`Valid also rebuilt the Mosque of Mohammed at Medina and gave it the plan of a court surrounded by halls; the side looking toward Mecca, the Hall of Prayer (.lirehrab), extends in several aisles.
Development of Architectural chronological development -of forms among the Saracens cannot in many directions be exactly deter mined, since numerous later alterations have so changed the buildings that neither the forms nor the date of the original can be ascertained. That the starting-point of Arabian art was the late classical is proved by the facts cited above. The next source was ancient Persia. The -entrance of new characteristic elements follows, as in other cases, grad ually. We have stated before (b. III) that the exact time cannot be given at which Byzantine architecture acquired those characteristic forms which we cannot consider as belonging to the last period of clas sical art, but must regard as the beginning of a style that flourished in Greece through the entire Middle Ages and has continued until the pres .ent day.
The Slitting of the Arches of the ranges of columns and piers, so usual with the Arabs, may go back to the same source, and may have been introduced by Grecian architects. Or it may be that both in Christian and in Saracenic structures the use of older fragments, particularly of columns which fell short of the required height and were unlike one another, may have given frequent occasion for the high stilting of the arches; but certainly it was in great part a taste for proportions not clas sically symmetrical which sought by the lack of symmetry to gain the charm of novelty and that exercise of the imagination for which those classical forms had to a certain degree become too commonplace.
Pointed and horseshoe would particularly suit the ideas of a people like the Arabs—who, overthrowing one world, sought to build up another—to found a style in which a greater liberty of fancy should take the place of classical formality. And thus a second form of arch, the pointed, which corresponded still more to the imaginative impulse, found its way into Saracenic architecture, and also a third, the horseshoe form, in which the lower portions of the arches turn inward, so that the arches approach one another before they spring across toward the opposite columns.
Mohammedan Art in Turkey: founded in 766 by the caliph Al Mansiir, and finished in four years, was the residence of the caliphs and soon became the seat of Oriental elegance and learning. The Palace of was so famous that even in the ninth century the Byzantines sought to rival it, and the Emperor Theophilus built a summer palace after the pattern of the caliph's seat. But, however
sumptuous may have been the works of Omar's immediate successors, however brilliant even the structures of the Abbasids, nothing has conic down to us. The mosque built by them in the eighth century was famed for its size and magnificence, as is also the case with others. We cannot make a picture out of the descriptions.
illonainnzedan Art in still exist in Spain some struc tures of this period. In 711 the decisive battle of Guadalete gave the greater part of Spain to the Arabs, by whose emirs it was ruled, subject to the suzerainty of the caliph. About the middle of the same century the Abbasids overthrew the more ancient caliphate and killed its members, but one individual, Abderrahman, escaped, and succeeded in maintain ing himself as ruler of Spain independent of the new caliph of Bagdad. Here also Christian churches were at first used as mosques, as at Cor dova, the capital of the Spanish caliphate.
Mosque at ancient cathedral was first used in common, but about 785 or 786 the Christians, after receiving a pecuniary indemni fication, were excluded, and a new building was begun. The grandiose works of the Romans in Spain had excited Abderrahman's admira tion, and he resolved to surpass them; to effect this there was no better way than to plunder them. From every part of his dominions he col lected antique columns. If old capitals could not be found, Roman capi tals of a later period were imitated, and the hastily-built structure was in twelve months carried to completion. It is a court surrounded by porticoes, the side devoted to the prayers of the faithful forming a regular forest of columns, originally more than a thousand in number. (Under Abderrahman's son Hescham, as well as under Hakem II. and Hescham II., at the close of the tenth century, it was considerably enlarged and decorated. In 1146, Cordova was taken by the Christians, and remained in their hands; the mosque became a church, and subsequently a regular church was built within it. The ground-plan (pl. 21, fig. 4) shows the various extensions, and the perspective (pi. zo, fig. r) exhibits the richly decorated later part.) Cordova soon became a brilliant capital. Art and Science made their seat here, and the Arabs, who but a few hundred years before were cul tureless nomads, had soon gathered together and put to use all that survived of the ancient Roman culture. So fine an appreciation of the wsthetic took hold of them that their works, instead of exhibiting merely fantastic splendor, became instinct with elegance and regularity of pro portion combined with extreme richness, while the fulness of the most delicate poesy shone in all their creations.