Saracenic architecture

“ The Turkish quarter of Cairo still retains the picturesque Saracenic architecture of the times of the Caliphs. The houses are mostly three stories in height, each story projecting over the other, and the plain stone walls are either whitewashed or striped with horizontal red bars, in a manner which would be absurd under a northern sky, but which is here singularly harmonious and agreeable. The only signs of sculpture are occasional doorways with richly carved arches, or the light marble gallery surrounding a fountained court. ”

“ Arrived on the summit of the old lofty yellow belfry, from which a beautiful young woman had thrown herself for love a week before, a view of fairy beauty was spread out before us. Beneath lay the city with all its domes, towers, and pinnacles, its fantastic architecture, its gloomy Moorish gateways, and its piles of Saracenic ruin towering in [Pg 279] melancholy grandeur, like ghosts of departed power, amidst the downfall of all their pride.
There lay the green gardens, gleaming with marble fountains and statues. ”

“ This building is composed of vaulted chambers, and was the first specimen of Saracenic architecture I had met with, but it is entirely destitute of other decoration than the beautiful light arch of the gateway. Here, as in every spot where ancient buildings are found, are large reservoirs. Only three-quarters of an hour further on are the more [106] extensive ruins called by the Arabs Tirt (like dirt) , in the maps Tereth, containing four castle-like buildings and many tombs. ”

“ The astonishment ceases, however, when it is discovered that this is all stucco-work; plates of plaster of Paris, cast in moulds and skilfully joined so as to form patterns of every size and form. This mode of diapering walls with arabesques, and stuccoing the vaults with grotto-work, was invented in Damascus, but highly improved by the Moors in Morocco, to whom Saracenic architecture owes its most graceful and fanciful details. The process by which all this fairy tracery was produced was ingeniously simple. ”

“ The Gothic architects tried, by splaying their deeply-embowed doorways, and by ornamenting them richly with carving and sculpture, to give them the dignity that was indispensable for their situation without unnecessarily increasing the size of the openings. It was left, however, for the Saracenic architects completely to get over the difficulty. They placed their portals—one, or three, or five, of very moderate dimensions—at the back of a semi-dome. This last feature thus became the porch or portico, and its dimensions became those of the portal, wholly irrespective of the size of the opening. ”

“ A minor but most significant characteristic of Saracenic architecture is the elaborate surface decoration in which geometrical designs, letters, &c., are interwoven with consummate skill, but in which no figures of animals are ever introduced, the representation of life being strictly forbidden by the Koran. ”

“ At every turn the eye may fall upon beautiful old gems of Gothic architecture, quaint and solemn old houses, carved with heraldic blazonry, or with statues of illustrious warriors dead ages ago set [Pg 68] in their walls. Column, pillar, and arch are so intertwined and twisted in all directions, that the buildings look as if they had been suddenly paralysed whilst writhing all over in a fit of agony. One may pass under some beautifully fretted arch, and find oneself within a ruined court of the most graceful Saracenic device. No step breaks the sleepy silence of its light arcades ”

“ There are several buildings of the middle ages in Palermo, which enable one to trace the progress of the art. The most interesting is perhaps the Church of San Niccolò della Kalsa, the tower of which abounds in inlaid work, and we may trace in it imitations, both of the Norman ornaments, and of those of Roman architecture; but the combinations of the former are more complicated than those of the cathedral. This was probably erected in the twelfth century. In the Saracenic architecture we find no carved mouldings, the artist depending entirely for their enrichments on inlaid work and mosaics. ”

“ At the later period when Saracenic architecture began to develop as a new order astounding the world with its delicate beauty, the actual work was primarily dependent on Greek and Coptic designing and handicraft. Mosques were planned by Greek architects, and their fine decorative work executed by Coptic craftsmen. The Arabs were warriors and rulers; they were not builders and artists. Their natural home was the desert tent, and when they indulged in the luxury of cities they were dependent on the skill of the conquered peoples whom they forced into their service. ”

“ The Moorish inhabitants of Spain have left in that country numerous monuments of their graceful architecture, notably the Alhambra of Granada and the Mosque of Cordova. The latter, to the description of which this selection is mainly devoted, is one of the most magnificent examples of Saracenic architecture extant, and despite the efforts of ecclesiastics to ruin it, still remains a worthy object of pilgrimage for the lovers of art. ”

“ Of all the Damascenes I have yet seen, there is not one but declares his city to be the Garden of the World, the Pearl of the Orient, and thanks God and the Prophet for having permitted him to be born and to live in it.
But, except the bazaars, the khans and the baths, of which there are several most luxurious establishments, the city itself is neither so rich nor so purely Saracenic in its architecture as Cairo. ”

“ Returning to the Temple Street and going westward along the dyke, which, with the Rev. G. Williams [322] , I consider to be the ancient bridge between Sion and Moriah, we see, after a few yards, on the right hand a small façade of Saracenic architecture, adorned with arabesques of excellent design; whose accurate execution deserves notice. It is a fragment of an ancient school, established by Saladin, the revenues of which are now exhausted, so that nothing else remains besides this building. ”

“ Never, from Adam's day to this, did anybody ever invent a new architecture. It is purely a matter of genealogy. For just as we trace back a family line, can we trace the generations of art. Spite of its complications, many an offshoot can be followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediæval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. ”

“ These old Saracenic ruins are four hours and a half from El Farsy; they present groups of buildings situated on two low hills, about a quarter of a mile apart. The centre of the intervening space is a flat bare rock, in which several wells are pierced. The first group which the traveller, coming from Benghazi, meets, contains the remains of a castle of excellent architecture, which cannot be later than the third century of the Hejirah. ”

“ The most important feature found in all these churches is the pointed arch, of Saracenic origin imported from the East, which was employed for the nave, arcades, the crossing, and in the squinches carrying the domes. The blind arcades which decorate the walls of San Cataldo and of the Norman palaces—La Favara, the Torre della Ninfa, La Ziza and La Cuba (all in or near Palermo) ,—in two or three orders, and sometimes (as in the Favara palace) of great height, have all pointed arches and no impost mouldings or capitals. ”

“ The interiors when not domed are often covered by wooden or plaster ceilings, more or less richly decorated, such as are shown in the view of one of the arcades of the Mosque “El Moyed,” Cairo (Fig. 189) , where the horse-shoe and pointed arches can both be seen. This illustration also shows timber ties, at the feet of the arches, such as were commonly used by the earlier Saracenic builders.
The surfaces of the interiors of most Mohammedan buildings in all countries are covered with the most exquisite decorations in colour. ”

“ Imitations of natural objects being forbidden by the Koran (a prohibition occasionally, but very rarely, infringed) , the Saracenic artists, whose instincts as decorators seem to have been unrivalled, fell back upon geometrical and flowing patterns and inscriptions, and upon the use of tiles (Fig. 190) , mosaics, inlays, patterns impressed on plaster, and every possible device for harmoniously enriching the surfaces with which they had to deal. Several of our illustrations give indications of the presence of these unrivalled decorations in the buildings which they represent (Fig. 195) . ”

“ Gothic architecture produces the effect of sublimity, though always without simplicity, and often without magnitude; so perhaps does the Saracenic; if the Grecian ever produce the same effect it is by magnitude 309alone. But the architecture of the ancients is altered, and materially injured by the alteration, when adapted to cold climates, where it is necessary when the light is admitted to exclude the air: the windows have always a littleness, always appear misplaced; they are holes cut in the wall: not, as in the Gothic, natural and essential parts of the general structure. ”

“ Large, costly, and often elegant stone edifices—public and private—are not wanting in the principal towns and cities of Mexico; but all, save those of very recent construction, have the characteristic Saracenic or Moorish architecture of Southern Spain—namely, a rectangular structure with rooms opening on to interior piazzas, and a more or less spacious court-yard, which is often fancifully paved and ornamented with fountains and shrubbery ”

“ It was an age when the pride of architecture had been indulged to the full; edifices, public and private, mansions and temples, ran off far away from each market-town or borough, as from a centre, some of stone or marble, but most of them of that composite of fine earth, rammed tight by means of frames, for which the Saracens were afterwards famous, and of which specimens remain to this day, as hard in surface, as sharp at the angles, as when they first were finished. ”

“ Towards the end of the eleventh century the new masters of the Roman Empire, in the course of their military expeditions to Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, were brought in contact with the Saracens and their architecture, and in coming back to Europe they brought with them new ideas of building, such as the pointed arch of the Saracens, which feature together with new forms of ornament were added by them to the prevalent Romanesque style, the mixture producing an entirely new style, which has been curiously named after the early Northern barbarians—the Gothic. ”

“ The coupled columns may 307 truly be called a Saracenic feature, though the Saracen must have learned it in the first instance from such buildings as the sepulchral church known as Saint Constantia at Rome. We may fairly see a Saracenic influence in a crowd of Christian examples where this form is used in cloisters and other smaller buildings where the arches and columns are of no great size. It is even not uncommon in strictly Norman buildings in positions where the shafts are merely part of the decorative construction, and do not actually support the weight of the building. ”

“ There is no regularity in the style of the buildings in the enclosure, but the general effect is highly picturesque. The great dome of the mosque is the grandest in all the Orient, but the body of the edifice, made to resemble an octagonal tent, and covered with blue and white tiles, is not high enough to do it justice. The first court is paved with marble, and has four porticoes, each of five light Saracenic arches, opening into the green park, which occupies the rest of the terrace. This park is studded with cypress and fig trees, and dotted all over with the tombs of shekhs. ”

“ The beautiful little city, half Saracenic, in all the glory of its cathedral still new and white and blooming with colour like a flower, sat on the edge of that loveliest coast, the sea like sapphire surging up in many lines of foam, the waves clapping their hands as in the Psalms, and above, the olive-mantled hills rising soft 302 towards the bluest sky, with on every point a white village, a little church tower, the convent walls shining in the sun. It is still a region as near Paradise as human imagination can grasp, more fair than any scene we know. ”

“ Facing us there is another of those beautiful Saracenic rows of arches, and we think we see the whole. But no, there is yet another court within this court, and this gateway, through which we gain access to it, was used by the harem. Passing through, we come to the last grand conception. Standing on a marble platform, the beauty of the frontage is seen to its greatest advantage. We look wonderingly at the labour expended upon the carvings of the twisted pilasters, the open fretwork of the little galleries, and the coping-stones that crown the turrets. ”

“ The portal is the richest specimen of Saracenic sculpture I have ever seen: a very labyrinth of intricate ornaments. The artist must have seen the great portal of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec. The minarets have tumbled down, the roof has fallen in, but the walls are still covered with white and blue tiles, of the finest workmanship, resembling a mosaic of ivory and lapis lazuli. Some of the chambers seem to be inhabited, for two old men with white beards lay in the shade, and were not a little startled by our sudden appearance. ”