BYZANTINE AND BASILICAL STYLES. But as early as the Sixth Century the Oriental con structive spirit asserted itself once more in the Hellenic Provinces. and two sharply contrasted styles henceforth flourished side by side: the Byzantine domicil architecture in the Empire of the East, and the wooden-roofed Latin basilica] architecture in the West, especially in Italy. Rome, Ravenna, Salonica, Central Spin, North Africa, are full of early basilicas. Constanti nople with Saint Sophia (q.v. for illustration) and others, Ravenna, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria possess numerous Byzantine churches. While the Byzantine style underwent, in the course oLsue ceeding centuries, certain changes, sueh as the heightening of the drums of the domes, the deco ration of the exterior with marble or alternate courses of stone and brick, the use of accessories like porches, colonettes, etc., these differences were of minor importance.
31011AmIIEDA1. In the \\ est, on the contrary, the new civilization resulting from the awaken ing of the northern races in the Eleventh Century and their fusion with the old stock, created for itself a new architecture of which the first phase is called Romanesque, the second Gothic. But before describing its characteristics, a phase of Oriental architecture which arose in the mean time must not be omitted—that of the Mohatn medan peoples in the great empire founded by the Arabs in the Seventh Century. Syria, Pales tine, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Asia Minor, and other lands, wrested mainly from the Byzantines• were filled with monuments of a varied and rich style, based largely on Byzantine and Persian models adapted to new purposes and different ideals. The mosques and mausoleums, minarets, khans, hospitals, and bazaars, palaces, oratories, and fountains form a varied group of buildings. The :Moorish School of Spain from the time of the mosque of Cordova to the Alhambra (q.v. for illustration) of Granada; and the Egyptian School of Cairo, from the mosques of Eason and 'Falun to that of Knit Bey, are the best known ; but the Syrian and Palestinian Sohool, centred at Damascus, and the Persian School, centred at Bagdad and lspahan, were fully as important—the latter sending out off shoots as far as distant India and Asia Minor.
The development of the dome, the stilted horse shoe and pointed arches, stalactite vaulting, geo metrical decoration, particularly in brilliant faience and mosaic—these are characteristics of the Mohammedan schools. spread coin cidently with the political conquests of Islam. The Golden Age began in the Tenth Century. Up to that time there had been two types of mosque, both of them with fiat wooden ceilings: that founded on the type of the Christian Aura with a completely inclosed interior, as the mosque at Cordova (q.v.) ; and that based on the open court surrounded by colonnades like a cloister, the colonnade being deepest on the one side where the sanctuary was placed. as the mosques of Kairwan. Damascus. and Cairo. The famous Aka Mosque at Jerusalem held an intermediate position, while the Dome of the Rock, also at Jerusalem, showed how Byzantine domical buildings were at first touetintes imitated. But in the Eleventh Century the final fixed types had been reached. The court-plan and pointed arch were supreme; the geometrical style of orna ment was complete with its bewildering tracery, and the (Ionic had triumphed over the fiat ceiling. When the Mongols and Tatars overran Islam they adopted the architecture they found, espe cially the Persian forms. The latest addition to the artistic heritage was through the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in the Fifteenth Cen tury, which led to a return in even greater force of the primitive influence of Byzantium.