Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/566

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550
SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE.
Part III.

550 SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Part ni. correct illustrations have been published is the Imaret or Hospital of Oulou Jami, at Erzeroum — an arcade of two stories, surroundino- on three sides a courtyard 90 ft. by 45. It is broken in the centre by what in a Christian church would be called a transept. The woodcut here given (No. 984) shows the general apj^earance of the arcade, and also the upper part of two minarets which flank the external porch. This porch is ornamented in the richest manner of the style. Oppo- site to the entrance a long gallery leads to the tomb of the founder, a circular building of very considerable elegance, the roof of which is a hemispherical vault internally, but a straight-sided Armenian conical roof on the outside. These dispositions make the plan of the building 983. Tomb of Ezekiel, near Bagdad. (From Texier and PuUau.) SO similar to that of a Christian church that most travellers have con- sidered it as one, mistaking the court for the nave, and the tomb, with the gallery leading to it, for the apse and choir. There can, however, be no doubt but that it was originally built by a Mohamedan for the purpose of a hospital, or place of rest for pilgrims, during the sway of the Seljukian princes in the 12th and 13th centuries ; and that its similarity to a Christian church in plan is accidental, though its details very much resemble those of the churches of Ani and other places in Armenia, This, however, only shows that the inhabitants of the same country did not practise two styles, but arranged the same forms in different manners to suit their various j^urposes. There is another mosque of about the same age as this one at Ani which would show even more clearly this close analogy ; but it had