from the Paris Salon of 1879, was the first American picture ever bought for the Luxembourg. He received a silver medal in Paris 1889, and gold medals at Paris, 1888, and Vienna, 1893. Examples of his work are in the Sydney Art Museum, N.S.W., and the art museums of Springfield, Mass., Cincinnati, Ohio and New York. His son, Gustave Henry Mosler (1875–1906), a pupil of his father and of Léon Bonnat, exhibited at the Salon in Paris, receiving a medal for his “De Profundis” in 1891; his portrait of Governor J. W. Stewart is in the State House, Montpelier, Vermont, and his “Empty Cradle” is in the Toledo Art Club.
MOSQUE (through Fr. mosquée; Span. mezquita, from Arab.
masjid, sajada, to adore), the house of prayer in the
Mahommedan religion, consisting generally of a large open
court (sahn) surrounded by arcades (liwan), with a fountain
(mida-a) in the centre of the court, for the ablutions necessary
before prayer. The principal feature in the mosque is the
niche (mihrab), which is sunk in a wall built at right angles to
a line drawn from Mecca, and indicates the direction towards
which the Moslem should turn when engaged in prayer. The
arcades in front of the Mecca niche were sometimes of considerable
depth, and constituted the prayer chamber (maksura),
portions of which were occasionally enclosed with lattice work.
By the side of the niche was the pulpit (minbar), and sometimes
in front of the latter a platform (dikka) raised on columns,
from which chapters from the Koran were read to the people.
| |||
| Fig. 1.—Plan of Mosque of ʽAmr, Old Cairo. | |||
| 1, Ḳibleh. | 5, | Fountain for ablution. | |
| 2, Minbar. | 6, 6, | Rooms built later. | |
| 3, Tomb of ʽAmr. | 7, | Minaret. | |
| 4, Dikka. | 8, | Latrines. | |
Most mosques have endowed property, which is administered by a warden (nazir), who also appoints the imams and other officials. The larger mosques have two imams: one is called (in Arabia and Egypt) the khatib, and he preaches the sermon on Fridays (the Moslem Sabbath); the other, the ratib, reads the Koran, and recites the five daily prayers, standing close to the mihrab, and leading the congregation, who repeat the prayers with him, and closely follow his postures. The imams do not form a priestly sect; they generally have other occupations, such as teaching in a school or keeping a shop, and may at any time be dismissed by the warden, in which case they lose the title of imam. Moslem women, as a rule, are expected to say their prayers at home, but in some few mosques they are admitted to one part specially screened off for them.
The earliest mosque erected was that at Mecca, which consisted of a great court, in the centre of which was the Kaʽba or Holy Stone. The court was surrounded with arcades, all of which constituted the prayer chamber, so that its plan is necessarily different to the normal type; the existing buildings date only from the first half of the 17th century, as the whole mosque was destroyed by a torrent in 1626.
The normal type referred to is best represented in the mosque of ʽAmr (see ʽAmr-ibn-el-Ass) at Fostat, Cairo; built in A.D. 643 it still retains its original arrangement, though partly rebuilt and increased in its dimensions. The mosque (see fig. 1), now in a somewhat ruined condition, covers an area of about 130,000 sq. ft. with an open court, 240 ft. sq., and a sanctuary or prayer chamber, 106 ft. deep, there being a central avenue and ten aisles on either side. The columns and capitals were all taken from ancient buildings, Egyptian, Roman and Byzantine, and they carry arches of different forms, semicircular, pointed and horseshoe.
The columns and other materials of the mosque of el-Aksa at Jerusalem were taken by Abdalmalik (A.D. 690) from the ruins of Justinian’s church of St Mary on Mount Sion, and the central avenue or nave built with them presents the appearance of a Christian church; it however runs north and south, the Mecca niche being at the south end; originally there were seven aisles on each side, now reduced to three. The Kubbet-es-Sakhra, or Dome of the Rock, at Jerusalem, is only a shrine erected over the sacred rock, so that the title often ascribed to it as “the mosque of Omar” is misleading.
The mosque of the Omayyads in Damascus was built by the Caliph Walid in A.D. 705 on the foundations of the basilican church of St John: its plan differs therefore from the normal type in that its arcades run east and west, and the transept in the centre becomes the prayer chamber. The Mecca niche is sunk in the doorway of a Roman temple which formerly occupied the same site, and the substructure of the minaret at the south-west angle is of still more ancient date. The great court on the north side has a lofty cloister round it, so that in many respects it follows the normal type.
The mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun, in Cairo (A.D. 879), is the first mosque erected in which the materials were not taken from ancient buildings; it has therefore a special interest as being the earliest genuine example of the Mahommedan style (see Architecture: Mahommedan). The walls, piers and arches, are all built in brick, covered with stucco, a great portion of which is preserved down to the present day. The plan is of the normal type, with a great court in the centre, a prayer chamber four aisles deep on the Mecca side (south-east), and a double aisle on the other three sides. All the arches are pointed and slightly horseshoe, preceding therefore by about two and a half centuries the introduction of the pointed arch into Europe. The piers carrying the arches have shafts at their angles, the earliest examples known, and the decoration of the walls consists of friezes, borders, and impost-bands, all enriched with conventional patterns interwoven with cufic characters and modelled in stucco. The windows in the outer walls are filled with pierced stone screens of geometrical design. The architect is said to have been a Coptic Christian who deprecated the destruction of ancient buildings to obtain columns and blocks of stone, and who undertook to design a mosque which should be built entirely in brick, which when coated with stucco and appropriate decorative designs would rival its predecessors.
The next important mosque is that of Kairawan in Tunisia, which was founded by Sidi Okba in A.D. 675, but was partly rebuilt and added to in the following two centuries. Its court covers an area of 38,000 sq. ft., and its prayer chamber is 150 ft. deep, having a central avenue and eight aisles on each side.
The chief interest of the mosque at Kairawan lies in its being the prototype of the great mosque at Cordova, which was built by Abdarrahman in A.D. 780; the earliest portion of the mosque is the prayer chamber (135 ft. wide by 220 ft. deep), which is in front of the entrance gateway to the great court, and consists of a central avenue with five aisles on each side. In A.D. 961 this
