cararmzsaries.—Particularly characteristic of Persia are the caravan saries—often of large dimensions—placed at intervals along the high roads. The description of these, like that of all that is left of ancient Persian art in our day, belongs to Ethnography.
Indian-ifohammedan Arehileallre.—In strict connection with Persian architecture follows a broader architectural development in India; the flourishing period of this new Indian-Mohammedan style was in the six teenth and seventeenth centuries. Shah Akbar the Great founded a new capital at Agra, not far from Delhi, and adorned it with majestic edifices. His tomb follows the type of the tumulus and terraced pyiamid, or, rather, that of the topes. The stupendous granite structure consists of four storeys diminishing in pyramidal form and surmounted by an empty sar cophagus. Of greater magnificence is Akbar's Palace at Agra, profusely adorned with mosaics and decorations of all kinds.
The Jama-Afasjid.—Shah Jabal', the grandson of Akbar, built New Delhi. Among the forty mosques of this city, the largest, Jama-Masjid, or the Great Mosque, is the most notable; its facade is shown on Plate 21 (fig. 5). The central dome, hidden by the portal in the view, has the same form as the side-domes. The building is surrounded by an addi tional arcaded wall, which stands on a high substructure; at each angle rises a tall minaret, and in the centre of each of the three sides is an immense gateway to which access is obtained by a broad flight of stairs. It is a magnificent sight to view from afar the ensemble of this mosque, with its slender minarets, its towers, and its grand portals. It was constructed 163P-1637 A. D. Variously colored materials—red sand stone for the base, marble and brick for the superstructure, gilding on the summits of the domes—acld to the charm of the whole.
The A.foli-,iasja (Pearl Mosque) at Agra, built of white marble, with a decoration of golden inscriptions on a blue ground, is very celebrated. It is described by Fergusson as follows: " Its dimensions are considerable, being externally 235 feet east and west by ego feet north and south, and the court-yard 155 feet square. The mass is also considerable, as the whole is raised on a terrace of artificial construction, by the aid of which it stands well out from the surrounding buildings of the fort. Its chief beauty consists in its court-yard, which is wholly of white marble from the pavement to the summit of its domes. In design it somewhat resembles the great Delhi mosque, except that the minarets are omitted and the side gateways are only recesses. The western part, or mosque properly so called, is of white marble inside and out, and, except an inscription from the Kurtin inlaid with black marble as a frieze, has no ornament whatever beyond the lines of its own graceful architecture." The TriFlfahal.—But before all is the mausoleum built by the emperor Shah Jabal' for the remains of his beloved wife, Mumtaza Mahal, and in which he himself is buried. This mausoleum is known as one of the wonders of the world, and it is said that twenty thousand workmen were employed in its erection during a period of twenty-two years. The fol lowing is the account given by "The enclosure, including the gardens and outer court, is a parallelogram of 186o feet by more than loco feet. The outer court, surrounded by arcades and adorned by four gateways, forms an oblong occupying in length the whole breadth of the enclosure by about 45o feet in depth. The principal gateway, measuring Ito feet by 14o, leads from the court to the gardens, which, with their marble canals and fountains and cypress trees, are almost as beautiful as the tomb itself. The tomb stands on a raised platform, 18 feet high, faced
with white marble, and is exactly 313 feet square. At each corner of this terrace stands a minaret 133 feet in height and of the most exquisite pro portions—more beautiful, perhaps, than any other in India. In the centre of the marble platform stands the mausoleum, a square of 186 feet, with the corners cut off to the extent of 33 feet 9 inches. The centre of this is occupied by the principal dome, 58 feet in diameter and So feet in height, under which is an enclosure formed by a screen of trellis-work of white marble, a cite/Cancel/NT of elegance in Indian art. Within this stand the two tombs. These, however, as is usual in Indian sepulchres, are not the true tombs: the bodies rest in a vault level with the surface of the ground, beneath plainer tombstones placed exactly underneath those in the hall above. In each angle of the building is a smaller dome of two storeys in height, 26 feet 8 inches in diameter, and connected by various passages and halls. The light to the central apartment is admitted only through double screens of white marble trellis-work of the most exquisite design, one on the outer and one on the inner face of the walls. In our climate this would produce nearly complete darkness, but in India, and in a building wholly composed of white marble, this was required to temper the glare, which otherwise would have been intolerable. As it is, no words can express the chastened beauty of that central chamber, seen in the soft gloom of the subdued light which reaches it through the dis tant and half-closed openings that surround it. When used as a pleasure palace, it must have been the coolest and the loveliest of garden retreats, and now that it is sacred to the dead it is the most graceful and most impressive of the sepulchres of the world. This building is an early example of that system of inlaying with precious stones which became the great characteristic of the style of the Mughuls after the death of Akbar. All the spandrels of the 'raj, all the angles and more important architectural details, are heightened by being inlaid with precious stones, such as agates, bloodstones, jaspers, and the like. These are combined in wreaths, scrolls, and frets as exquisite in design as they are beautiful in color, and, relieved by the pure white marble in which they are inlaid, they form the most beautiful and precious style of ornament ever adopted in architecture. It is lavishly bestowed on the tombs themselves and the screens that surround them, but more sparingly introduced on the mosque that forms one wing of the 'raj, and on the fountains and surrounding buildings. The judgment, indeed, with which this style of ornament is apportioned to the various parts is almost as remarkable as the ornament itself, and conveys a high idea of the taste and skill of the Indian archi tects of this age." To the closing period of Indian-Mohammedan architecture belongs a palace at Madura in which a great hall, represented on Plate 21 (fig. 2), is particularly remarkable. In Bijapur a series of important monuments remain, as the jani. Mosque, built by Ali Adil Shah, and the mausoleums of Ibrahim Adil (1626) and Sultan Mohammed Shah, the last inde pendent rulers of Bijapur. The last of the architectural monuments to be here considered is the Mausoleum of Hyder Ali, erected at Seringa patam in the second half of the eighteenth century. This is a magnificent domical structure with minarets, but with most degraded details.