Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/528

512 SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Part III. appropriate when the window is not to be looked out of, or when it is filled with painted glass ; but of course are utterly unsuitable to our purposes. Yet it is doubtful, even now, whether the Saracenic did not excel the Gothic architects, even in their best days, in the elegance of design and variety of invention displayed in the tracery of their windows. In the mosque of Ibn Touloun it is used as an old and jaerfected invention, and with the germs of all those angular and flowing lines which afterwards were combined into such myriad forms of beauty. It is ])Ossible that future researches may bring to light a build- ing, 50 or even 100 years earlier than this, which may show nearly as complete an emancipation from Christian art ; but for the present, it is from the mosque of Touloun (a.d. 885) that we must date the complete foundation of the new style. Although there is consider- able difficulty in tracing the history of the style from the erection of the mosques of Damascus and Jerusalem to that of Touloun, there is none from that time onwards. Cairo alone furnishes nearly suflicient tnaterials for the purpose. The next great mosque erected in tliis city was el-Azhar, or "the splendid," commenced in the year 981, or about a century after that of Touloun, and, though certainly a very magnificent build- ing, and showing a great advance in elegance of detail over that last named, it is far from being so satisfactory, owing to the intro- duction of ancient pillars in parts, and to masses of wall being placed on them, only suited to such forms as those used in the mosque of Touloun. The buildings during the next century and a half are neither numerous nor remarkable for size, though progress is very evident in such examples as exist ; and in the middle of the twelfth century we find the style almost entirely changed. One of the finest buildings of the last age is that built by Sultan Barkook outside the walls of Cairo (a.d. 1149), which, besides a mosque, contains an additional feature in the great sepulchral chambers which are in fiict the principal part of the edifice, and betray the existence of a strong affinity to the tomb-building races in the rulers of Egypt at that time. The plan and section (Woodcuts Nos. 963, 964), though small, will show the state to which the art had at that period arrived in Egypt. The pointed arch, as will be observed, is used with as much lightness and elegance as ever it reached in the West. The dome has become a truly graceful and elaborate appendage, forming not only a very perfect ceiling inside, but a most imposing ornament to the exterior. Above all, the minaret has here arrived at as high a degree of perfection as it ever reached in any after age. The oldest known example of this species of tower is that of the