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to south, and 276 ft. from east to west. The materials are unburned brick, symmetrically arranged, but unequal in size. The walls are 4 ft. in thickness. The building was of three stories. The principal edifice was surrounded by a wall with towers in it at intervals. From vestiges which appear, it is supposed the town was supplied with the water of the Rio Gila, by an artificial canal. The plain in the neighbourhood is covered with broken earthen pottery painted in white, red, and blue colours.

117. The capital of Mexico, reconstructed by the Spaniards, is undoubtedly one of the finest cities ever built by Europeans in either hemisphere. Perhaps there scarcely exists a city of the same extent which, for the uniform level of the ground on which it stands, for the regularity and breadth of the streets, and the extent of its great square, can be compared to the capital of New Spain. The religious edifices are extensive and greatly decorated, but the architecture is much debased. To the dwellings ornament is sparingly applied; coloured tiles are used. The stones are a porous amygdaloid called tetzontli, and a porphyry of vitreous feld-spath, without any quartz; these give to the Mexican buildings an air of solidity, and sometimes even of magnificence. The wooden balconies and galleries which disfigure the European cities in both the Indies are discarded; the balustrades and gates are all of Biscay iron ornamented with bronze; and the houses, instead of roofs, have terraces, like those in Italy and other southern countries. It must, however, be admitted, notwithstanding the progress of the arts there since about 1820, that it is less from the grandeur and beauty of the edifices, than from the breadth and straightness of the streets, and their uniform regularity and extent, that Mexico commands the admiration of Europeans.

SECT. X.

ARABIAN, MORESQUE, OR SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE.

118. Before the appearance of Mahomet, in the seventh century, and the consequent establishment of Islamism, the Arabians were by no means celebrated for their skill in architecture. The beautiful country of Happy Yemen, wherein were seated the most ancient and populous of the forty-two cities of Arabia enumerated by Abulfeda, does not appear to have produced what might have been expected from the neighbours of the Egyptians, Syrians, Chaldeans, and Persians. The arts of the surrounding nations seem to have been lost upon them. Though a part of their time and industry was devoted to the management of their cattle, still they were collected into towns, and were employed in the labours of trade and agriculture. The towers of Saana, compared by Abulfeda to Damascus, and the marvellous reservoir of Merab, were constructed by the kings of the Homerites, who, after a sway of two thousand years, became extinguished in 502. The latter, the Meriaba, mentioned by Pliny as having been destroyed by the legions of Augustus, was six miles in circumference, and had not revived in the fourteenth century. But," says Gibbon, "the profane lustre of these was eclipsed by the prophetic glories of Medina and Mecca." Of the ancient architecture of Arabia there are so few examples remaining, that no satisfactory account can be given of it. Excavations, still seen in rocks, are said to be the houses of the people called Thamud; but the Caaba of Mecca is the only one of the seven temples in which the Arabians worshipped their idols now in existence. It is a quadrangular building, about 36 ft. long, 34 ft. broad, and about 40 ft. high. It is lighted by a door on the east side, and by a window, and the roof is supported by three octangular pillars. Since its adoption by Mahomet, it has been enclosed by the caliphs with a quadrangle, round which are porticoes and apartments for the pilgrims resorting to it. Here were the tombs of the eighty descendants of Mahomet and of his wife; but, in 1803, they were destroyed by the Wahabees, who, however, respected and spared the Caaba and its enclosures.

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119. The extraordinary conquests from the Indus to the Nile, under Omar, the second caliph, who, after a reign of ten years, died in a. n. 644, brought the victorious Moslems in contact with nations then much more civilised than themselves. As their empire extended, their love for the arts and sciences increased. The first mosque built out of the limits of Arabia is supposed to be that which was founded by Omar on the site of the ancient temple at Jerusalem. Under the dynasty of the Ommiades, of which race Omar was a member, the cultivation of architecture was carried on with success. The seat of the empire was removed to Damascus, which was considerably enlarged and improved. Among its numerous splendid buildings was the celebrated mosque founded by Alwalid II. It was he who introduced the lofty minaret, which, though an innovation at the time, seems, in later years, to have been as necessary a portion of the mosque as the main body of it. This caliph made considerable additions to the mosque at Medina, as he also did to that which had been built by Omar on the site of the Temple of Solomon, above mentioned. His generals and governors of provinces seem to have been equally zealous in the cause of art and the prophet; witness the mosque built by one of the former on taking Samarcand, and

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the universal improvement in the provinces under the sway of the latter. the works just mentioned, the removal of the seat of the empire to the western frontier of Persia, by the second caliph of the dynasty of the Abassides, gave a lustre to Arabian architecture which almost surpasses belief. Almansor, the brother and successor of Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad in the year 145 from the Héjira (a. d. 762), a city which remained the imperial seat of his posterity during a period of five hundred years. chosen spot is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above Modain; the double wall was of a circular form; "and such," says Gibbon, "was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and the adjacent villages." The magnificence displayed in the palace of the caliph could only be exceeded by that of the Persian kings; but the pious and charitable foundation of cisterns and caravanseras along a measured road of seven hundred miles, has never been equalled. 120. About A. n. 660-5, the prudence of the victorious general Akbah had led him to the purpose of founding an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; and of forming a citadel that might secure, against the accidents of war, the wealth and families of the Saracens. With this view, under the modest title of a caravan station, be planted the colony of Cairoan, in the fiftieth year of the Héjira. "When," observes Gibbon, "the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect, in cisterns and reservoirs, a precarious supply of rain water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three thousand and six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years the governor's palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble."

121. "In the West, the Ommiades of Spain," says the same author, "supported with equal pomp the title of Commander of the Faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in honour of his faithful Sultana, the third and greatest of the Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra. Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were employed by the founder: his liberal taste invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained by twelve hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls, and a great bason in the centre was sur rounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds." The streets and houses at this place are hollowed out of the rock, which stands 1200 feet above them.

122. Whether we contemplate the materials furnished by Babylon and its neighbour. hood, the dismantled towns of Syria, or the abundant ruins of Egypt, and from Tripoli to the Atlantic, it is curious, as the historian of the western Arabs has remarked, to observe that no people constructed, without recourse to the quarry, so many magnificent edifices. In Spain, this was most remarkably the case, whereof the reader will be convinced by reference to Murphy's Arabian Antiquities, and Laborde's Voyage Pittoresque de l'Espagne.

123. From the latter half of the eighth century to nearly the middle of the ninth, the progress of the Arabians in the sciences was wonderful. Their merit, however, in the art which it is our province to investigate, was of a class inferior to that of the people who invented and carried into execution, though later, the principles which regulated the stupendous monuments of Gothic architecture in Europe. They certainly understood the science of architecture; and works on it were written for the benefit of those whose occu pations led them to take an interest in the art.

124. We regret that our limits do not permit us to dwell on the progress in the sciences made by the Arabians, though some of them are intimately connected with our subject. But the information we omit will be much more satisfactorily obtained by the reader consulting the pages of the historian of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Our purpose is now to present a concise view of the architecture of the Arabians from Laborde's Voyage Pittoresque de l'Espagne (vol. ii. part 1. xliii. et seq.); observing, by the way, that, from our own study of the subject, we are inclined fully to adopt it. In Spain there is a sufficient number of monuments of architecture to class them chronologically, and to assign an epoch to the different styles they exhibit. Though the species does not resemble that which has been denominated Gothic, which is clearly not an imitation, the one and the other sprung from the same source. The point of departure was the architecture of Byzantium, in which city, after the fall of Italy, a totally new style arose, whose development in different modes was the basis of all modern architecture. As though the Coliseum had furnished the hint, the immense edifices, in the style of the period, were constructed with a multiplicity of stories, they were heavy without, though lightly and richly decorated within; the artists employed in their erection seeming to aim at a transference to the architecture and sculpture on which they were engaged of the oriental profusion of ornament visible in the stuffs of India. This Byzantine school produced the Lombard and

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Saxon styles in the North, on which we shall enlarge in the section on Gothic architecture, and, in the South, it produced the Arabian, Saracenic, or Moresque style, by whichever name the reader may choose to distinguish it. Both were strongly impregnated with the vices and defects into which the Roman architecture of the period had fallen. For the sake of illustrating what we mean, we refer, as examples, to the Baths of Dioclesian, to that emperor's palace at Salona, and to the buildings of Justinian and Theodosius, from all which may be learned the abuses and incongruities which attended the fall, not only of architecture, but of all the other arts. We find in them arches springing from capitals, columns without entablatures, and even zigzag ornaments. But, with all this perversion of taste, the general form of the plans of the edifices altered not that of the temples more particularly continued unchanged. Some great convulsion was necessary before they could undergo alteration, and such was the introduction of Christianity. Thus, says Saint Isidore, the basilica suffered transformation into the Christian church: "Basilicæ olim negotiis plenæ, nunc votis pro salute susceptis." Of this, in a succeeding page, we shall have more to say. But the change was not confined to the basilica; the palace and domestic dwelling equally partook of the alteration of wants. The Romans, whilst masters of the world, were careless in protecting their cities by walls. Defence was only necessary on their frontiers; and there, walls and towers were constructed, from which was the first hint for the castle, of which the Roman villa, fortified, is the type. When, however, Italy was invaded, the fate of war soon caused exterior decoration to be sacrificed to internal comfort and luxury; and even Rome, under Belisarius, was surrounded by walls and towers. The people, whose prowess made these precautions necessary, soon found the convenience of adopting similar habits and buildings.

125. The Arabians, whose wandering life could scarcely be imagined capable of such a change, ultimately established themselves in Roman castles, and turned the Christian churches, which, at the period, were extremely numerous, into mosques. For some time, the architecture of the Goths, of the Arabians or Moors, was, as respects plan, the same; not less so was the character of the ornaments employed by both nations; but it was not long before these diverged into styles which possessed each its peculiar beauties. The Christians soon used the pointed arch; and the style they adopted became slender and tall, whilst that of the Moslems, from the nature of the climate and their peculiar habits, was deficient in elevation, though in the end it acquired a lightness and elegance which it did not at its origin possess. But it is proper, here, to impress on the mind of the reader that Gothic and Arabian architecture have nothing in common between them, except their origin from a common source. It is an error to confound them, or to suppose that the pointed arch is found in any strictly Arabian edifices. That, as far as we can ascertain, did not exist before the eleventh century. It seems to have been a development in the parts of a style which, as it passed into more northern latitudes, became more acute in the roofs, from the necessity of discharging the rain and snow with greater facility. This pointed style spread itself over some parts of India; but, there, none of the examples are older than the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Except in ornamental detail, whereof we append two specimens (figs. 80, 81.) from the Alhambra, the Arabs were not inventive. It is not

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unlikely that their skill in geometry greatly assisted them in the extraordinary combination of lines to be found in their decorations, which nothing can surpass; nor was it till the time of the Abassides that the Arabians becam fully acquainted with what had been done by the Greeks. This knowledge was not confined to them, for there is abundant proof. 1. That all the modern arts, as well of the North, as of the West and South, had their origin from the Greek empire at Constantinople, which at that period gave the fashion in them, as did Italy five centuries afterwards. 2. That the plans of churches and mosques are traceable to that of the ancient basilica, as in the citadels of the middle ages, and the palaces of the Greek emperors, are to be found the types of the Gothic castie and of the Moresque alcazar. 3. That the Gothic and Saracenic styles attained their several perfection in very Idifferent manners as to the details of their distribution and ornament, and acquired peculiar characters, which in both may be divided into three periods, the last in each being lost in the change that took place in Italy on the revival of the arts. The periods of the Gothic will be noticed under the proper section

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Fig. S1 CAPITAL, ALHAMBRA.

126. The first period in the history of Moresque architecture is from the foundation of Islamism to the ninth century, of which the finest example was the Mosque of Cordova in Spain. This was commenced in 770 by Abderahman, and finished by his son and successor, Hisham. Its plan is a parallelogram, whose longest side is 620 ft. by 440, formed by a wall and counterforts, both of which are embattled. The height of the wall varies from 35 to 60 ft., and its thickness is 8 ft. The whole of the quadrangular space is internally divided into two parts, viz. a court of 210 ft. in depth, the mosque itself covering the remainder of the area. The mosque consists of nineteen naves (of a portion of one whereof fig. 2. is a

diagram) formed by sevente.n ranks of columns, and a wall pierced with arches, from south to north, and thirty-two narrower naves from east to west. Each of these naves is about 16 ft. wide from north to south, and about 400 ft. long, their width in the opposite direction being less. Thus the intersection of the naves with each other produces 850 columns, which, with fifty-two columns in the court, form a total of upwards of 900 columns. They are about 18 in. in diameter, the mean height of them is about 15 ft., and they are covered with a species of Corinthian and Composite capital, of which there are many varieties. The columns have neither socle nor base, and are connected by arches from one to another. The ceilings are of wood, painted, each range forming, on the outside, a small roof, separated from Fig. 82. MOSQUE AT CORDOVA. those adjoining by a gutter. The variety of the marbles of the columns produces an effect of richness which all agree is very striking. They were most probably procured from the Roman ruins of the city. It is impossible to pass over the description of this mosque without calling to mind the resemblance it bears in its arrangement to the basilicas at Rome. The reader who has seen St. Agnese and St. Paolo fuori le mura, we are sure, will think with us. After the conquest of Cordova in 1236, this mosque was converted into a cathedral. In 1528, it was inuch disfigured by modern erections, which were necessary for better adapting it to the service of the Christian religion. These, however, have not so far ruined its ancient effect as to prevent an idea being formed of it when in its splendour. The decorations throughout are in stucco, painted of various colours, decorated with legends, and occasionally gilt like the churches of the Lower Empire.

127. In the second period, the style greatly improvea in elegance. It lasted till the close of the thirteenth century, just before which time was founded the royal palace and fortress of the Alhambra, at Granada (fig. 83.), perhaps the most perfect model of pure Arabian architecture that has existed. During this period, no traces of the Byzantine style are to be found. An exuberance of well-tempered ornament is seen in their edifices, whose distribution and luxury manifest the highest degree of refinement. Speaking of the interior of the building above mentioned, M. de Laborde says, that it exhibits "tout ce que la volupté, la grace, l'industrie peuvent reunir de plus agréable et de plus parfait." After passing the principal entrance, you arrive at two oblong courts; one whereof, celebrated in Arabian history, called the Court of the Lions, is in fig. 84. represented on the following page. This court is

100 ft. long and 50 ft. broad, having 128 columns of white marble. Round these two courts, on the ground floor, are disposed the apartments of the palace. Those for state look out towards the country; the rest, cooler and more retired, have openings for light under the interior porticoes. The whole is on one plane, the walls being placed so as exactly to suit the plateau of the rock; its entire length is about 2300 ft., and breadth 600 ft. The doors are few and large, and the windows, except on the side where the landscape is most magnificent, are chiefly towards the interior. In one of the apartments, the Arabian architect nas, in an inscription, given his reason for this adoption, in the following terms: -"My windows admit the light, and exclude the view of external objects, lest the beauties of

nature should divert your attention from the beauties of my work." The walls are covered with arabesques, apparently cast in moulds, and afterwards joined together. The orna

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ments are in colours of gold, pink, light blue, and a dusky purple, the first colour being nearest the eye, and the last furthest from it; the general surface, however, is white. The walls, to the height of four feet, were lined with variously figured and coloured porcelain mosaics, as were the floors. The Arabs of the Spanish caliphate appear to have known some mode of preventing the decay of paint and timber, for the paintings, in which the medium for the colour is not oil, retain the original freshness of their colours, and the woodwork of the ceilings presents no symptoms of decomposition. It has been conjectured that the soundness of the wood throughout has arisen from the trees being lanced or drained of their sap at the time of felling; but it may be, that the coating of paint has had some effect in producing the result. Description conveys no notion of this extraordinary edifice the reader who wishes to obtain one must refer to Murphy's work, already mentioned.

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Fig. 81.

COURT OF THE LIONS, ALHAMBRA.

128. The third period of Arabian architecture is from the end of the thirteenth century to the decline of the Saracen power in Spain. During a portion of this period, it was used by the Spaniards themselves, and like the Gothic, in the northern and middle parts of Europe, was engrafted on the style which crept from Italy into all countries till the Renaissance. During this period were built the castles of Benavento, Penafiel, and Tordesillas; and the alcazars of Segovia and Seville. The plans continued much the same; but Greek ornaments began to appear, with Moresque arches on Corinthian columns. At this time, also, representations of the human figure are to be seen, which, by the laws of Mahomet, were strictly forbidden. There was a charm about this architecture which makes one almost regret that reason and advance in civilisation have extinguished it.

129. We are not to look to the works of the Arabians for the real grandeur which is exhibited in the works of Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Brick was the material most used. When stone was employed, it was covered with a coating of stucco. In their constructive combinations there is nothing to surprise. The domes which crown their apartments are neither lofty nor large in diameter, neither do they exhibit extraordinary mechanical skill. The Arabian architects seem to have been unacquainted with the science of raising vaults on lofty piers. In the specimen cited at Cordova, the span, from pier to pier is less than 20 ft., which would not have required much skill to vault, yet we find the ceilings of timber. The use of orders was unknown to them; the antique columns which they introduced were employed as they found them, or imitations of them, without an acquaintance with the types from which they were derived, with their principles or proportions. In truth,

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