portion was extended 150 ft. in the rear by Hakim II., the
mihrab and Mecca wall being rebuilt; about 20 years later a
further enlargement was made, and eight more aisles were added
along the whole eastern side, so that the prayer chamber covered
an area of over 148,000 sq. ft. In the 13th century a portion of
Hakim’s addition was pulled down to make way for the first
cathedral, which was dedicated to the Virgin. The most
beautiful portion of the mosque, however, still exists in the
prayer chamber of Hakim, where are to be found the earliest
examples of the cusped arch and the origin of many of the
geometrical patterns in stucco at the Alhambra.
The mosque of el Azhar, “the splendid,” was begun about A.D. 970 by Jauhar, the general of the Fatimite Caliph Moizz, who captured Fostat and founded el Kahira, the present town of Cairo. It was based, therefore, on the great mosque at Kairawan, and although more or less rebuilt, it still preserves its original plan. It has a special interest in being the chief university of the Moslem world, containing some thousands of students (mujawirin), for whom certain parts of the mosque (riwaq) are screened off, according to the country from which they come. Thus special parts are reserved for natives of the various provinces of Egypt, of Morocco, Syria, Arabia, India, Turkey, &c. Each student can, if he is too poor to hire lodgings, live, eat and sleep in the mosque. Each has a large chest in which to keep his clothes and books; these are piled against the walls to a height of seven or eight feet. The students pay no fees, but the richer ones give presents to the lecturers, who sit on the matting in various parts of the sanctuary or cloister, while the students sit round each lecturer in a circle. The usual course of study lasts for three years, though some students remain for much longer. The chief of the lecturers, called the Sheik el-Azhar, receives about £100 a year, the others little or nothing, as regular pay. The Koran, sacred and secular law, logic, poetry, arithmetic, with some medicine and geography, are the chief subjects of study.
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| Fig. 2.—Plan of Mosque of Sultan Hasan, Cairo. | |
| 1, | 2, Main entrance. |
| 3, | Court open to sky. |
| 4, | 5, Fountains. |
| 6, | 6, North and south vaulted transepts (the dotted lines show the curve of the vault). |
| 8, | 9, Dikka. |
| 10, | Sanctuary. |
| 11, | Mimbar. |
| 12, | Ḳibleh. |
| 13, | Door to tomb. |
| 14, | Domed tomb-chamber. |
| 15, | Tomb within screen. |
| 16, | Ḳibleh. |
| 17, | 17, Minarets. |
| 18, | 19, 20, Various entrances to mosque. |
| 21, | Small rooms connected with service of the mosque. |
| 22, | Sultan’s private entrance. |
Of other mosques in Cairo, the finest is that of Sultan Hasan (fig. 2), completed in A.D. 1360. It differs from the normal type in many respects, as it includes residences for various sects, so that portions of it, with the several storeys externally, resemble an immense mansion or warehouse, and this would seem to have led to an important change inside, as instead of a cloister of two or more aisles there are four immense halls all covered with pointed barrel vaults. Beyond the Mecca wall is the tomb of the founder, covered with an immense dome. The entrance doorway on the north-east side is over 80 ft. in height, its summit being decorated with stalactite vaults, one of the grandest features in Mahommedan architecture, only equalled by the magnificent portals of the mosques in India. The central square court, of moderate dimensions, with halls and great recesses, is followed in other examples in Cairo, among which the Tomb Mosque of Kait-Bey (c. A.D. 1470) is the most graceful (fig. 3). In this case the central court is roofed over, and has an octagon lantern in the centre; the recesses are covered with horizontal ceilings carried on great beams, the whole being elaborately carved, coloured and gilded; the tomb is covered with the later type of dome, built in stone, and elaborately carved outside with delicate conventional patterns in relief.
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| Fig. 3.—Mosque-tomb of Kait-Bey, Cairo. |
| 1, Main entrance. |
| 2, Lobby and cisterns for ablution. |
| 3, Great minaret. |
| 4, Ḳibleh. |
| 5, Minbar. |
| 6, Sultan’s tomb-chamber. |
| 7, The tomb within a screen. |
| 8, Dikka. |
| (For views of interior and exterior, see Architecture.) |
Although the conquest of Persia by the Arabs took place in A.D. 641 there are no remains of mosques there earlier than the 13th century, and the oldest example at Tabriz is evidently, as far as its plan is concerned, a copy of a Byzantine church, departing entirely therefore from the normal plans.[1] The great mosque at Isfahan, built by Shah Abbas the Great (1585–1629), has one great court (225 ft. by 170 ft.) and two smaller ones, all with fountains in them. The prayer chamber is a lofty structure, quite unlike those of Egypt and Kairawan, with a dome 75 ft. in diameter and halls on each side divided into two aisles, each compartment being covered with a dome, in this respect also not following the early normal type, in which domes were only found over tombs. The mosques of Constantinople are all copies more or less of S. Sophia: they have courts in front with a range of arcades round, and the centre portion forms the prayer chamber, the side aisles serving as passages. The central dome has but a slight elevation outside, but with the numerous cupolas round, and the minarets, it forms a picturesque group which is wanting in the mosques of Kairawan, Cordova, and other examples in North Africa.
In India as in other countries the Mahommedans took possession of the ancient buildings and adapted them to their religious requirements. The materials of the native styles of India, however, did not lend themselves to their utilization as in Syria, Egypt and North Africa, where the columns and capitals formed the substructure of the arcades which surrounded their courts. In the earliest mosque at old Delhi, they adopted the piers and bracketed capitals of the Jaina builders, whom they probably employed to build their mosque. They, however, had no confidence in the arch, which, as the Hindu says, “never sleeps but is always tending to its own destruction,” so that the pointed arch, which had almost become the emblem of the Mahommedan religion, had to be dispensed with for the covered aisles which surrounded the great court, and in the triple entrance gateway the form of an arch only was retained, as it was constructed with horizontal courses of masonry for the haunches, and with long slabs of stone resting one against the other at the top. A similar construction was employed in the great mosque at Ajmere, built A.D. 1200–1211 at the same time as the Delhi mosque. The objection to the arch is more clearly shown
