CHAPTER VI

THE MOSQUE

The mosque of Ukhaiḍir has an exceptional interest. It is one of the earliest mosques known to us which retains its original form and decoration, and its plan may be regarded as one of the first examples which we possess of the systematized architectural scheme which, in slightly varying types, ruled the Mohammadan world until the fourteenth century of our era. It was a scheme which was derived from the inaugural sanctuary of the Faith, the Prophet’s house at Medînah.

Recent research has made it abundantly clear that Muḥammad, when he constructed his new dwelling after the flight to Medînah in A.D. 622, had no other object in view than the purely domestic. It was not a mosque which he set himself to build, but a living-house, and he laid it out in the fashion which was customary in his day. It may indeed be doubted whether he contemplated the need of a temple of any kind.[382] In the view of the founder of Islâm there were but two sanctuaries in the world, the mosque of the Ka’bah at Mekkah and the mosque of the Aqṣâ at Jerusalem, the former being at that period an open space, bounded only by the buildings of the city, with the house of Abraham in its midst, the latter an area on the edge (_aqṣâ_ = extremity) of the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem, an area actually occupied by the ruins of Justinian’s Church of the Virgin, which had been destroyed by the Persians in A.D. 614. For the rest God could be worshipped in every place, and the nomads of Arabia could perform their religious exercises as satisfactorily in the open wilderness as in any other spot. But, as has been well pointed out,[383] even in the Days of Ignorance, the madjlis, the place of assembly--that is to say the courtyard of the Arab house--was itself invested with a kind of sanctity; the meetings held in it were conducted with gravity and order, and it may also have been used for cult purposes. To it the terms ‘madjlis’ and ‘masdjid’ were applied impartially, and it was not until after the advent of the Prophet that the word ‘masdjid’ was narrowed down so as to signify only such places of assembly as were connected with religious observances.[384] These places were not, however, used exclusively for cult purposes. In Muḥammad’s masdjid at Medînah, the court of his house was necessarily the centre of his domestic life; in it he lived and entertained his wives and took counsel with his friends, and, since he was the head of his community, it was the meeting-place of the Faithful, whether for religious or for secular needs. The homeless among his adherents found a lodging in it, and the wounded were tended there. Nor did the masdjid al-djamâ’ah, the mosque of assembly, lose its secular character until more than a hundred years had passed after the Hidjrah. For the mosque, as Wellhausen has put it (and the phrase cannot be bettered), was the forum of primitive Islâm. When the conquerors founded their camp-cities, the misrs of Mesopotamia and of Egypt, their first step was to _mark out_ the area of the mosque, to provide, that is to say, a central place of assembly for the people. To it the khalif repaired on his accession and the governor on his appointment, and the discourses which they pronounced on these occasions were political rather than religious.[385] Thither, too, they summoned the people when questions of importance were to be discussed, or weighty tidings to be communicated.[386]

Muḥammad’s house at Medînah, which was to play so influential a part in the architectural history of Islâm, consisted of a courtyard 100 ells square (_circa_ 60 metres) enclosed by a wall, the lower part of which was stone and the upper of sun-dried brick. The qiblah, the direction in which the worshippers turned in prayer, was towards Jerusalem, i.e. it lay to the north; there was, however, no niche to mark it, and the word ‘qiblah’ did not carry with it any architectural connotation, but merely the sense of a moral order. That the congregation might be protected from the burning sun, this side of the court was covered by a roof of woven palm-leaves, supported on columns made of palm-trunks. The roof was so low that a man could touch it with his hand. On the east side, two rooms, for the two wives, Saudâ and ‘A’ishah, were placed outside the wall at its southern extremity. In the opposite corner (the south-west) a primitive lodging was provided for the poorest of those who had followed the Prophet in his flight. It was covered by a roof (ṣuffah) similar to that of the qiblah, and those who inhabited it were known as the Aṣḥâb al-Ṣuffah, the people of the portico. There were three doors into the courtyard. That which lay to the south was the principal entrance; a subsidiary door was placed on the west side, and on the east side was the door used by the Prophet. At a subsequent date, owing to quarrels with the Jews, the qiblah was turned away from Jerusalem and placed in the direction of Mekkah. This necessitated the closing of the south door and the opening of a door in the north wall. Moreover, the Aṣḥâb al-Ṣuffah were moved to the north-east angle of the court and their roof was re-erected there.[387] In addressing those who were present, the Prophet was accustomed to lean against the trunk of a palm-tree, but in the year seven or eight of the Hidjrah he caused a wooden minbar to be erected. It consisted of two steps and a seat. On or before it he conducted the prayers.[388] The khalif ‘Umar enlarged the mosque at Medînah, but the new building scarcely exceeded the old in architectural pretension. The wall was of sun-dried brick, the columns of palm-trunks (or according to one account of sun-dried brick also) supporting a palm-leaf roof. It is not clear whether this roof was carried all round the court or was confined to the south side. The court, which in Muḥammad’s day was without any kind of pavement, was given by ‘Umar a floor of pebbles beaten into the ground.[389] Further improvements were carried out by ‘Uthmân, but it was not until the time of the Umayyad khalif Walîd ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (A.D. 705-715) that the old simplicity of construction was abandoned. In the year A.H. 87 or 88 he pulled down the mosque and rebuilt it. The workmen whom he employed were Greeks and Copts from Damascus and Egypt.[390] The walls and columns of the new edifice were of cut stone; gold, silver, and mosaic were used to adorn it; the miḥrâb and the maqṣûrah were of teak.[391] The maqṣûrah, the enclosure reserved for the khalif, had already, according to Balâdhuri, been introduced into the mosque by Marwân (A.D. 683-685), but his maqṣûrah was of stone. The miḥrâb was a new feature: ‘the first who introduced the novelty of a concave miḥrâb was ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Azîz when he restored the mosque of the Prophet’ (by order of the khalif Walîd).[392] Both maqṣûrah and miḥrâb were borrowed from Christian usage; the maqṣûrah was copied from the Imperial enclosed dais of Byzantine churches, the miḥrâb from the Christian apse--it was ‘min shân al-kanâ’is’, an attribute of churches, and was adopted with some reluctance by Islâm.[393] Concerning the Medînah mosque Professor Becker quotes an exceedingly suggestive anecdote. Walîd, boasting of his construction to a son of the khalif ‘Uthmân, who had been the last before him to restore the mosque, said: ‘How far our building excels yours.’ ‘True,’ replied his interlocutor, ‘we built after the manner of mosques, but you after the manner of Christian churches.’

Elsewhere the development followed similar lines. The Ḥaram of Mekkah stands apart; its arrangement could never be the same as that of ordinary mosques. Yet it is interesting to observe that it was at first innocent of any building except the Ka’bah. The khalif ‘Umar enlarged the area by pulling down adjacent houses, and enclosed it with a wall lower than a man’s stature; ‘Uthmân is said to have been the first to furnish it with riwâqs. Again here, as at Medînah, it was Walîd who first beautified the mosque with marble columns and with mosaic.[394]

The accounts of the foundation of the misrs of Baṣrah, Kûfah, and Fusṭâṭ throw a vivid light upon the requirements, spiritual and architectural, of primitive Islâm. It is recorded that the khalif ‘Umar gave orders to the respective governors of the three places, Abû Mûsâ, Sa’d ibn abi Waqqâs, and ‘Amr ibn al-’Âṣ, that a masdjid al-djamâ’ah should be provided, while each tribe was to have a small mosque for its particular use. At Baṣrah the mosque was marked out (_ikhtaṭṭa_) but not built, and Balâdhuri is careful to add that the people prayed in it without buildings.[395] It was subsequently enclosed with a fence made of reeds, and this fence Abû Mûsâ replaced by a wall of sun-dried brick and roofed it (presumably the qiblah side) with reeds. Ziyâd ibn Abîhi, Mu’âwiyah’s powerful viceroy, enlarged it considerably. His building was of burnt brick and gypsum mortar, and he roofed it with teak.[396] Five columns (the word used is _sawâri_ = masts, the columns were therefore presumably of wood) supported the roof of the qiblah wall; the side walls were of stone, and columns are not mentioned there. The columns were probably of teak like the roof; some of them had four _’uqûd_ = ties, which I take to mean the metal collars which were used to fasten together the different sections of wooden or marble columns. Ziyâd was the first to introduce a maqṣûrah, and he is said to have built a minaret of stone. Al-Hadjdjâdj or his son put in columns made of stone from the mountains of Ahwâz.[397] At Kûfah the mosque was marked out on a high spot before any part of the city had been built. On three sides the ṣaḥn was bounded by a ditch; on the fourth, that which faced towards Mekkah (the front side as it is called by the Arab writers), there was a covering roof (_ẓullah_) which had neither side nor end walls; it was 200 ells long, and was supported by columns of marble which were taken from churches built by Chosroës. The ceiling was like the ceiling of Greek churches.[398] ‘And such’, says Ṭabari, ‘was the mosque (at that time), with the exception of the mosque at Mekkah which they would not imitate.’

The first mosque at Kûfah therefore consisted of a great ṣaḥn surrounded on three sides by a ditch and on the fourth, the qiblah side, by an open colonnade carrying a roof, and the arrangement was exactly the same as that of Muḥammad’s house, except that the qiblah wall and the palm-trunk columns were replaced by marble columns. Balâdhuri gives a tradition that the mosque at Kûfah was built out of part of the materials taken from the palaces of al-Mundhir at Ḥîrah,[399] and Ṭabari says that the castle at Kûfah was of burnt brick taken from Persian buildings at Ḥîrah. Ziyâd rebuilt the mosque. He summoned, according to Ṭabari,[400] Persian builders, and expounded to them the plan of the mosque and its extent, and that which he desired regarding the length of its roof, saying that he wished to erect an edifice which should not have its parallel. To which a man, who had been one of the builders of Chosroës, replied that could only be accomplished by using columns from the Jebel Ahwâz which should be carved and polished and filled with lead and iron clamps (_safâfîd_ = skewers). The ceiling should be 30 ells high (_circa_ 17 metres!), and it should be roofed. The mosque should also have side and end walls. This scheme was adopted by Ziyâd. Balâdhuri mentions that he placed a maqṣûrah in this mosque also, and that both at Baṣrah and at Kûfah he strewed pebbles on the ṣaḥn to prevent the people from getting dusty.[401]

At Baṣrah and at Kûfah the ṣaḥn was the principal feature of the mosque, as indeed it had been at Medînah; this was not the case at Fusṭâṭ. The first Egyptian mosque was built by ‘Amr ibn al-’Âṣ in the year A.D. 642. It stood in the midst of vineyards and consisted merely of a covered place, 50 x 30 cubits in extent (28·92 x 17·34 metres), enclosed in a brick wall.[402] The people assembled in the open space which surrounded it. The roof, which was very low, must have been supported on columns, though these are not mentioned. The brick walls were unplastered, and the floor was strewn with pebbles. ‘Amr set up within it a wooden minbar, but this was resented by ‘Umar, and it was removed. ‘Is it not enough’, wrote the khalif, ‘that thou shouldst stand while the people sit at thy feet?’ This episode is of the highest significance in the history of the minbar. It is clear that it was regarded at that time as a throne rather than as a pulpit, and as such unsuited to any but the khalif. It was not until the close of the Umayyad period that the minbar lost its secular significance and became a part of the ritual furnishing of the mosque. With this change it is probable that its form changed also, and instead of the two steps and a seat of the Prophet’s minbar, the high pulpit of the modern mosque came into use. That this pulpit was copied from the pulpits of Christian churches is not improbable. The minbar which was set up in the time of ‘Abd al-Azîz ibn Marwân (A.D. 685-705) in the mosque of ‘Amr is said to have been taken from a Christian church.[403] Neither was there in ‘Amr’s mosque any miḥrâb to mark the qiblah; it was not until the third enlargement of the mosque in A.D. 710 that the qiblah wall was given a miḥrâb. It is further recorded that the orientation adopted by ‘Amr was imperfect, so that the worshippers were obliged to stand askew that they might face truly towards Mekkah while they prayed. The mosque was provided with six doors, two in each wall, with the exception of the qiblah wall, which was left unbroken. The first enlargement of the building took place in A.D. 673, on which occasion an open space, or court, was added to the north. In the second enlargement (A.D. 698-699) the mosque was entirely rebuilt and the ṣaḥn was included within its walls.

It appears from these accounts that by the middle of the Umayyad period the development from courtyard-house to sanctuary was complete. Its course had been simple and obvious. All the essentials of the stereotyped form were present at Medînah; the differences were differences in size and splendour, not in kind. The domestic court had become the ṣaḥn; the palm-leaf sheltering roofs against the qiblah wall and in one angle of the court had solidified into the riwâqs; the palm-trunk columns had been replaced by columns or piers of brick (possibly by brick columns at Medînah itself as early as the time of ‘Umar), or, where the spoils of Sasanian and Byzantine lay ready to hand, as at Kûfah or Fusṭâṭ, by columns of marble. The qiblah had been given a visible shape in the miḥrâb niche, and by the close of the Umayyad period the minbar had wholly lost its temporal attributes and had taken its place as part of the necessary furniture of the mosque, though it probably still continued to be a movable wooden structure. Such a sanctuary, but reduced to the modest dimensions of a private chapel (if I may be permitted the phrase), is the mosque of Ukhaiḍir. The fact that its orientation is inexact--Mekkah lies to the south-east of Ukhaiḍir, whereas the direction indicated by the miḥrâb is almost due south--would not have been regarded as of much importance. As has been mentioned, ‘Amr’s mosque had the same defect, and in this respect Manṣûr’s mosque at Baghdâd offers a yet more significant parallel. Ṭabari observes that the mosque in the round city was not properly oriented because it was built to fit the qaṣr, whereas at Ruṣâfah the orientation was right, because the mosque was built before the qaṣr.[404] Precisely the same explanation applies to the Ukhaiḍir mosque. The palace builders were accustomed to square their plans to the points of the compass, and a miḥrâb in the south wall was the closest approximation which could be obtained in an edifice which lay north and south. The mosque was so small that there was no difficulty in applying to it the system of vaulting which reigns over the whole palace, but the massive Mesopotamian vault was unsuited to free-standing columns and the roof of the riwâqs has fallen. Outside Ukhaiḍir we have no extant example of a vaulted mosque on this plan. We are specifically told that the roof of the mosque at Baṣrah was first of reeds and then of teak; the nature of the roof of the ẓullah at Kûfah is open to doubt. Its ceiling was like the ceiling of Greek churches, a description which does not exclude the possibility of a vault. That the miḥrâb at Ukhaiḍir received no decoration need cause no surprise. Far from being regarded as having any special sanctity, the miḥrâb is defined as the least holy part of the mosque and the Imâm is earnestly warned not to take up his station within it--doubtless, as Professor Becker observes, in order to emphasize the fact that though the miḥrâb was copied from the Christian apse, it shared none of its attributes.[405] Of the minbar it is improbable that any vestige would be found under the ruin heaps at Ukhaiḍir. It was most likely of wood, and has long been destroyed. Nor is it necessary to suppose that the ṣaḥn contained a water-basin for ablutions. No such feature is mentioned in the account of the early mosques, save that at a later date Maqrîzi records the presence in the mosque of ‘Amr of an ancient well appertaining to the gardens in which the mosque was built.[406]

It will be convenient to carry this survey a little further in order to include the mosques of Sâmarrâ, which are not far removed, either chronologically or geographically, from the mosque of Ukhaiḍir, but in so doing the early Syrian and North African mosques must be taken into account. The plan of the first mosques in Syria was partly determined by the fact that they were erected on the site of Christian churches. They differ, therefore, from the normal construction of the Medînah type. To the khalif ‘Umar is ascribed the first Mohammadan building upon the site which is now occupied by the Aqṣâ, but it seems probable that his edifice was nothing but a makeshift reparation of the ruined church of the Virgin.[407] Probably the Umayyad khalif ‘Abd al-Malik rebuilt the mosque in the year A.D. 691, but in A.D. 746 it was destroyed by an earthquake. Manṣûr rebuilt it, and it was again destroyed by earthquake. It was restored by al-Mahdi about A.D. 780, but the plan was considerably altered. Even the mosque described by Muqaddasi in A.D. 985 is materially different from the building which exists to-day. I think it exceedingly doubtful whether the mosque retained at any time after the temporary construction of ‘Umar the plan of Justinian’s church, since the necessary alteration in the orientation must have introduced a wide diversity; but the design of the many-aisled church and the presence of a large quantity of columns and capitals may well have influenced the mosque builders. In any case the position of the Aqṣâ would have led to an abnormal plan, inasmuch as the great court of the ḥaram enclosure, in which it stood, rendered it unnecessary to give a separate court, or ṣaḥn, to the mosque.

The Umayyad mosque at Damascus is also abnormal, but its plan seems to have been far more directly determined than in the Aqṣâ by the building which preceded it on the same site. The nave and aisles of the church of St. John must have dictated the scheme of its arcades, and its distinguishing feature, the wide central aisle running north and south, can only be explained by a similar disposition, either transept or narthex, in the church.[408] It is conceivable that the temple porticoes may have given the impulse to the full development of the riwâqs about the ṣaḥn, just as the porticoes of such buildings as the Serapeion, the agora, and the gymnasium at Alexandria, or of the stoas and agoras which adorned the Hellenistic cities of the Roman empire, may have had their share in suggesting an extension of the colonnades of the mosque, and indeed in Mesopotamia, where these models were absent, there is no reason for supposing that the riwâqs were carried in the first constructions all round the ṣaḥn. But this extension was in itself a not unnatural growth out of the Medînah plan, and in its further history, the courtyard-mosque with its deep ḥaram and its narrow flanking riwâqs pursued its own line of development, based upon its own needs. In this development no doubt the renowned Umayyad mosque at Damascus played a part. In Syria both the Aqṣâ and the mosque at Ba’albek show the wide central aisle running north and south.[409] It is typical of the Tunisian mosques, but here it is almost always found in conjunction with a wide transept running parallel with the qiblah wall; a dome covers the miḥrâb where the wide aisle and the transept meet, and a second dome stands at the opposite end of the central aisle. This =⏊=-shaped scheme can be seen at Qairawân, in the Zaitûnah at Tunis, at Tilimsân, and elsewhere. The mosque of Qairawân was founded in A.D. 671, but entirely rebuilt, first in 703 and again in 837.[410] The Zaitûnah was founded in A.D. 732. The great mosque at Cordova, founded at the end of the eighth century, had the same disposition.[411] The Tilimsân mosques are considerably later in date and are built with piers, with the exception of Sidi al-Ḥalwi, where both piers and columns are used.[412]

With the exception of the late Tilimsân group, the wooden roof of all the above-mentioned mosques, both in Syria and in North Africa, was supported by columns and arches, the columns having invariably been taken from pre-Mohammadan buildings. Probably the earliest extant example of a mosque in which the arches rested on piers is at Ḥarrân, but the building is unfortunately so much ruined that its exact disposition cannot be determined without excavation. The plan, so far as it is apparent, has been given by Dr. Preusser.[413] The central arch in the north façade of the ḥaram alone remains standing. Its width would seem to indicate that here, as at Damascus, the central aisle was broader than the rest. On either side of it there was an arch of much narrower span.[414] None of the other piers can be placed with certainty. There are some fragments of columns both in the ḥaram and in the east riwâq. An inscription on the east gate gives the name of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn,[415] but I think it certain that it alludes not to the foundation, but to the restoration of the mosque. The cusped ornament round the relieving arch over the door corresponds with the cusped motive on the façade of the Mayâfârqîn mosque, and the gateway at Ḥarrân has every appearance of being the work of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn. But the engaged capitals of the interior responds in the east wall, and the wreathed acanthus capital under the central arch of the ḥaram (one capital only is preserved) must be dated several centuries earlier. I do not doubt that they were executed for the places which they occupy, and I agree with Dr. Herzfeld in assigning them to the Umayyad period.[416] I observed, however, among the ruins in the interior of the mosque many fragments of carved ornament which cannot be earlier than the time of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn, and I came to the conclusion that until the building has received further study it is impossible to make a more precise statement concerning it than that it seems to be a structure of which parts at least belong to the early eighth century, that it had a wide central aisle and four gable roofs supported on masonry piers, or possibly upon piers and columns.

At Raqqah, according to Balâdhuri,[417] a mosque was built by Sa’îd ibn ‘Âmir ibn Ḥudhaim not long after the conquest of the country by the Mohammadans; and Muqaddasi, as I have already had occasion to mention,[418] speaks of one of the Raqqah mosques as built upon columns. My impression upon visiting the site in 1909 was that the earliest Mohammadan city must have occupied the ground where, among ruin heaps, rises a rectangular minaret. In connexion with this minaret I conjectured that the first mosque had stood (though possibly the minaret was not contemporary with the earliest building), and since the town to which it belonged was the successor of Nicephoricum-Callinicum, and there were no doubt plenty of columns at hand for the mosque, I conclude that it was Sa’îd ibn ‘Âmir’s edifice which was described by Muqaddasi, and that it is to be classed with the normal type of courtyard-mosque built on classical sites, i.e. it had a riwâq or riwâqs composed of columns. The khalif Manṣûr founded in the year A.H. 155 a second town, the ruins of which are still to be seen to the west of the earlier settlement. Upon this site there were no ancient remains,[419] that is to say that Manṣûr had not Roman or Byzantine materials at his disposal. Now within the walls of Manṣûr’s city stand the ruins of a mosque built upon piers (Fig. 32). According to an inscription over the central arch of the ḥaram arcade it was repaired in A.D. 1166 by the Atâbek Nûr al-Dîn.[420] It was surrounded by a wall built of sun-dried brick, which was strengthened by rounded towers. The ḥaram was composed of three rows of oblong brick piers, of which the northernmost alone is standing; the riwâqs on the remaining three sides were of two rows of columns which can be traced only by the holes in the ground whence the burnt bricks whereof they were built have been extracted. The central arch of the ḥaram is no wider than the arches on either side, but the niche in which it is set is carried up higher than the other niches, and M. van Berchem has suggested that it may have been surmounted by a gable, like the mosques at Damascus and Diyârbekr. It is possible that this was so, but both at Damascus and at Diyârbekr the central aisle is distinguished from the side aisles by its greater width. The round minaret in the ṣaḥn at Raqqah I believe to have been the work of Nûr al-Dîn. At Baghdâd, Manṣûr built a mosque of which we have nothing but the description. Its walls were of sun-dried brick and its columns of wood, each column being composed of two pieces, the ends bound together with sinews and glue and rings of iron, with the exception of five or six columns near the minaret, which were constructed of rounded pieces of wood.[421]

Less than a hundred years later Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861) built the mosque of Abû Dulaf, which is closely related in plan to Manṣûr’s mosque at Raqqah (Fig. 33).[422] There is the same enclosing wall of sun-dried brick garnished with

rounded towers. The arcades are of burnt brick, but the central aisle of the ḥaram and the corresponding aisle of the north riwâq are more than a metre wider than the others (7·33 metres as against an average of 6·20 metres), and a transept 10·40 metres wide runs along the qiblah wall. Dr. Herzfeld informs me that he has by excavation ascertained the existence of a miḥrâb in the centre of the qiblah wall where I had placed a door. In one respect Abû Dulaf differs from all other mosques built with piers; the arcades of the south riwâq, instead of lying parallel to the qiblah wall, are placed at right angles to it. I do not think that this variation is of great importance, for the outer and inner arcades (that is to say, the arcade on the ṣaḥn and the arcade next to the qiblah wall) are placed parallel to the qiblah wall, and it is only between these two that the ḥaram arcades run at right angles. The divergence from the normal scheme is not therefore so great as would at first appear. The mosque is surrounded by an outer enclosure, or ziyâdah[423], within which stands the spiral minaret, to the north of the centre of the north wall. The piers and arches of the riwâqs must undoubtedly have carried a flat wooden roof; nevertheless in the façades of the ṣaḥn each pier is adorned with the blind niche which I believe to be derived from the tubular system of Mesopotamian vaulting (Plate 89, Fig. 2). This decoration is a direct link between the unvaulted mosque of Abû Dulaf and the vaulted palace of Ukhaiḍir, and the fact that it appears again in the mosque of Ibn Ṭulûn is to my mind an indubitable proof of the essential exactitude of the tradition which connects Ibn Ṭulûn’s building with Mesopotamian architecture (Plate 89, Fig. 1). Other structural evidence is not wanting. The position of the minaret in the northern ziyâdah (to say nothing of its spiral form) corresponds with the position of the minarets both at Abû Dulaf and at Sâmarrâ, and even if we leave on one side the much-disputed question of the origin of the stucco ornament in the Cairo mosque, there is another feature of its decoration which points directly to Mesopotamia. The walls are crowned with a fantastic parapet, which probably goes back, in design at least, to the ninth century, and below the parapet, just above the level of the roof, runs a decorative band consisting of a recessed square pierced by a circular hole (Plate 91, Fig. 1). The same motive appears upon the walls of the Sâmarrâ mosque, with this difference, that it is placed below the level of the roof and not above it (Plate 91, Fig. 2). Instead of forming part of a light parapet, it forms part of the solid wall; with the result that the circle is not pierced through to the interior, but remains a saucer-shaped motive sunk within the square. I hazard the conjecture that the origin of this ornament is to be sought upon the walls of Assyrian fortifications, and that it represents the row of shields set within rectangular frames which are to be seen on innumerable Assyrian reliefs (Fig. 34).

In the great mosque at Sâmarrâ the wooden roof was borne directly (without the interposition of arches) by composite piers having bases 2·07 metres square.[424] These piers were composed of an octagonal core of brick with four slender marble columns placed one at each corner. The columns were sometimes round, sometimes octagonal, and averaged ·30 metre in diameter. Dr. Herzfeld calculates that each column consisted of three sections, placed one on top of the other and bound together with lead and with metal rings. They rested upon bell-shaped bases and carried bell-shaped capitals. Dr. Herzfeld points out that the teak columns of Manṣûr’s mosque at Baghdad were similarly composed of sections joined together in the same manner. The ḥaram and the north riwâq at Sâmarrâ were given a wide central aisle.

The two small mosques of which Dr. Herzfeld has uncovered the foundations in the palace of Balkuwârâ present further variations. The larger was an oblong chamber of brick, 35 × 15 metres, the roof supported by two rows of eight columns which were probably either of wood or of marble. In the wall opposite the qiblah there were three doors. The smaller mosque was a chamber 10·35 × 7·76 metres, built of sun-dried brick, without columns. The miḥrâb was a deep rounded niche surmounted by a cyma moulding and flanked by engaged columns, and in the opposite wall were three doors. The miḥrâb of the larger mosque, which is totally destroyed, is probably to be reconstructed in the same style. Neither of these mosques has a ṣaḥn, the great palace enclosure in which they stand serving them as court.[425]

With the exception of the small palace chapels at Balkuwârâ, all the Mesopotamian mosques were laid out on the same plan, but they differed in details of construction. When columns were available they were used in the riwâqs, as at Kûfah and in the first mosque at Raqqah. Elsewhere there were either wooden columns (Baṣrah, Baghdâd), or columns of masonry (Ukhaiḍir); or the riwâqs might be built with brick piers (Manṣûr’s mosque at Raqqah, Abû Dulaf) or, where stone was easy to obtain, with stone piers (Ḥarrân). At Sâmarrâ there is an isolated example of a composite pier. The roofs also differ from one another. At Ḥarrân there must have been wooden gable roofs over the riwâqs; at Ukhaiḍir they were vaulted; at Abû Dulaf the flat wooden roof rested on arches; at Sâmarrâ, and probably at Baghdâd, it was carried directly by the piers or columns. The wide central aisle was present at Ḥarrân, at Sâmarrâ, and at Abû Dulaf; at the latter there is also a side transept, producing the same =⏊=-shaped plan that has been noticed in the Tunisian mosques. The data are too scanty to admit of any but the most general conclusion. We find divergent detail but no divergence in type, and the type in Mesopotamia, as in other parts of the Mohammadan world, was derived ultimately from the Prophet’s house at Medînah. It is in Mesopotamia that we have the earliest examples of the brick pier. We do not know how far Nûr al-Dîn’s reparations at Raqqah extended, nor what was the aspect of the façades of the ṣaḥn before his time, but at Abû Dulaf the original construction is preserved and the brick piers and arches of the façades bear in their spandrel niches a characteristic Mesopotamian trait. I do not doubt that the first Egyptian mosque built with brick piers, that of Ibn Ṭulûn, was inspired by the Mesopotamian scheme; the marks of relationship are too numerous not to be convincing. The engaged quarter-columns with which his piers are provided were no new thing. Engaged half-columns are universal at Ukhaiḍir, and the oblong piers with quarter-columns in Ibn Ṭulûn’s mosque are nothing but a translation into solid masonry, along the lines indicated at Ukhaiḍir, of the octagonal piers with angle colonnettes of Sâmarrâ. More than a hundred years later this building served as a model to al-Ḥâkim, and it is interesting to note that the Mesopotamian pier was applied at a still later date to a building which seems in other respects to have been a direct imitation of the Umayyad mosque at Damascus. The great mosque at Diyârbekr (I give here a plan which I made in 1911, Plate 90) is a patchwork of older materials re-used at different times. The oldest part of the existing structure is the west wing of the ḥaram, which is dated by an inscription in the year A.D. 1091,[426] but the west arcade of the ṣaḥn, though it is dated A.D. 1124, must preserve the memory of a plan which is older than that of the present mosque. It strikes the north wall of the ḥaram at an angle of 78°, and by reason of its oblique disposition it cuts off the north-west corner of the ṣaḥn, which is 6·24 metres shorter on the north side than it is on the south side. The east arcade of the ṣaḥn (dated A.D. 1163-1179) lies almost at right angles to the north wall of the ḥaram. Whether the orientation of the west arcade was dictated by a pre-Mohammadan building or, as Dr. Herzfeld has acutely suggested, by the plan of a mosque which stood upon this site before the year A.D. 1091,[427] cannot be determined with certainty. In its present form it is the work of Mohammadan builders of the twelfth century, though it is partly composed of pre-Mohammadan materials. Whence these materials were derived has not been ascertained. There is, however, a further proof that a building older than the existing mosque, oriented in the manner corresponding with that of the west arcade, existed on this site. On the north side of the ṣaḥn, between the two northern madrasahs, there is a lane or passage which communicates with the street beyond the precincts of the mosque. On the east side of the passage there is a fragment of wall, built of large dressed stones, entirely dissimilar from the masonry in any part of the existing mosque, and this fragment lies at the same angle as the west arcade of the ṣaḥn (Plate 93, Fig. 1).

Not far from Diyârbekr there is another building which shows in its plan and decorations the influence of the Ulu Djâmi’ in that city. The so-called mosque of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn at Mayâfârqîn ranks, even in ruin, among the finest of Mohammadan monuments (Plate 92). The wide central aisle has been converted into a chamber almost square (it is not quite rectangular and averages 13·60 x 13·32 metres), which was covered by a dome set on elaborately decorated squinch arches (Plate 93, Fig. 2). Under the dome runs an inscription assigning the building of the mosque to the Ortokid Alpi (A.D. 1152-1176). The square chamber is surrounded on three sides by a corridor consisting of eleven bays, some of which were probably domed, while the others were vaulted. The columns placed against the piers of the dome were taken from a neighbouring early Christian basilica. The wings to east and west are divided by three arcades into four transepts averaging alternately 5 metres and 2·60 metres in width, a narrow transept lying next to the qiblah wall. The eastern miḥrâb in the south wall of the east wing is dated by an inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi in the year A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. The west wing contains no date, but the very shallow miḥrâb in the south wall is proved by its decoration to belong to a period not earlier than the sixteenth century, and as the whole wing as it stands at present seems to have been rebuilt, it may well be that it all belongs to a late reconstruction or reparation. Still further west are some ruined edifices which formed part of the precincts of the mosque, and here a lintel, re-used in a doorway of a later period, bears a second inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi and the date A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. There are no remains of a minaret, and the ṣaḥn is completely ruined and filled with débris, but the north façade, which is almost entirely preserved, is of remarkable interest in the history of Mohammadan decoration. (The photograph of a section of this façade has been given on Plate 84, Fig. 3.) The wings and the north façade show many signs of reparation, and no doubt the mosque shared the fate of all great buildings in these stormy regions, and suffered frequent ruin and subsequent restoration; but it seems probable that the two wings were originally built between A.D. 1226 and 1228, and that they were added to the domed chamber with its corridor which had been erected some fifty years earlier.

In the Ayyûbid mosques at Ḥasan Kaif, all of which are dated in the first half of the fifteenth century, no suggestion of an early plan can be traced. At Môṣul, the great mosque as it exists at present dates from the time of Nûr al-Dîn Maḥmûd (A.D. 1146-1173), but the plan shows traces of an earlier riwâq constructed with piers, and lying immediately to the north of the present ḥaram; while fragmentary inscriptions in decorated Kufic must belong, according to M. van Berchem, to the eleventh century A.D.[428]

That we have no further information concerning the Mesopotamian mosque shows how insufficient are the data which bear upon its architectural history. From the facts which I have briefly summarized one conclusion may, however, be drawn. The mosque builders were guided by a scheme of extreme simplicity, the details of which were executed according to the nature of the building material which was available. When that material could be taken from older buildings the Mesopotamian artificers were not slow to profit by so fortunate a circumstance; elsewhere they reverted to the system of construction which from time immemorial had prevailed in those regions. They built with sun-dried or with burnt bricks, or where stone could be obtained they built with stone. Sometimes they imported stone from Ahwâz for the columns of their riwâqs, and sometimes wood; sometimes they raised columns of stone masonry, or again they combined brick piers with colonnettes of marble. But since imported wood and stone were expensive, and the Sasanian monuments, which had served as quarries, were speedily exhausted, there was a natural tendency to return to the old local forms, and piers of brick or stone masonry were the obvious solution for the supports of the riwâqs. Ukhaiḍir is the only example which remains to us of a mosque in which the riwâqs were covered with a vault; probably the vault was seldom employed. It is certain that all the mosques of the early Abbâsid period, of which the ruins are preserved, must have been roofed with wood.