With the exception of the late Tilimsân group, the wooden roof of all the above-mentioned mosques, both in Syria and in North Africa, was supported by columns and arches, the columns having invariably been taken from pre-Mohammadan buildings. Probably the earliest extant example of a mosque in which the arches rested on piers is at Ḥarrân, but the building is unfortunately so much ruined that its exact disposition cannot be determined without excavation. The plan, so far as it is apparent, has been given by Dr. Preusser.[413] The central arch in the north façade of the ḥaram alone remains standing. Its width would seem to indicate that here, as at Damascus, the central aisle was broader than the rest. On either side of it there was an arch of much narrower span.[414] None of the other piers can be placed with certainty. There are some fragments of columns both in the ḥaram and in the east riwâq. An inscription on the east gate gives the name of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn,[415] but I think it certain that it alludes not to the foundation, but to the restoration of the mosque. The cusped ornament round the relieving arch over the door corresponds with the cusped motive on the façade of the Mayâfârqîn mosque, and the gateway at Ḥarrân has every appearance of being the work of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn. But the engaged capitals of the interior responds in the east wall, and the wreathed acanthus capital under the central arch of the ḥaram (one capital only is preserved) must be dated several centuries earlier. I do not doubt that they were executed for the places which they occupy, and I agree with Dr. Herzfeld in assigning them to the Umayyad period.[416] I observed, however, among the ruins in the interior of the mosque many fragments of carved ornament which cannot be earlier than the time of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn, and I came to the conclusion that until the building has received further study it is impossible to make a more precise statement concerning it than that it seems to be a structure of which parts at least belong to the early eighth century, that it had a wide central aisle and four gable roofs supported on masonry piers, or possibly upon piers and columns.
At Raqqah, according to Balâdhuri,[417] a mosque was built by Sa’îd ibn ‘Âmir ibn Ḥudhaim not long after the conquest of the country by the Mohammadans; and Muqaddasi, as I have already had occasion to mention,[418] speaks of one of the Raqqah mosques as built upon columns. My impression upon visiting the site in 1909 was that the earliest Mohammadan city must have occupied the ground where, among ruin heaps, rises a rectangular minaret. In connexion with this minaret I conjectured that the first mosque had stood (though possibly the minaret was not contemporary with the earliest building), and since the town to which it belonged was the successor of Nicephoricum-Callinicum, and there were no doubt plenty of columns at hand for the mosque, I conclude that it was Sa’îd ibn ‘Âmir’s edifice which was described by Muqaddasi, and that it is to be classed with the normal type of courtyard-mosque built on classical sites, i.e. it had a riwâq or riwâqs composed of columns. The khalif Manṣûr founded in the year A.H. 155 a second town, the ruins of which are still to be seen to the west of the earlier settlement. Upon this site there were no ancient remains,[419] that is to say that Manṣûr had not Roman or Byzantine materials at his disposal. Now within the walls of Manṣûr’s city stand the ruins of a mosque built upon piers (Fig. 32). According to an inscription over the central arch of the ḥaram arcade it was repaired in A.D. 1166 by the Atâbek Nûr al-Dîn.[420] It was surrounded by a wall built of sun-dried brick, which was strengthened by rounded towers. The ḥaram was composed of three rows of oblong brick piers, of which the northernmost alone is standing; the riwâqs on the remaining three sides were of two rows of columns which can be traced only by the holes in the ground whence the burnt bricks whereof they were built have been extracted. The central arch of the ḥaram is no wider than the arches on either side, but the niche in which it is set is carried up higher than the other niches, and M. van Berchem has suggested that it may have been surmounted by a gable, like the mosques at Damascus and Diyârbekr. It is possible that this was so, but both at Damascus and at Diyârbekr the central aisle is distinguished from the side aisles by its greater width. The round minaret in the ṣaḥn at Raqqah I believe to have been the work of Nûr al-Dîn. At Baghdâd, Manṣûr built a mosque of which we have nothing but the description. Its walls were of sun-dried brick and its columns of wood, each column being composed of two pieces, the ends bound together with sinews and glue and rings of iron, with the exception of five or six columns near the minaret, which were constructed of rounded pieces of wood.[421]
Less than a hundred years later Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861) built the mosque of Abû Dulaf, which is closely related in plan to Manṣûr’s mosque at Raqqah (Fig. 33).[422] There is the same enclosing wall of sun-dried brick garnished with
rounded towers. The arcades are of burnt brick, but the central aisle of the ḥaram and the corresponding aisle of the north riwâq are more than a metre wider than the others (7·33 metres as against an average of 6·20 metres), and a transept 10·40 metres wide runs along the qiblah wall. Dr. Herzfeld informs me that he has by excavation ascertained the existence of a miḥrâb in the centre of the qiblah wall where I had placed a door. In one respect Abû Dulaf differs from all other mosques built with piers; the arcades of the south riwâq, instead of lying parallel to the qiblah wall, are placed at right angles to it. I do not think that this variation is of great importance, for the outer and inner arcades (that is to say, the arcade on the ṣaḥn and the arcade next to the qiblah wall) are placed parallel to the qiblah wall, and it is only between these two that the ḥaram arcades run at right angles. The divergence from the normal scheme is not therefore so great as would at first appear. The mosque is surrounded by an outer enclosure, or ziyâdah[423], within which stands the spiral minaret, to the north of the centre of the north wall. The piers and arches of the riwâqs must undoubtedly have carried a flat wooden roof; nevertheless in the façades of the ṣaḥn each pier is adorned with the blind niche which I believe to be derived from the tubular system of Mesopotamian vaulting (Plate 89, Fig. 2). This decoration is a direct link between the unvaulted mosque of Abû Dulaf and the vaulted palace of Ukhaiḍir, and the fact that it appears again in the mosque of Ibn Ṭulûn is to my mind an indubitable proof of the essential exactitude of the tradition which connects Ibn Ṭulûn’s building with Mesopotamian architecture (Plate 89, Fig. 1). Other structural evidence is not wanting. The position of the minaret in the northern ziyâdah (to say nothing of its spiral form) corresponds with the position of the minarets both at Abû Dulaf and at Sâmarrâ, and even if we leave on one side the much-disputed question of the origin of the stucco ornament in the Cairo mosque, there is another feature of its decoration which points directly to Mesopotamia. The walls are crowned with a fantastic parapet, which probably goes back, in design at least, to the ninth century, and below the parapet, just above the level of the roof, runs a decorative band consisting of a recessed square pierced by a circular hole (Plate 91, Fig. 1). The same motive appears upon the walls of the Sâmarrâ mosque, with this difference, that it is placed below the level of the roof and not above it (Plate 91, Fig. 2). Instead of forming part of a light parapet, it forms part of the solid wall; with the result that the circle is not pierced through to the interior, but remains a saucer-shaped motive sunk within the square. I hazard the conjecture that the origin of this ornament is to be sought upon the walls of Assyrian fortifications, and that it represents the row of shields set within rectangular frames which are to be seen on innumerable Assyrian reliefs (Fig. 34).
In the great mosque at Sâmarrâ the wooden roof was borne directly (without the interposition of arches) by composite piers having bases 2·07 metres square.[424] These piers were composed of an octagonal core of brick with four slender marble columns placed one at each corner. The columns were sometimes round, sometimes octagonal, and averaged ·30 metre in diameter. Dr. Herzfeld calculates that each column consisted of three sections, placed one on top of the other and bound together with lead and with metal rings. They rested upon bell-shaped bases and carried bell-shaped capitals. Dr. Herzfeld points out that the teak columns of Manṣûr’s mosque at Baghdad were similarly composed of sections joined together in the same manner. The ḥaram and the north riwâq at Sâmarrâ were given a wide central aisle.
The two small mosques of which Dr. Herzfeld has uncovered the foundations in the palace of Balkuwârâ present further variations. The larger was an oblong chamber of brick, 35 × 15 metres, the roof supported by two rows of eight columns which were probably either of wood or of marble. In the wall opposite the qiblah there were three doors. The smaller mosque was a chamber 10·35 × 7·76 metres, built of sun-dried brick, without columns. The miḥrâb was a deep rounded niche surmounted by a cyma moulding and flanked by engaged columns, and in the opposite wall were three doors. The miḥrâb of the larger mosque, which is totally destroyed, is probably to be reconstructed in the same style. Neither of these mosques has a ṣaḥn, the great palace enclosure in which they stand serving them as court.[425]
With the exception of the small palace chapels at Balkuwârâ, all the Mesopotamian mosques were laid out on the same plan, but they differed in details of construction. When columns were available they were used in the riwâqs, as at Kûfah and in the first mosque at Raqqah. Elsewhere there were either wooden columns (Baṣrah, Baghdâd), or columns of masonry (Ukhaiḍir); or the riwâqs might be built with brick piers (Manṣûr’s mosque at Raqqah, Abû Dulaf) or, where stone was easy to obtain, with stone piers (Ḥarrân). At Sâmarrâ there is an isolated example of a composite pier. The roofs also differ from one another. At Ḥarrân there must have been wooden gable roofs over the riwâqs; at Ukhaiḍir they were vaulted; at Abû Dulaf the flat wooden roof rested on arches; at Sâmarrâ, and probably at Baghdâd, it was carried directly by the piers or columns. The wide central aisle was present at Ḥarrân, at Sâmarrâ, and at Abû Dulaf; at the latter there is also a side transept, producing the same ⏊-shaped plan that has been noticed in the Tunisian mosques. The data are too scanty to admit of any but the most general conclusion. We find divergent detail but no divergence in type, and the type in Mesopotamia, as in other parts of the Mohammadan world, was derived ultimately from the Prophet’s house at Medînah. It is in Mesopotamia that we have the earliest examples of the brick pier. We do not know how far Nûr al-Dîn’s reparations at Raqqah extended, nor what was the aspect of the façades of the ṣaḥn before his time, but at Abû Dulaf the original construction is preserved and the brick piers and arches of the façades bear in their spandrel niches a characteristic Mesopotamian trait. I do not doubt that the first Egyptian mosque built with brick piers, that of Ibn Ṭulûn, was inspired by the Mesopotamian scheme; the marks of relationship are too numerous not to be convincing. The engaged quarter-columns with which his piers are provided were no new thing. Engaged half-columns are universal at Ukhaiḍir, and the oblong piers with quarter-columns in Ibn Ṭulûn’s mosque are nothing but a translation into solid masonry, along the lines indicated at Ukhaiḍir, of the octagonal piers with angle colonnettes of Sâmarrâ. More than a hundred years later this building served as a model to al-Ḥâkim, and it is interesting to note that the Mesopotamian pier was applied at a still later date to a building which seems in other respects to have been a direct imitation of the Umayyad mosque at Damascus. The great mosque at Diyârbekr (I give here a plan which I made in 1911, Plate 90) is a patchwork of older materials re-used at different times. The oldest part of the existing structure is the west wing of the ḥaram, which is dated by an inscription in the year A.D. 1091,[426]
but the west arcade of the ṣaḥn, though it is dated A.D. 1124, must preserve the memory of a plan which is older than that of the present mosque. It strikes the north wall of the ḥaram at an angle of 78°, and by reason of its oblique disposition it cuts off the north-west corner of the ṣaḥn, which is 6·24 metres shorter on the north side than it is on the south side. The east arcade of the ṣaḥn (dated A.D. 1163-1179) lies almost at right angles to the north wall of the ḥaram. Whether the orientation of the west arcade was dictated by a pre-Mohammadan building or, as Dr. Herzfeld has acutely suggested, by the plan of a mosque which stood upon this site before the year A.D. 1091,[427] cannot be determined with certainty. In its present form it is the work of Mohammadan builders of the twelfth century, though it is partly composed of pre-Mohammadan materials. Whence these materials were derived has not been ascertained. There is, however, a further proof that a building older than the existing mosque, oriented in the manner corresponding with that of the west arcade, existed on this site. On the north side of the ṣaḥn, between the two northern madrasahs, there is a lane or passage which communicates with the street beyond the precincts of the mosque. On the east side of the passage there is a fragment of wall, built of large dressed stones, entirely dissimilar from the masonry in any part of the existing mosque, and this fragment lies at the same angle as the west arcade of the ṣaḥn (Plate 93, Fig. 1).
Not far from Diyârbekr there is another building which shows in its plan and decorations the influence of the Ulu Djâmi’ in that city. The so-called mosque of Ṣalâḥ al-Dîn at Mayâfârqîn ranks, even in ruin, among the finest of Mohammadan monuments (Plate 92). The wide central aisle has been converted into a chamber almost square (it is not quite rectangular and averages 13·60 x 13·32 metres), which was covered by a dome set on elaborately decorated squinch arches (Plate 93, Fig. 2). Under the dome runs an inscription assigning the building of the mosque to the Ortokid Alpi (A.D. 1152-1176). The square chamber is surrounded on three sides by a corridor consisting of eleven bays, some of which were probably domed, while the others were vaulted. The columns placed against the piers of the dome were taken from a neighbouring early Christian basilica. The wings to east and west are divided by three arcades into four transepts averaging alternately 5 metres and 2·60 metres in width, a narrow transept lying next to the qiblah wall. The eastern miḥrâb in the south wall of the east wing is dated by an inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi in the year A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. The west wing contains no date, but the very shallow miḥrâb in the south wall is proved by its decoration to belong to a period not earlier than the sixteenth century, and as the whole wing as it stands at present seems to have been rebuilt, it may well be that it all belongs to a late reconstruction or reparation. Still further west are some ruined edifices which formed part of the precincts of the mosque, and here a lintel, re-used in a doorway of a later period, bears a second inscription of the Ayyûbid Ghâzi and the date A.H. 624 = A.D. 1227. There are no remains of a minaret, and the ṣaḥn is completely ruined and filled with débris, but the north façade, which is almost entirely preserved, is of remarkable interest in the history of Mohammadan decoration. (The photograph of a section of this façade has been given on Plate 84, Fig. 3.) The wings and the north façade show many signs of reparation, and no doubt the mosque shared the fate of all great buildings in these stormy regions, and suffered frequent ruin and subsequent restoration; but it seems probable that the two wings were originally built between A.D. 1226 and 1228, and that they were added to the domed chamber with its corridor which had been erected some fifty years earlier.
In the Ayyûbid mosques at Ḥasan Kaif, all of which are dated in the first half of the fifteenth century, no suggestion of an early plan can be traced. At Môṣul, the great mosque as it exists at present dates from the time of Nûr al-Dîn Maḥmûd (A.D. 1146-1173), but the plan shows traces of an earlier riwâq constructed with piers, and lying immediately to the north of the present ḥaram; while fragmentary inscriptions in decorated Kufic must belong, according to M. van Berchem, to the eleventh century A.D.[428]
That we have no further information concerning the Mesopotamian mosque shows how insufficient are the data which bear upon its architectural history. From the facts which I have briefly summarized one conclusion may, however, be drawn. The mosque builders were guided by a scheme of extreme simplicity, the details of which were executed according to the nature of the building material which was available. When that material could be taken from older buildings the Mesopotamian artificers were not slow to profit by so fortunate a circumstance; elsewhere they reverted to the system of construction which from time immemorial had prevailed in those regions. They built with sun-dried or with burnt bricks, or where stone could be obtained they built with stone. Sometimes they imported stone from Ahwâz for the columns of their riwâqs, and sometimes wood; sometimes they raised columns of stone masonry, or again they combined brick piers with colonnettes of marble. But since imported wood and stone were expensive, and the Sasanian monuments, which had served as quarries, were speedily exhausted, there was a natural tendency to return to the old local forms, and piers of brick or stone masonry were the obvious solution for the supports of the riwâqs. Ukhaiḍir is the only example which remains to us of a mosque in which the riwâqs were covered with a vault; probably the vault was seldom employed. It is certain that all the mosques of the early Abbâsid period, of which the ruins are preserved, must have been roofed with wood.
There are no inscriptions by which to fix the date of Ukhaiḍir. If any record of its foundation were made, it must have been written upon the plaster which covered the walls, and in some of the more important rooms the plaster has peeled away. But it is probable that there was no such record. The laudable habit of setting the name and date of the founder upon the building which he had caused to be constructed does not seem to have been followed in the first age of Islâm, and, like Ukhaiḍir, the ḥîrahs upon the Syrian frontier have furnished us with no direct evidence as to their origin. I found in room 44 a graffito upon the plaster on the south side of the doorway which communicates with room 45. It is exceedingly ill written, and in some places the cracking of the plaster makes it almost indecipherable. The authors of Ocheïdir did not notice it and no mention of it appears in M. Massignon’s text, though he certainly saw it, since it is visible in one of his photographs.[429] The original is so indistinct that I doubt whether any photograph would reproduce it satisfactorily. After an unsuccessful attempt to take a squeeze, I made a copy—scarcely more successfully (Fig. 35). When I returned to Ukhaiḍir in 1911 the plaster was still more damaged, and I abandoned the attempt to re-copy the graffito. Meantime Dr. B. Moritz had noticed the characters in M. Massignon’s photograph, and he was inclined to believe that they might be ancient, possibly Nabataean. I therefore sent my copy both to him and to Professor Littmann, and the latter was so kind as to supply me with the following notes. ‘Dr. Moritz and I combined our efforts and something like the following may be suggested:
“This water from the house (?) to ... from this water. And the declaration was pronounced that there is no God but God and Muḥammad is his Prophet. And there was present at this ... Bishr, son of ‘Âdah son of ‘Îsâ son of ‘Umar, in the year of the Hidjrah 77-.”
‘If the date is correctly read we would have to choose between the years A.H. 771 and 779 = A.D. 1369-1378. The purpose of this inscription may be to reserve the rights of watering at or near Ukhaiḍir. The Beduin put their tribe marks on ruins in the desert in order to prove that the region (water and pasture) is theirs. This is their way of annexation. The whole is very doubtful; but we have made out at least something. The words that are absolutely certain are [Image of Arabic writing not available.], and [Image of Arabic writing not available.] ’
The result, as Professor Littmann observes, is small; but we have at any rate the assurance that the graffito is not very ancient and that it is not concerned with the building or restoration of the palace. The water to which it alludes must be the well in the Wâdi al-Ubaiḍ.
The name ‘Ukhaiḍir’ is not mentioned by historians or geographers. Like so many of the place-names now current in the desert it is in all probability comparatively modern. Mshattâ, Qṣair ‘Amrah, Kharâneh, are not known to history under those titles; even the word ‘Ḥamâd’, which is applied universally to the high and barren steppes of the northern Syrian desert, is not used by any mediaeval writer. But the root from which ‘Ukhaiḍir’ is derived, signifying primarily to be green and therefore easily applicable to any spot where there is water or verdure, is found in other place-names. The palace or ḥîrah of the Umayyads in Damascus was called ‘al-Khaḍrâ’,[430] and Balâdhuri mentions another Khaḍrâ, in or near Kûfah, in his description of that city.[431] It would, however, be vain to attempt to identify the Khaḍrâ of Kûfah with Ukhaiḍir, though some at least of the place-names given in Balâdhuri’s catalogue denote sites well without the limits of Kûfah itself, and even at considerable distances from the town. Khawarnaq, for example, comes into the list, and a building or village called Qaṣr al-Muqâtil, which is stated by Yâqût to be either between ‘Ain al-Tamr and Damascus, or near al-Quṭquṭâneh and Sulâm.[432] Quṭquṭâneh we know to be the modern Ṭuqṭuqâneh, and Sulâm I must connect with the well of the same name, of which I heard as lying under the Ṭâr east of Ukhaiḍir a little to the south of my path to Mudjḍah and ‘Aṭshân.[433] Qaṣr al-Muqâtil is said by Ṭabari, by Balâdhuri, and by Yâqût to have been called after a certain Muqâtil ibn Ḥasân ibn Tha’labah ibn Aus ibn Ibrâhîm ibn Ayyûb ibn Madjrûf ibn ‘Âmir ibn ‘Uṣayyah ibn Imra’al-Qais ibn Zaid Manât ibn Tamîm, who would seem to have lived during the Days of Ignorance, and in fact the Qaṣr of the Banû Muqâtil is mentioned by Ibn al-Athîr in his account of the movements of Persian and Mohammadan leaders which preceded the battle of Qâdisiyyeh.[434] From a further passage in Ibn al-Athîr it would appear to have
lain near Quṭquṭâneh, on the road from Kûfah to Anbâr.[435] Yâqût states that ‘Isâ ibn ‘Ali ibn ‘Abdallâh (who was great-uncle to the khalif Manṣûr) demolished and subsequently rebuilt Qaṣr al-Muqâtil, and that it belonged to him: he goes on to quote a couplet of Ibn Takhmâ al-Asadi: ‘Methinks there is not in the Qaṣr, the Qaṣr of Muqâtil, or in Zûrah, any pleasant shade or a friend;’ from which I infer that the Qaṣr was not a walled palm garden, like the modern quṣûr in the vicinity of the Baḥr Nedjef, and therefore that it may well have been an isolated castle in the desert. I do not wish to suggest that there can be any certainty in identifying Ukhaiḍir with the Qaṣr al-Muqâtil, but I would nevertheless call attention to the following points:
1. It is strange that a building as important as Ukhaiḍir should not have been mentioned by historians or poets, since the district in which it stands was the theatre of much action during the first hundred and fifty years of the Hidjrah.
2. The position of the Qaṣr of Muqâtil, so far as somewhat vague indications allow it to be determined, would not accord ill with the site of Ukhaiḍir.
There is, however, another way of accounting for the silence of early records, namely, by supposing that Ukhaiḍir was not in existence at that period. In this matter we can be guided only by such deductions as can be made from the plan, structure, and decorations of the palace.
The plan of Ukhaiḍir is in many respects more closely related to that of the palace of Khusrau at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn than to the plan of Balkuwârâ. The latter palace is a further development of the scheme which is represented in a less complete form by the two other buildings. That this further development necessarily implies the lapse of any long period of time, or indeed of any appreciable period of time, between the erection of Ukhaiḍir and the erection of Balkuwârâ, I am not prepared to assert; it might be taken to denote no more than that in the one case the architects were called upon to construct a remote hunting palace in the desert, while in the other they were laying out a princely dwelling in the capital of the empire. A similar explanation might be given to account for the difference between the beautiful and varied stucco work of Balkuwârâ, wherein the influence of Hellenistic Syria and Coptic Egypt is apparent, and the limited range of the decorations of Ukhaiḍir, confined as they are to motives which had been borrowed by the Sasanians partly from Mesopotamian Hellenism, and partly from the Assyro-Babylonian tradition. But I cannot regard such reasoning as wholly convincing. The difference both in decoration and in structure between Ukhaiḍir and the buildings at Sâmarrâ are such as to place the foundation of the one considerably earlier than the foundation of the others.
As regards structure one of the most significant indications of date is the curve of the arches. Ukhaiḍir belongs to the time of transition from the round or ovoid to the pointed arch. This transition must have been accomplished in Mesopotamia during the course of the eighth century. While the Sasanian vault is invariably round or elliptical (I attach no importance to the fortuitous appearance of the pointed vault in the substructure at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn), the Sasanian arch is, so far as my knowledge goes, invariably round. The arches of Sarvistân are specifically stated to be round,[436] the arches of Firûzâbâd are also round, though where the arch is set back upon the jambs a tendency to give a curve to the angle lends to them the appearance of a horse-shoe.[437] All the arches of the Ctesiphon façade are round, and at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn the builders knew no other form. It has been contended that the pointed arch is found in the upper gallery on the interior of the east wall at Ctesiphon, but Dr. Herzfeld has shown satisfactorily that the curve assumed by those arches was dictated by their peculiar construction.[438] The pointed arch, like the pointed vault, may have been used sporadically in the pre-Mohammadan era (it is found in the church of Qaṣr ibn Wardân, which must have been built about the year A.D. 564[439]); it was latent in Sasanian architecture; but it was not until the eighth century that it passed into familiar use. In the Umayyad buildings on the western side of the desert, it appears side by side with the round arch, and at Hammân al-Ṣarakh, Ṭûbah and Mshattâ it assumes exactly the same shape in which we have it at Ukhaiḍir, a slightly stilted, pointed ovoid which bears the hall-mark of its descent from the Sasanian elliptical vault. Similarly at Ukhaiḍir it has not yet ousted all other forms; there are examples in the palace of the true ovoid arch and even of the round arch. The builders of Sâmarrâ went a step further. Their arches have shaken off all connexion with the Sasanian ellipse and have taken on the curve which was to become typical from that time forward of the Mohammadan pointed arch.[440] Of the same character are the arches of the Baghdâd gate at Raqqah, which cannot be earlier than the reign of Manṣûr and may with greater probability be assigned to Hârûn al-Rashîd.[441] It would therefore appear to be certain from the evidence which we possess that in the first half of the ninth century, and possibly as early as the close of the eighth century, the pointed arch had come into systematic use in Mesopotamia, to the exclusion of all other forms, and if that be the case, Ukhaiḍir must belong to an earlier period, more closely approximating, as I would suggest, to the period which witnessed the same transition stage on the Syrian side of the desert, a stage which falls there into the first half of the eighth century.
From the details of arch construction little help is to be derived. The double ring of brick voussoirs, the inner horizontal, the outer vertical, is common to Ctesiphon and to Sâmarrâ, as well as to the Syrian ḥîrahs of the intervening age. The system of arch-building over temporary or permanent centerings has been shown by Dr. Reuther to be practised to the present day, but so far as I am aware, arches set back from the jambs, such as those which were built over temporary centerings in the Sasanian palaces and in Ukhaiḍir, are not present in monumental buildings at a later date. There is no recorded example of this construction at Sâmarrâ.
Neither do the horse-shoe arches of the central court afford any conclusive evidence as to date. In all probability the horse-shoe arch was used in Mesopotamia long before Ukhaiḍir was built, and it is used to this day. It appears at Tâq-i-Girrâ, a monument of which the date is not determined, though the classical workmanship of its mouldings indicates a period early in the Christian era;[442] it is found in a Hellenistic vault at Chiusi,[443] and it is common in the churches of Syria. To the north of Mesopotamia there is an early example of its use in the basilica at Mayâfârqîn.[444] As for the methods of vaulting employed at Ukhaiḍir they exhibit no features which are not present in the Umayyad buildings on the Syrian side of the desert, but in some respects, for example in the use of the groin and of the fluted dome, they are in advance of Sasanian construction.
I have already called attention to the points of similarity between Ukhaiḍir and Kharâneh. They have a certain weight in the chronological problem although they do not afford decisive evidence as to identity of date. With identical requirements details of structure are apt to remain the same over long periods of time. The loophole windows at Abû Hurairah and at Raqqah,[445] in buildings which must be placed in the middle of the twelfth century, differ little, if at all, from those of Ukhaiḍir and Kharâneh. Nor is the coincidence in the latter two monuments of a decorated chamber to the right of the audience room in itself a determining factor. The same scheme may have existed in Mohammadan palaces later in date than Kharâneh, but unfortunately the later palaces have not been preserved or are not yet adequately explored. Possibly the excavations at Sâmarrâ may throw further light on the subject.
There is, however, another matter which must be taken into account. The palace of Ukhaiḍir could not have satisfied the needs of any but a very primitive society. It contains no bath, that indispensable requisite of existence in hot climates, nor any sanitary arrangements whatsoever. Moreover the seclusion of the ḥaram courts is very imperfect, a fact which points to a primitive stage of Islâm. It is true that the ḥaram courts are separated from each other and from the central court of honour, but they are overlooked by the windows of the two upper stories of the northern block, which must have belonged to the public part of the palace. Doorways open from the first floor on to a roof which is continuous with the roof of the ḥiram lîwâns, and even if low walls divided the roof spaces, the guests or guards who were lodged in the upper story had an uninterrupted view into all the courts below. When I first visited Ukhaiḍir I found it inhabited by some Arabs from Djôf. The wives and families of the shaikhs had taken possession of the rooms on the first floor, where none of my servants were allowed to penetrate. They dwelt there because, if they had occupied the lower courts, their movements could have been observed from above.
All these observations point to, or can be reconciled with, a date in the eighth century for the building of the palace, but whether it belongs to the late Umayyad or to the early Abbâsid period cannot be decided from internal evidence. The sister buildings on the western side of the desert are Umayyad, but on the other hand Ya’qûbi, writing towards the close of the ninth century, mentions the fact that the castles of the Abbâsid khalifs were situated on or near the road to Mekkah. ‘He who wishes to travel from Kûfah to the Ḥidjâz goes out along the southern road by stations which are built and halting-places which are kept in repair, among which are the castles of the Hâshimid khalifs. The first station is Qâdisiyyeh.’[446] The Arabic word which I have translated ‘castles’ is quṣûr; it is the word which is applied to-day to the mud-walled palm gardens of the Baḥr Nedjef. Whether in this passage it should be taken to denote palm gardens or ḥîrahs situated along the Ḥadjdj road I do not know, but it is significant that, with the exception of Ukhaiḍir, no trace of any such ḥîrahs has remained to our day. Ukhaiḍir is not upon the road that runs from Kûfah to the Ḥidjâz, but neither is it more than two days’ journey removed from it. That the khalif Hârûn al-Rashîd carried his hunting expeditions into the region near Kûfah seems probable from the fact that it was on one of these occasions that he is said to have found the grave of the khalif ‘Ali at the spot which is now occupied by the city of Nedjef.[447] The story of the finding of the grave bears every sign of having been a legend invented by the Shî’ahs, but it lends additional colour to the supposition that the early Abbâsids frequented the eastern deserts in pursuit of game, and therefore that they may have possessed palaces outside Kûfah to which they were accustomed to resort. Manṣûr, the second of the line, founded Baghdâd in A.D. 762, and removed the offices of government thither from Hâshimiyyeh near Kûfah in 763. His predecessor Ṣaffâh had lived at Hâshimiyyeh near Anbâr: it was he who had transferred the capital from Damascus to ‘Irâq. Previous to 750, when the last Umayyad khalif, Marwân II, was deposed and slain, the eastern provinces of the empire were governed by powerful viceroys, and if Ukhaiḍir is to be regarded as pre-Abbâsid it is to one of these that it must be attributed. Men like Ziyâd ibn Abîhi or Ḥadjdjâdj, who controlled the riches of ‘Irâq and Persia, were scarcely second in wealth and power to the khalifs themselves. Ziyâd’s personal austerity is attested by historians who had no desire to depict the character of Mu’âwiyah’s vicegerent in a favourable light, but his architectural activity is shown not only by the number of mosques which he founded or rebuilt, but also by the erection of palaces at Baṣrah.[448] He died in A.D. 673 after holding his high office under ‘Ali and Mu’âwiyah for a period of nearly fifteen years. Ḥadjdjâdj was governor of ‘Irâq from A.D. 695 to 713. In the khalifate of Ḥishâm, Khâlid ibn ‘Abdallâh ruled over ‘Irâq for thirteen years (724-737), and Yûsuf ibn ‘Umar, who succeeded to the post, held it for seven years. Any of these men might have built and occupied palaces in the wilderness, imitating the practice of their Umayyad masters, and also of their Nu’mânid predecessors in the very region in which the Umayyad viceroys wielded in their turn an authority far greater than that to which the Arab princes of Ḥîrah could lay claim. But the existence of a miḥrâb in the mosque fixes a date before which it is unlikely that Ukhaiḍir could have been built. According to Mohammadan writers, the first miḥrâb was that which was constructed in the mosque of Medînah between A.D. 709 and 711, and if that be so Ukhaiḍir cannot be placed earlier than the last years of Ḥadjdjâdj. I take the years 709-711 as the earliest possible date and the khalifate of Hârûn al-Rashîd as the latest possible date, and with due regard to the probable age of the Syrian palaces on the one hand, and to the architectural features of Ukhaiḍir as compared with those of Raqqah and Sâmarrâ on the other, I conclude that Ukhaiḍir must have been built towards the middle of the eighth century.
This leads me back once more to the Qaṣr of Muqâtil, which, though it was in existence during the pre-Mohammadan and Umayyad periods, was destroyed and rebuilt by ‘Îsâ ibn ‘Ali; and without insisting upon the identity of the two, I submit that the suggestion that they may be identical is not groundless. The well in the Wâdi al-Ubaiḍ is the only spot in the region immediately south of the lake of Abû Dibs at which fresh water can be obtained, and for that reason it was probably always frequented. That no advantage should have been taken of it at a time when Ḥîrah and Kûfah were rich and important centres of population is difficult to suppose. But whatever habitation was in existence on the Wâdi al-Ubaiḍ during the Days of Ignorance, it cannot have been the same as the palace of Ukhaiḍir, which is indisputably of Mohammadan origin. The Qaṣr al-Muqâtil was, however, rebuilt in the early part of the Abbâsid era; and that is a date (and as I have attempted to show, it is the latest date) which is consistent with the architecture of Ukhaiḍir.
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