THE MOSQUE
The mosque of Ukhaiḍir has an exceptional interest. It is one of the
earliest mosques known to us which retains its original form and
decoration, and its plan may be regarded as one of the first examples
which we possess of the systematized architectural scheme which, in
slightly varying types, ruled the Mohammadan world until the fourteenth
century of our era. It was a scheme which was derived from the inaugural
sanctuary of the Faith, the Prophet’s house at Medînah.
Recent research has made it abundantly clear that Muḥammad, when he
constructed his new dwelling after the flight to Medînah in A.D. 622,
had no other object in view than the purely domestic. It was not a
mosque which he set himself to build, but a living-house, and he laid it
out in the fashion which was customary in his day. It may indeed be
doubted whether he contemplated the need of a temple of any kind.[382]
In the view of the founder of Islâm there were but two sanctuaries in
the world, the mosque of the Ka’bah at Mekkah and the mosque of the Aqṣâ
at Jerusalem, the former being at that period an open space, bounded
only by the buildings of the city, with the house of Abraham in its
midst, the latter an area on the edge (_aqṣâ_ = extremity) of the sacred
enclosure at Jerusalem, an area actually occupied by the ruins of
Justinian’s Church of the Virgin, which had been destroyed by the
Persians in A.D. 614. For the rest God could be worshipped in every
place, and the nomads of Arabia could perform their religious exercises
as satisfactorily in the open wilderness as in any other spot. But, as
has been well pointed out,[383] even in the Days of Ignorance, the
madjlis, the place of assembly--that is to say the courtyard of the Arab
house--was itself invested with a kind of sanctity; the meetings held in
it were conducted with gravity and order, and it may also have been used
for cult purposes. To it the terms ‘madjlis’ and ‘masdjid’ were applied
impartially, and it was not until after the advent of the Prophet that
the word ‘masdjid’ was narrowed down so as to signify only such places
of assembly as were connected with religious observances.[384] These
places were not, however, used exclusively for cult purposes. In
Muḥammad’s masdjid at Medînah, the court of his house was necessarily
the centre of his domestic life; in it he lived and entertained his
wives and took counsel with his friends, and, since he was the head of
his community, it was the meeting-place of the Faithful, whether for
religious or for secular needs. The homeless among his adherents found a
lodging in it, and the wounded were tended there. Nor did the masdjid
al-djamâ’ah, the mosque of assembly, lose its secular character until
more than a hundred years had passed after the Hidjrah. For the mosque,
as Wellhausen has put it (and the phrase cannot be bettered), was the
forum of primitive Islâm. When the conquerors founded their camp-cities,
the misrs of Mesopotamia and of Egypt, their first step was to _mark
out_ the area of the mosque, to provide, that is to say, a central place
of assembly for the people. To it the khalif repaired on his accession
and the governor on his appointment, and the discourses which they
pronounced on these occasions were political rather than religious.[385]
Thither, too, they summoned the people when questions of importance were
to be discussed, or weighty tidings to be communicated.[386]
Muḥammad’s house at Medînah, which was to play so influential a part in
the architectural history of Islâm, consisted of a courtyard 100 ells
square (_circa_ 60 metres) enclosed by a wall, the lower part of which
was stone and the upper of sun-dried brick. The qiblah, the direction in
which the worshippers turned in prayer, was towards Jerusalem, i.e. it
lay to the north; there was, however, no niche to mark it, and the word
‘qiblah’ did not carry with it any architectural connotation, but merely
the sense of a moral order. That the congregation might be protected
from the burning sun, this side of the court was covered by a roof of
woven palm-leaves, supported on columns made of palm-trunks. The roof
was so low that a man could touch it with his hand. On the east side,
two rooms, for the two wives, Saudâ and ‘A’ishah, were placed outside
the wall at its southern extremity. In the opposite corner (the
south-west) a primitive lodging was provided for the poorest of those
who had followed the Prophet in his flight. It was covered by a roof
(ṣuffah) similar to that of the qiblah, and those who inhabited it were
known as the Aṣḥâb al-Ṣuffah, the people of the portico. There were
three doors into the courtyard. That which lay to the south was the
principal entrance; a subsidiary door was placed on the west side, and
on the east side was the door used by the Prophet. At a subsequent date,
owing to quarrels with the Jews, the qiblah was turned away from
Jerusalem and placed in the direction of Mekkah. This necessitated the
closing of the south door and the opening of a door in the north wall.
Moreover, the Aṣḥâb al-Ṣuffah were moved to the north-east angle of the
court and their roof was re-erected there.[387] In addressing those who
were present, the Prophet was accustomed to lean against the trunk of a
palm-tree, but in the year seven or eight of the Hidjrah he caused a
wooden minbar to be erected. It consisted of two steps and a seat. On
or before it he conducted the prayers.[388] The khalif ‘Umar enlarged
the mosque at Medînah, but the new building scarcely exceeded the old in
architectural pretension. The wall was of sun-dried brick, the columns
of palm-trunks (or according to one account of sun-dried brick also)
supporting a palm-leaf roof. It is not clear whether this roof was
carried all round the court or was confined to the south side. The
court, which in Muḥammad’s day was without any kind of pavement, was
given by ‘Umar a floor of pebbles beaten into the ground.[389] Further
improvements were carried out by ‘Uthmân, but it was not until the time
of the Umayyad khalif Walîd ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (A.D. 705-715) that the
old simplicity of construction was abandoned. In the year A.H. 87 or 88
he pulled down the mosque and rebuilt it. The workmen whom he employed
were Greeks and Copts from Damascus and Egypt.[390] The walls and
columns of the new edifice were of cut stone; gold, silver, and mosaic
were used to adorn it; the miḥrâb and the maqṣûrah were of teak.[391]
The maqṣûrah, the enclosure reserved for the khalif, had already,
according to Balâdhuri, been introduced into the mosque by Marwân (A.D.
683-685), but his maqṣûrah was of stone. The miḥrâb was a new feature:
‘the first who introduced the novelty of a concave miḥrâb was ‘Umar ibn
‘Abd al-Azîz when he restored the mosque of the Prophet’ (by order of
the khalif Walîd).[392] Both maqṣûrah and miḥrâb were borrowed from
Christian usage; the maqṣûrah was copied from the Imperial enclosed dais
of Byzantine churches, the miḥrâb from the Christian apse--it was ‘min
shân al-kanâ’is’, an attribute of churches, and was adopted with some
reluctance by Islâm.[393] Concerning the Medînah mosque Professor Becker
quotes an exceedingly suggestive anecdote. Walîd, boasting of his
construction to a son of the khalif ‘Uthmân, who had been the last
before him to restore the mosque, said: ‘How far our building excels
yours.’ ‘True,’ replied his interlocutor, ‘we built after the manner of
mosques, but you after the manner of Christian churches.’
Elsewhere the development followed similar lines. The Ḥaram of Mekkah
stands apart; its arrangement could never be the same as that of
ordinary mosques. Yet it is interesting to observe that it was at first
innocent of any building except the Ka’bah. The khalif ‘Umar enlarged
the area by pulling down adjacent houses, and enclosed it with a wall
lower than a man’s stature; ‘Uthmân is said to have been the first to
furnish it with riwâqs. Again here, as at Medînah, it was Walîd who
first beautified the mosque with marble columns and with mosaic.[394]
The accounts of the foundation of the misrs of Baṣrah, Kûfah, and Fusṭâṭ
throw a vivid light upon the requirements, spiritual and architectural,
of primitive Islâm. It is recorded that the khalif ‘Umar gave orders to
the respective governors of the three places, Abû Mûsâ, Sa’d ibn abi
Waqqâs, and ‘Amr ibn al-’Âṣ, that a masdjid al-djamâ’ah should be
provided, while each tribe was to have a small mosque for its particular
use. At Baṣrah the mosque was marked out (_ikhtaṭṭa_) but not built, and
Balâdhuri is careful to add that the people prayed in it without
buildings.[395] It was subsequently enclosed with a fence made of reeds,
and this fence Abû Mûsâ replaced by a wall of sun-dried brick and roofed
it (presumably the qiblah side) with reeds. Ziyâd ibn Abîhi, Mu’âwiyah’s
powerful viceroy, enlarged it considerably. His building was of burnt
brick and gypsum mortar, and he roofed it with teak.[396] Five columns
(the word used is _sawâri_ = masts, the columns were therefore
presumably of wood) supported the roof of the qiblah wall; the side
walls were of stone, and columns are not mentioned there. The columns
were probably of teak like the roof; some of them had four _’uqûd_ =
ties, which I take to mean the metal collars which were used to fasten
together the different sections of wooden or marble columns. Ziyâd was
the first to introduce a maqṣûrah, and he is said to have built a
minaret of stone. Al-Hadjdjâdj or his son put in columns made of stone
from the mountains of Ahwâz.[397] At Kûfah the mosque was marked out on
a high spot before any part of the city had been built. On three sides
the ṣaḥn was bounded by a ditch; on the fourth, that which faced towards
Mekkah (the front side as it is called by the Arab writers), there was a
covering roof (_ẓullah_) which had neither side nor end walls; it was
200 ells long, and was supported by columns of marble which were taken
from churches built by Chosroës. The ceiling was like the ceiling of
Greek churches.[398] ‘And such’, says Ṭabari, ‘was the mosque (at that
time), with the exception of the mosque at Mekkah which they would not
imitate.’
The first mosque at Kûfah therefore consisted of a great ṣaḥn surrounded
on three sides by a ditch and on the fourth, the qiblah side, by an open
colonnade carrying a roof, and the arrangement was exactly the same as
that of Muḥammad’s house, except that the qiblah wall and the palm-trunk
columns were replaced by marble columns. Balâdhuri gives a tradition
that the mosque at Kûfah was built out of part of the materials taken
from the palaces of al-Mundhir at Ḥîrah,[399] and Ṭabari says that the
castle at Kûfah was of burnt brick taken from Persian buildings at
Ḥîrah. Ziyâd rebuilt the mosque. He summoned, according to Ṭabari,[400]
Persian builders, and expounded to them the plan of the mosque and its
extent, and that which he desired regarding the length of its roof,
saying that he wished to erect an edifice which should not have its
parallel. To which a man, who had been one of the builders of Chosroës,
replied that could only be accomplished by using columns from the Jebel
Ahwâz which should be carved and polished and filled with lead and iron
clamps (_safâfîd_ = skewers). The ceiling should be 30 ells high
(_circa_ 17 metres!), and it should be roofed. The mosque should also
have side and end walls. This scheme was adopted by Ziyâd. Balâdhuri
mentions that he placed a maqṣûrah in this mosque also, and that both at
Baṣrah and at Kûfah he strewed pebbles on the ṣaḥn to prevent the people
from getting dusty.[401]
At Baṣrah and at Kûfah the ṣaḥn was the principal feature of the mosque,
as indeed it had been at Medînah; this was not the case at Fusṭâṭ. The
first Egyptian mosque was built by ‘Amr ibn al-’Âṣ in the year A.D. 642.
It stood in the midst of vineyards and consisted merely of a covered
place, 50 x 30 cubits in extent (28·92 x 17·34 metres), enclosed in a
brick wall.[402] The people assembled in the open space which surrounded
it. The roof, which was very low, must have been supported on columns,
though these are not mentioned. The brick walls were unplastered, and
the floor was strewn with pebbles. ‘Amr set up within it a wooden
minbar, but this was resented by ‘Umar, and it was removed. ‘Is it not
enough’, wrote the khalif, ‘that thou shouldst stand while the people
sit at thy feet?’ This episode is of the highest significance in the
history of the minbar. It is clear that it was regarded at that time as
a throne rather than as a pulpit, and as such unsuited to any but the
khalif. It was not until the close of the Umayyad period that the minbar
lost its secular significance and became a part of the ritual furnishing
of the mosque. With this change it is probable that its form changed
also, and instead of the two steps and a seat of the Prophet’s minbar,
the high pulpit of the modern mosque came into use. That this pulpit was
copied from the pulpits of Christian churches is not improbable. The
minbar which was set up in the time of ‘Abd al-Azîz ibn Marwân (A.D.
685-705) in the mosque of ‘Amr is said to have been taken from a
Christian church.[403] Neither was there in ‘Amr’s mosque any miḥrâb to
mark the qiblah; it was not until the third enlargement of the mosque in
A.D. 710 that the qiblah wall was given a miḥrâb. It is further recorded
that the orientation adopted by ‘Amr was imperfect, so that the
worshippers were obliged to stand askew that they might face truly
towards Mekkah while they prayed. The mosque was provided with six
doors, two in each wall, with the exception of the qiblah wall, which
was left unbroken. The first enlargement of the building took place in
A.D. 673, on which occasion an open space, or court, was added to the
north. In the second enlargement (A.D. 698-699) the mosque was entirely
rebuilt and the ṣaḥn was included within its walls.
It appears from these accounts that by the middle of the Umayyad period
the development from courtyard-house to sanctuary was complete. Its
course had been simple and obvious. All the essentials of the
stereotyped form were present at Medînah; the differences were
differences in size and splendour, not in kind. The domestic court had
become the ṣaḥn; the palm-leaf sheltering roofs against the qiblah wall
and in one angle of the court had solidified into the riwâqs; the
palm-trunk columns had been replaced by columns or piers of brick
(possibly by brick columns at Medînah itself as early as the time of
‘Umar), or, where the spoils of Sasanian and Byzantine lay ready to
hand, as at Kûfah or Fusṭâṭ, by columns of marble. The qiblah had been
given a visible shape in the miḥrâb niche, and by the close of the
Umayyad period the minbar had wholly lost its temporal attributes and
had taken its place as part of the necessary furniture of the mosque,
though it probably still continued to be a movable wooden structure.
Such a sanctuary, but reduced to the modest dimensions of a private
chapel (if I may be permitted the phrase), is the mosque of Ukhaiḍir.
The fact that its orientation is inexact--Mekkah lies to the south-east
of Ukhaiḍir, whereas the direction indicated by the miḥrâb is almost due
south--would not have been regarded as of much importance. As has been
mentioned, ‘Amr’s mosque had the same defect, and in this respect
Manṣûr’s mosque at Baghdâd offers a yet more significant parallel.
Ṭabari observes that the mosque in the round city was not properly
oriented because it was built to fit the qaṣr, whereas at Ruṣâfah the
orientation was right, because the mosque was built before the
qaṣr.[404] Precisely the same explanation applies to the Ukhaiḍir
mosque. The palace builders were accustomed to square their plans to the
points of the compass, and a miḥrâb in the south wall was the closest
approximation which could be obtained in an edifice which lay north and
south. The mosque was so small that there was no difficulty in applying
to it the system of vaulting which reigns over the whole palace, but the
massive Mesopotamian vault was unsuited to free-standing columns and the
roof of the riwâqs has fallen. Outside Ukhaiḍir we have no extant
example of a vaulted mosque on this plan. We are specifically told that
the roof of the mosque at Baṣrah was first of reeds and then of teak;
the nature of the roof of the ẓullah at Kûfah is open to doubt. Its
ceiling was like the ceiling of Greek churches, a description which does
not exclude the possibility of a vault. That the miḥrâb at Ukhaiḍir
received no decoration need cause no surprise. Far from being regarded
as having any special sanctity, the miḥrâb is defined as the least holy
part of the mosque and the Imâm is earnestly warned not to take up his
station within it--doubtless, as Professor Becker observes, in order to
emphasize the fact that though the miḥrâb was copied from the Christian
apse, it shared none of its attributes.[405] Of the minbar it is
improbable that any vestige would be found under the ruin heaps at
Ukhaiḍir. It was most likely of wood, and has long been destroyed. Nor
is it necessary to suppose that the ṣaḥn contained a water-basin for
ablutions. No such feature is mentioned in the account of the early
mosques, save that at a later date Maqrîzi records the presence in the
mosque of ‘Amr of an ancient well appertaining to the gardens in which
the mosque was built.[406]
It will be convenient to carry this survey a little further in order to
include the mosques of Sâmarrâ, which are not far removed, either
chronologically or geographically, from the mosque of Ukhaiḍir, but in
so doing the early Syrian and North African mosques must be taken into
account. The plan of the first mosques in Syria was partly determined by
the fact that they were erected on the site of Christian churches. They
differ, therefore, from the normal construction of the Medînah type. To
the khalif ‘Umar is ascribed the first Mohammadan building upon the site
which is now occupied by the Aqṣâ, but it seems probable that his
edifice was nothing but a makeshift reparation of the ruined church of
the Virgin.[407] Probably the Umayyad khalif ‘Abd al-Malik rebuilt the
mosque in the year A.D. 691, but in A.D. 746 it was destroyed by an
earthquake. Manṣûr rebuilt it, and it was again destroyed by earthquake.
It was restored by al-Mahdi about A.D. 780, but the plan was
considerably altered. Even the mosque described by Muqaddasi in A.D. 985
is materially different from the building which exists to-day. I think
it exceedingly doubtful whether the mosque retained at any time after
the temporary construction of ‘Umar the plan of Justinian’s church,
since the necessary alteration in the orientation must have introduced a
wide diversity; but the design of the many-aisled church and the
presence of a large quantity of columns and capitals may well have
influenced the mosque builders. In any case the position of the Aqṣâ
would have led to an abnormal plan, inasmuch as the great court of the
ḥaram enclosure, in which it stood, rendered it unnecessary to give a
separate court, or ṣaḥn, to the mosque.
The Umayyad mosque at Damascus is also abnormal, but its plan seems to
have been far more directly determined than in the Aqṣâ by the building
which preceded it on the same site. The nave and aisles of the church of
St. John must have dictated the scheme of its arcades, and its
distinguishing feature, the wide central aisle running north and south,
can only be explained by a similar disposition, either transept or
narthex, in the church.[408] It is conceivable that the temple porticoes
may have given the impulse to the full development of the riwâqs about
the ṣaḥn, just as the porticoes of such buildings as the Serapeion, the
agora, and the gymnasium at Alexandria, or of the stoas and agoras which
adorned the Hellenistic cities of the Roman empire, may have had their
share in suggesting an extension of the colonnades of the mosque, and
indeed in Mesopotamia, where these models were absent, there is no
reason for supposing that the riwâqs were carried in the first
constructions all round the ṣaḥn. But this extension was in itself a not
unnatural growth out of the Medînah plan, and in its further history,
the courtyard-mosque with its deep ḥaram and its narrow flanking riwâqs
pursued its own line of development, based upon its own needs. In this
development no doubt the renowned Umayyad mosque at Damascus played a
part. In Syria both the Aqṣâ and the mosque at Ba’albek show the wide
central aisle running north and south.[409] It is typical of the
Tunisian mosques, but here it is almost always found in conjunction with
a wide transept running parallel with the qiblah wall; a dome covers the
miḥrâb where the wide aisle and the transept meet, and a second dome
stands at the opposite end of the central aisle. This =⏊=-shaped scheme
can be seen at Qairawân, in the Zaitûnah at Tunis, at Tilimsân, and
elsewhere. The mosque of Qairawân was founded in A.D. 671, but entirely
rebuilt, first in 703 and again in 837.[410] The Zaitûnah was founded in
A.D. 732. The great mosque at Cordova, founded at the end of the eighth
century, had the same disposition.[411] The Tilimsân mosques are
considerably later in date and are built with piers, with the exception
of Sidi al-Ḥalwi, where both piers and columns are used.[412]
With the exception of the late Tilimsân group, the wooden roof of all
the above-mentioned mosques, both in Syria and in North Africa, was
supported by columns and arches, the columns having invariably been
taken from pre-Mohammadan buildings. Probably the earliest extant
example of a mosque in which the arches rested on piers is at Ḥarrân,
but the building is unfortunately so much ruined that its exact
disposition cannot be determined without excavation. The plan, so far as
it is apparent, has been given by Dr. Preusser.[413] The central arch in
the north façade of the ḥaram alone remains standing. Its width would
seem to indicate that here, as at Damascus, the central aisle was
broader than the rest. On either side of it there was an arch of much
narrower span.[414] None of the other piers can be placed with
certainty. There are some fragments of columns both in the ḥaram and in
the east riwâq. An inscription on the east gate gives the name of Ṣalâḥ
al-Dîn,[415] but I think it certain that it alludes not to the
foundation, but to the restoration of the mosque. The cusped ornament
round the relieving arch over the door corresponds with the cusped
motive on the façade of the Mayâfârqîn mosque, and the gateway at Ḥarrân
has every appearance of being the work of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn. But the engaged
capitals of the interior responds in the east wall, and the wreathed
acanthus capital under the central arch of the ḥaram (one capital only
is preserved) must be dated several centuries earlier. I do not doubt
that they were executed for the places which they occupy, and I agree
with Dr. Herzfeld in assigning them to the Umayyad period.[416] I
observed, however, among the ruins in the interior of the mosque many
fragments of carved ornament which cannot be earlier than the time of
Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn, and I came to the conclusion that until the building has
received further study it is impossible to make a more precise statement
concerning it than that it seems to be a structure of which parts at
least belong to the early eighth century, that it had a wide central
aisle and four gable roofs supported on masonry piers, or possibly upon
piers and columns.
At Raqqah, according to Balâdhuri,[417] a mosque was built by Sa’îd ibn
‘Âmir ibn Ḥudhaim not long after the conquest of the country by the
Mohammadans; and Muqaddasi, as I have already had occasion to
mention,[418] speaks of one of the Raqqah mosques as built upon columns.
My impression upon visiting the site in 1909 was that the earliest
Mohammadan city must have occupied the ground where, among ruin heaps,
rises a rectangular minaret. In connexion with this minaret I
conjectured that the first mosque had stood (though possibly the minaret
was not contemporary with the earliest building), and since the town to
which it belonged was the successor of Nicephoricum-Callinicum, and
there were no doubt plenty of columns at hand for the mosque, I conclude
that it was Sa’îd ibn ‘Âmir’s edifice which was described by Muqaddasi,
and that it is to be classed with the normal type of courtyard-mosque
built on classical sites, i.e. it had a riwâq or riwâqs composed of
columns. The khalif Manṣûr founded in the year A.H. 155 a second town,
the ruins of which are still to be seen to the west of the earlier
settlement. Upon this site there were no ancient remains,[419] that is
to say that Manṣûr had not Roman or Byzantine materials at his disposal.
Now within the walls of Manṣûr’s city stand the ruins of a mosque built
upon piers (Fig. 32). According to an inscription over the central arch
of the ḥaram arcade it was repaired in A.D. 1166 by the Atâbek Nûr
al-Dîn.[420] It was surrounded by a wall built of sun-dried brick, which
was strengthened by rounded towers. The ḥaram was composed of three rows
of oblong brick piers, of which the northernmost alone is standing; the
riwâqs on the remaining three sides were of two rows of columns which
can be traced only by the holes in the ground whence the burnt bricks
whereof they were built have been extracted. The central arch of the
ḥaram is no wider than the arches on either side, but the niche in which
it is set is carried up higher than the other niches, and M. van Berchem
has suggested that it may have been surmounted by a gable, like the
mosques at Damascus and Diyârbekr. It is possible that this was so, but
both at Damascus and at Diyârbekr the central aisle is distinguished
from the side aisles by its greater width. The round minaret in the ṣaḥn
at Raqqah I believe to have been the work of Nûr al-Dîn. At Baghdâd,
Manṣûr built a mosque of which we have nothing but the description. Its
walls were of sun-dried brick and its columns of wood, each column being
composed of two pieces, the ends bound together with sinews and glue and
rings of iron, with the exception of five or six columns near the
minaret, which were constructed of rounded pieces of wood.[421]
[Illustration: FIG. 32. Mosque at Raqqah.]
Less than a hundred years later Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861) built the
mosque of Abû Dulaf, which is closely related in plan to Manṣûr’s mosque
at Raqqah (Fig. 33).[422] There is the same enclosing wall of sun-dried
brick garnished with
[Illustration: FIG. 33. Mosque of Abû Dulaf.]
rounded towers. The arcades are of burnt brick, but the central aisle of
the ḥaram and the corresponding aisle of the north riwâq are more than a
metre wider than the others (7·33 metres as against an average of 6·20
metres), and a transept 10·40 metres wide runs along the qiblah wall.
Dr. Herzfeld informs me that he has by excavation ascertained the
existence of a miḥrâb in the centre of the qiblah wall where I had
placed a door. In one respect Abû Dulaf differs from all other mosques
built with piers; the arcades of the south riwâq, instead of lying
parallel to the qiblah wall, are placed at right angles to it. I do not
think that this variation is of great importance, for the outer and
inner arcades (that is to say, the arcade on the ṣaḥn and the arcade
next to the qiblah wall) are placed parallel to the qiblah wall, and it
is only between these two that the ḥaram arcades run at right angles.
The divergence from the normal scheme is not therefore so great as would
at first appear. The mosque is surrounded by an outer enclosure, or
ziyâdah[423], within which stands the spiral minaret, to the north of
the centre of the north wall. The piers and arches of the riwâqs must
undoubtedly have carried a flat wooden roof; nevertheless in the façades
of the ṣaḥn each pier is adorned with the blind niche which I believe to
be derived from the tubular system of Mesopotamian vaulting (Plate 89,
Fig. 2). This decoration is a direct link between the unvaulted mosque
of Abû Dulaf and the vaulted palace of Ukhaiḍir, and the fact that it
appears again in the mosque of Ibn Ṭulûn is to my mind an indubitable
proof of the essential exactitude of the tradition which connects Ibn
Ṭulûn’s building with Mesopotamian architecture (Plate 89, Fig. 1).
Other structural evidence is not wanting. The position of the minaret in
the northern ziyâdah (to say nothing of its spiral form) corresponds
with the position of the minarets both at Abû Dulaf and at Sâmarrâ, and
even if we leave on one side the much-disputed question of the origin of
the stucco ornament in the Cairo mosque, there is another feature of its
decoration which points directly to Mesopotamia. The walls are crowned
with a fantastic parapet, which probably goes back, in design at least,
to the ninth century, and below the parapet, just above the level of the
roof, runs a decorative band consisting of a recessed square pierced by
a circular hole (Plate 91, Fig. 1). The same motive appears upon the
walls of the Sâmarrâ mosque, with this difference, that it is placed
below the level of the roof and not above it (Plate 91, Fig. 2). Instead
of forming part of a light parapet, it forms part of the solid wall;
with the result that the circle is not pierced through to the interior,
but remains a saucer-shaped motive sunk within the square. I hazard the
conjecture that the origin of this ornament is to be sought upon the
walls of Assyrian fortifications, and that it represents the row of
shields set within rectangular frames which are to be seen on
innumerable Assyrian reliefs (Fig. 34).
In the great mosque at Sâmarrâ the wooden roof was borne directly
(without the interposition of arches) by composite piers having bases
2·07 metres square.[424] These piers were composed of an octagonal core
of brick with four slender marble columns placed one at each corner. The
columns were sometimes round, sometimes octagonal, and averaged ·30
metre in diameter. Dr. Herzfeld calculates that each column consisted of
three sections, placed one on top of the other and bound together with
lead and with metal rings. They rested upon bell-shaped bases and
carried bell-shaped capitals. Dr. Herzfeld points out that the teak
columns of Manṣûr’s mosque at Baghdad were similarly composed of
sections joined together in the same manner. The ḥaram and the north
riwâq at Sâmarrâ were given a wide central aisle.
[Illustration: FIG. 34. Assyrian fortress.
From _L’Acropole de Suse_, by kind permission of M. Dieulafoy.]
The two small mosques of which Dr. Herzfeld has uncovered the
foundations in the palace of Balkuwârâ present further variations. The
larger was an oblong chamber of brick, 35 × 15 metres, the roof
supported by two rows of eight columns which were probably either of
wood or of marble. In the wall opposite the qiblah there were three
doors. The smaller mosque was a chamber 10·35 × 7·76 metres, built of
sun-dried brick, without columns. The miḥrâb was a deep rounded niche
surmounted by a cyma moulding and flanked by engaged columns, and in the
opposite wall were three doors. The miḥrâb of the larger mosque, which
is totally destroyed, is probably to be reconstructed in the same style.
Neither of these mosques has a ṣaḥn, the great palace enclosure in which
they stand serving them as court.[425]
With the exception of the small palace chapels at Balkuwârâ, all the
Mesopotamian mosques were laid out on the same plan, but they differed
in details of construction. When columns were available they were used
in the riwâqs, as at Kûfah and in the first mosque at Raqqah. Elsewhere
there were either wooden columns (Baṣrah, Baghdâd), or columns of
masonry (Ukhaiḍir); or the riwâqs might be built with brick piers
(Manṣûr’s mosque at Raqqah, Abû Dulaf) or, where stone was easy to
obtain, with stone piers (Ḥarrân). At Sâmarrâ there is an isolated
example of a composite pier. The roofs also differ from one another. At
Ḥarrân there must have been wooden gable roofs over the riwâqs; at
Ukhaiḍir they were vaulted; at Abû Dulaf the flat wooden roof rested on
arches; at Sâmarrâ, and probably at Baghdâd, it was carried directly by
the piers or columns. The wide central aisle was present at Ḥarrân, at
Sâmarrâ, and at Abû Dulaf; at the latter there is also a side transept,
producing the same =⏊=-shaped plan that has been noticed in the Tunisian
mosques. The data are too scanty to admit of any but the most general
conclusion. We find divergent detail but no divergence in type, and the
type in Mesopotamia, as in other parts of the Mohammadan world, was
derived ultimately from the Prophet’s house at Medînah. It is in
Mesopotamia that we have the earliest examples of the brick pier. We do
not know how far Nûr al-Dîn’s reparations at Raqqah extended, nor what
was the aspect of the façades of the ṣaḥn before his time, but at Abû
Dulaf the original construction is preserved and the brick piers and
arches of the façades bear in their spandrel niches a characteristic
Mesopotamian trait. I do not doubt that the first Egyptian mosque built
with brick piers, that of Ibn Ṭulûn, was inspired by the Mesopotamian
scheme; the marks of relationship are too numerous not to be convincing.
The engaged quarter-columns with which his piers are provided were no
new thing. Engaged half-columns are universal at Ukhaiḍir, and the
oblong piers with quarter-columns in Ibn Ṭulûn’s mosque are nothing but
a translation into solid masonry, along the lines indicated at Ukhaiḍir,
of the octagonal piers with angle colonnettes of Sâmarrâ. More than a
hundred years later this building served as a model to al-Ḥâkim, and it
is interesting to note that the Mesopotamian pier was applied at a still
later date to a building which seems in other respects to have been a
direct imitation of the Umayyad mosque at Damascus. The great mosque at
Diyârbekr (I give here a plan which I made in 1911, Plate 90) is a
patchwork of older materials re-used at different times. The oldest part
of the existing structure is the west wing of the ḥaram, which is dated
by an inscription in the year A.D. 1091,[426] but the west arcade of
the ṣaḥn, though it is dated A.D. 1124, must preserve the memory of a
plan which is older than that of the present mosque. It strikes the
north wall of the ḥaram at an angle of 78°, and by reason of its oblique
disposition it cuts off the north-west corner of the ṣaḥn, which is 6·24
metres shorter on the north side than it is on the south side. The east
arcade of the ṣaḥn (dated A.D. 1163-1179) lies almost at right angles to
the north wall of the ḥaram. Whether the orientation of the west arcade
was dictated by a pre-Mohammadan building or, as Dr. Herzfeld has
acutely suggested, by the plan of a mosque which stood upon this site
before the year A.D. 1091,[427] cannot be determined with certainty. In
its present form it is the work of Mohammadan builders of the twelfth
century, though it is partly composed of pre-Mohammadan materials.
Whence these materials were derived has not been ascertained. There is,
however, a further proof that a building older than the existing mosque,
oriented in the manner corresponding with that of the west arcade,
existed on this site. On the north side of the ṣaḥn, between the two
northern madrasahs, there is a lane or passage which communicates with
the street beyond the precincts of the mosque. On the east side of the
passage there is a fragment of wall, built of large dressed stones,
entirely dissimilar from the masonry in any part of the existing mosque,
and this fragment lies at the same angle as the west arcade of the ṣaḥn
(Plate 93, Fig. 1).
Not far from Diyârbekr there is another building which shows in its plan
and decorations the influence of the Ulu Djâmi’ in that city. The
so-called mosque of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn at Mayâfârqîn ranks, even in ruin,
among the finest of Mohammadan monuments (Plate 92). The wide central
aisle has been converted into a chamber almost square (it is not quite
rectangular and averages 13·60 x 13·32 metres), which was covered by a
dome set on elaborately decorated squinch arches (Plate 93, Fig. 2).
Under the dome runs an inscription assigning the building of the mosque
to the Ortokid Alpi (A.D. 1152-1176). The square chamber is surrounded
on three sides by a corridor consisting of eleven bays, some of which
were probably domed, while the others were vaulted. The columns placed
against the piers of the dome were taken from a neighbouring early
Christian basilica. The wings to east and west are divided by three
arcades into four transepts averaging alternately 5 metres and 2·60
metres in width, a narrow transept lying next to the qiblah wall. The
eastern miḥrâb in the south wall of the east wing is dated by an
inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi in the year A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. The
west wing contains no date, but the very shallow miḥrâb in the south
wall is proved by its decoration to belong to a period not earlier than
the sixteenth century, and as the whole wing as it stands at present
seems to have been rebuilt, it may well be that it all belongs to a late
reconstruction or reparation. Still further west are some ruined
edifices which formed part of the precincts of the mosque, and here a
lintel, re-used in a doorway of a later period, bears a second
inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi and the date A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227.
There are no remains of a minaret, and the ṣaḥn is completely ruined and
filled with débris, but the north façade, which is almost entirely
preserved, is of remarkable interest in the history of Mohammadan
decoration. (The photograph of a section of this façade has been given
on Plate 84, Fig. 3.) The wings and the north façade show many signs of
reparation, and no doubt the mosque shared the fate of all great
buildings in these stormy regions, and suffered frequent ruin and
subsequent restoration; but it seems probable that the two wings were
originally built between A.D. 1226 and 1228, and that they were added to
the domed chamber with its corridor which had been erected some fifty
years earlier.
In the Ayyûbid mosques at Ḥasan Kaif, all of which are dated in the
first half of the fifteenth century, no suggestion of an early plan can
be traced. At Môṣul, the great mosque as it exists at present dates from
the time of Nûr al-Dîn Maḥmûd (A.D. 1146-1173), but the plan shows
traces of an earlier riwâq constructed with piers, and lying immediately
to the north of the present ḥaram; while fragmentary inscriptions in
decorated Kufic must belong, according to M. van Berchem, to the
eleventh century A.D.[428]
That we have no further information concerning the Mesopotamian mosque
shows how insufficient are the data which bear upon its architectural
history. From the facts which I have briefly summarized one conclusion
may, however, be drawn. The mosque builders were guided by a scheme of
extreme simplicity, the details of which were executed according to the
nature of the building material which was available. When that material
could be taken from older buildings the Mesopotamian artificers were not
slow to profit by so fortunate a circumstance; elsewhere they reverted
to the system of construction which from time immemorial had prevailed
in those regions. They built with sun-dried or with burnt bricks, or
where stone could be obtained they built with stone. Sometimes they
imported stone from Ahwâz for the columns of their riwâqs, and sometimes
wood; sometimes they raised columns of stone masonry, or again they
combined brick piers with colonnettes of marble. But since imported wood
and stone were expensive, and the Sasanian monuments, which had served
as quarries, were speedily exhausted, there was a natural tendency to
return to the old local forms, and piers of brick or stone masonry were
the obvious solution for the supports of the riwâqs. Ukhaiḍir is the
only example which remains to us of a mosque in which the riwâqs were
covered with a vault; probably the vault was seldom employed. It is
certain that all the mosques of the early Abbâsid period, of which the
ruins are preserved, must have been roofed with wood.