The New Student's Reference Work/Saracen Architecture

Saracen Architecture. There are no examples of purely Arabic architecture, except a few indistinct ruins of cities and streets excavated out of rocks. The Arabs were wanderers, not artists, and so, whether they built at home or in the countries they invaded, Persian and Byzantine workmen were the usual builders secured by the caliphs or rulers. Omar the second caliph (644 A. D.) introduced the minaret, a slender tower from which a priest should call the people to prayer. All of the Arab tribes in Asia, as well as the Moors of North Africa and Spain, are classed under the term Saracen, and it is to this race that Europeans owe some of their best designs used in architecture and the practical arts. Interesting examples of Saracenic architecture are in Cairo, Damascus, Cordova, Seville and Granada. The Saracens are lovers of geometry. Their Mohammedan Bible, the Koran, is written in Cufic, the most beautiful script known. Therefore the artists invented a type of design known as arabesque, which is a combination of scrolls, lines and twists, with which they stamped the upper portion of their plaster-walls, mingled with texts from the Koran. This, combined with a stalactite or hanging ceiling, made a beautiful and refined decoration. The lower portions were faced with richly colored tiles dipped in a glaze (coat of glass), an art learned from the Persians, who taught soft pottery. Wonderful tiles in blues and greens, with copper glaze, may be seen on the tomb of Mahomet (A. D. 707) the great mosque at Cordova (A. D. 756) and the Moorish buildings of Granada. There, also, one may examine a vase about four feet high, of graceful proportions, which is decorated with arabesque and covered with a brilliant gold glaze. This ware is known as Hispano-Moresque. The finest example that is perfect is owned in Sicily. The Saracens introduced tapestry or carpet-weaving into Spain about the 12th century and later established looms in Almeria and Malaga, where the costliest stuffs were woven. These included the material manufactured for the nobility, called tiraz, with the name of the wearer to be woven in the cloth. A banner now in Burgos shows a crimson stuff woven and embroidered in gold threads. Strictly Moorish architecture is known by the absence of domes and decoration upon the outside of buildings and by the presence of isolated towers and elaborate adornment of interiors. The most noted of their royal palaces is the Alhambra (q. v.) Consult Gwilt's Encyclopedia of Architecture; Lübke's History of Art; and De Forest's History of Art. See Architecture and Fine Arts.