Other cities also stood upon the Guadalquivir, on the banks of which were scattered magnificent gardens, pleasure-palaces, and villas. Never theless, Abderrahman employed Byzantine artisans here, as in his various other structures, in order to supply what the partial fancy of the Arabs could not invent; and thus we meet with various Byzantine forms in some works of this period, as in a chapel of the cathedral at Cordova, where interlacing foliage, egg-mouldings, and Corinthian consoles are united with Arabic inscriptions. While mosaics on a golden ground recall the basilicas of Ravenna, Arabian historians expressly mention that these were executed by Greeks.
Mohammedan ,'Irt from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth to this point we can follow the development of the architecture of all Islam, despite the political ruptures which shattered the unity of Mohammed's world-wide empire, and may consider the various races which had become Arabized through the reception of Mohammedanism as one and the same, even though here and there local peculiarities come into view. From the eleventh century these peculiarities come more into the foreground, since the entire development of Mohammedan architecture as a whole did not depend upon new constructive ideas so much as upon outward conven tional forms. Since, soon after the Crusades, the vicissitudes in Asia annihilated the caliphate of Bagdad, and nothing more exists of the mon uments of this period in that region, we must consider the Egyptian edi fices as the principal stem of Islamitic art, and can afterward follow its development in other lands.
Mohammedan An in Egypt: Mosques.—In the eleventh century the Mosque el-Hakim was built at Cairo; in this the arcades stand on square piers which are joined by semicircular arches. In the twelfth century there was a decided effort toward a more formal development. The Mosque of Sultan Barkuk, erected in I r49, outside the walls of Cairo, contains a court surrounded by arcaded halls ceiled with simple small cupolas resting upon pointed arches with slender octagonal piers. These are constructed of regular courses of white and red carefully-hewn stone, forming a pleasing variety of color. It also comprises a number of pilgrims' dwellings, and on both sides of the sanctuary are stately domed structures—the tombs of the builder and his family. In them the ancient fundamental idea of the tumulus, which appeared also in the Western sepulchral chapels of the Christian-Roman period, particularly in the tomb of Theodoric, comes before us with fresh surroundings. Two minarets of slender cylindrical shape surrounded with balconies at various heights rise airily above the group of buildings.
11.fosque of Saladin.—In the citadel of Cairo stands a now-ruined mosque which the famous adversary of the Crusaders, Sultan Saladin, built in Tur. This is interesting from the fact that the influence of the Christian architecture of the West, which at that period was already developed, was evidently brought by the Crusaders into the kingdoms which they established in the East. It has an entrance-court with por ticoes on two sides only, while the principal hall has the form . of a fivc-aisled basilica. Three rows of columns, each consisting of a single block of granite, are connected by simple pointed arches. The shape of the windows and many other details bring to memory the Christian archi tecture of the twelfth century. A cupola rises from a square plan on four pendentives of specifically Arabic shapes.
The Mosque of Sultan Hassan, founded in 1356, differs considerably from the other mosques of Cairo, since the court is relatively small, nearly square, sct in the centre of the structure, and surrounded by four lofty walls instead of columns. In each of these walls opens a grand pointed arch leading to a gigantic barrel-vaulted niche, forming a regu larly cruciform plan, the angles of which are filled up with numerous small rooms, which in consequence of the arrangement of the streets around composes a ground-plan of irregular shape. Beyond the largest of the four great niches is a square hall surrounded by massive walls and roofed by a dome borne upon the peculiarly Arabian pendentives formed of repeated corbellings. This is the sepulchral chamber of the founder. Near it stand, at equal distances, two tall octangular minarets elegantly designed. The entrance is a lofty niche in a large gate-house.
ilIosques and 1415 was founded the Mosque El-Moyed, in which we meet again with.the court surrounded by arcades (Al. 19,11g. r), and here also are antique columns and capitals older than the building; so that the entire structure recalls the more ancient works. At the close of the fifteenth century (1483) the Kait-Bey Mosque at Cairo was erected, enclosing the sepulchral chamber of its founder. It is remarkable for a magnificent ornamentation of the most beautiful de sign, rendering it one of the gems of Mohammedan architecture; in the splendor of its decoration it rivals the richest Spanish structures. Nor did architectural activity cease with the close of the Middle Ages, since Cairo and other cities still contain a number of works built in later times, but into which few new elements enter, and which we cannot reckon as monuments; so here we will leave Egypt.