Abu Hanifah and
Al-Shafe'i are most common in Cairo; the followers of Ibn Malik abound
only in Southern Egypt and the Berberah country, and the Hanbali is
almost unknown. The theologian begins with what is called a Matn or
text, a short, dry, and often obscure treatise, a mere string of
precepts; in fact, the skeleton of the subject. This he learns by
repeated perusal, till he can quote almost every passage literatim. He
then passes to its "Sharh," or commentary, generally the work of some
other savant, who explains the difficulty of the text, amplifies its
Laconicisms, enters into exceptional cases, and deals with principles
and reasons, as well as with mere precept. A difficult work will
sometimes require "Hashiyah," or "marginal notes"; but this aid has a
bad name:-
"Who readeth with note,
But learneth by rote,"
says a popular doggrel. The reason is, that the student's reasoning
powers being little exercised, he learns to depend upon the dixit of a
master rather than to think for himself. It also leads to the neglect
of another practice, highly advocated by the Eastern pedagogue.
"The lecture is one.
The dispute (upon the subject of the lecture) is one thousand."
In order to become a Fakih, or divine of distinguished fame, the
follower of Abu Hanifah must peruse about ten volumes,[FN#28] some of
huge size, written in a diffuse style;
[p.106]the Shafe'i's reading is not quite so extensive.[FN#29] Theology
is much studied, because it leads directly to the gaining of daily
bread, as priest or tutor; and other scientific pursuits are neglected
for the opposite reason.
The theologian in Egypt, as in other parts of Al-Islam, must have a
superficial knowledge of the Prophet's traditions. Of these there are
eight well known collections,[FN#30] but only the first three are
generally read.
School-boys are instructed, almost when in their infancy, to intone the
Koran; at the university they are
[p.107]taught a more exact system of chanting. The style called "Hafs"
is most common in Egypt, as it is indeed throughout the Moslem world.
And after learning to read the holy volume, some savans are ambitious
enough to wish to understand it: under these circumstances they must
dive into the 'Ilm al-Tafsir,[FN#31] or the Exegesis of the Koran.