Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture

Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture

I have attempted in this book to bring together the materials, so far as they are known, which bear upon the earliest phases of Mohammadan architecture, to consider the circumstances under which it arose and the roots from which it sprang. No development of civilization, or of the arts which serve and adorn civilization, has burst full-fledged from the forehead of the god; and architecture, which is the first and most permanent of the arts, reflects with singular fidelity the history of its creators. Not only does their culture stand revealed in the crumbling walls which sheltered them and in the monuments raised for perpetual remembrance over their bones, but the links which bound them to that which had gone before are therein confessed, as well as their own contribution to the achievements of their predecessors, to mechanical skilfulness, to utility, and to beauty. It is the nature and the extent of this contribution which is of vital importance to the student, and it is this which lends to architecture its keenest significance. What, then, was the contribution of the first builders of Islm? It must be confessed that the question admits of no very striking rejoinder. The Mohammadan invaders were essentially nomadic; their dwelling was the black tent, their grave the desert sands. The inhabitants of the rare oases of western and central Arabia were content, as they are to-day, with a rude architecture of sun-dried brick and palm-trunks, unadorned by any intricate device of the imagination, and unsuited to any but the simplest needs. Even the great national shrine at Mekkah, the sacred house of the Kabah, was innocent of subsidiary constructions. It is true that on the northern trade-route the rock-cut tombs of Madin li and of Petra bear witness to a higher order of artistic impulse, but it was an impulse which borrowed its power from without, from Hellenized Egypt and from Hellenized Syria. If there were an indigenous Arabian architecture worthy of the name, it can only have existed in the southern limits of the peninsula, where as yet exploration has been too imperfect to afford data for argument, nor is there evidence to show that in the seventh century of our era it can have played a part in the development of the northern tribes. Upon the northern frontiers the influence of the Byzantine and of the Sasanian empires would seem to have been predominant, and when the invaders established themselves in provinces which had been ruled from Constantinople or from Ctesiphon, they employed Greek and Persian artificers to fulfil their newly developed requirements and to satisfy their newly developed taste for architectural magnificence. The palaces of the conquerors were planned, constructed, and adorned by those whom they had conquered; their learning and their civilization were borrowed from them; even the ritual of their faith was shaped{viii} by contact with older forms of worship. No more significant example of the debt which Islm owes to alien races can be cited than that which is afforded by the history of the mosque. Out of the mud-built courtyard of the Arab house, the open space for domestic and tribal assembly, Greek and Persian builders created an architectural type which governed the whole Mohammadan world. And the only contribution of the masters for whom they worked was the demand for just such large and open spaces, easily accessible, oriented in a certain manner, and partially shaded from the rays of the sun. It is therefore scarcely possible to say that a specifically Mohammadan art existed during the first century after the Flight, though its germs were latent in the welding together of Hellenized with un-Hellenized, or barely Hellenized, regions under a single hand. The architecture of the first century gives evidence of the formative character of this process of compression; before the third century had ended it may be said to have been completed. If the monuments of the first century are still a faithful reflection of earlier and foreign creations, they hold the promise of further and more definitely characterized growth. But in an age and in lands where change was slow-footed, older conceptions continued to hold the field long after the political conditions under which they had arisen had vanished or had been baptized with other names. As we now know, the Mesopotamian palace builders of the ninth century of our era were guided by schemes which their Sasanian forerunners had inherited from remoter times; while the mosque builders had advanced little beyond the plan laid down in the camp-cities of the conquest. But the interchange of workmen between East and West was continuous, the intercourse unbroken; and from that intercourse, coupled with the needs of the age and the prejudices of the Faith, the arts of Islm were born. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 51664
Author: Bell, Gertrude Lowthian
Release Date: Apr 5, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English