The origin, development, and decadence of the arts among the Arabs present one of the most remarkable aspects of mediæval history. As in the architectural monuments of every people can be read the chronicle of its religion, its government, and its manners, so the scanty memorials of the Spanish and Sicilian Moslems, which the destructive accidents of foreign and domestic violence and the intemperate zeal of superstition have permitted to descend to posterity, constitute an invaluable record of the canons of their faith, the customs of their social and intellectual life, the growth and consolidation of their wonderful empire. From the remotest antiquity to the advent of Mohammed in the seventh century nothing worthy of the name of architecture existed in the Arabian Peninsula. The very name of that art, which implies a settled and permanent habitation, was antagonistic to the habits and the traditions of a nomadic existence. As a rule, the nature of the country, the character of the soil, the scarcity of water, the difficulties of intercommunication, were insuperable obstacles to the foundation of cities and the promotion of mercantile and manufacturing industry. The roving Bedouin regarded with aversion and contempt all those whose avocations necessitated a fixed residence, and whose security was dependent upon walls and towers. His jealousy of power, which based the authority of his sheik upon a nominal allegiance, to be thrown off or resumed at will, was repugnant to and wholly inconsistent with the principles which insure the preservation of established government or the maintenance of regular communities organized for the common protection and benefit. It is true that in the kingdoms of Hira and Yemen, which formed respectively the northern and southern extremities of Arabia, towns of considerable magnitude existed. Mecca, the revered centre of a widely diffused idolatrous system, could boast a numerous population; and the commerce of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf sustained upon those waters a few insignificant and miserable seaports; but in none of these settlements—which scarcely deserved the name of cities—was to be found a single example of architectural symmetry or magnificence. Everywhere else throughout the illimitable area of the Peninsula appeared a monotonous solitude of barren rocks and shifting sands, unrelieved by vegetation, unpeopled by human beings, save the ferocious occupants of the Bedouin camp or the traders who guarded the straggling caravan. Agriculture, the substantial basis of every nation’s prosperity, was manifestly impossible in the Desert. Mechanical ingenuity, with such a limited field for its exercise, was necessarily reduced to the simplest apparatus which could produce the most ordinary and primitive results.

At long and irregular intervals merchants and pilgrims brought to Mecca and Medina uncertain and romantic accounts of the pomp and luxury of distant empires. Compared with the edifices of the nations which inhabited them, the dwelling of the wealthiest Arabian—of mean appearance, suggestive of little comfort, utterly devoid of taste, and with no attempt at ornamentation—was hardly superior to a hovel. The famous Kaaba was itself an insignificant structure, deriving its importance solely from its sacred traditions, a mere barbarian depository of idols.

As was natural, and, indeed, inevitable, the Arab, in his career of victory, absorbed and insensibly appropriated the ideas and knowledge of the subjugated races who were his superiors in the arts of civilization. This process was greatly facilitated by the wholesale proselytism which was one of the principal incidents of Moslem conquest, and which led not infrequently to the practical apostasy of entire nations and their enlistment under the banners of Islam. In Egypt, Syria, Persia, the architectural memorials of the Arabs partook of the characteristics of the race whose influence predominated in the regions subjected to their authority, just as had been the case with all the victorious nations that had preceded them. In Spain, however, and also in Sicily, so far as we are able to conjecture, a greater originality distinguished the works of the conquerors than is to be observed in other countries. No well-defined connection with Oriental architecture can be detected in the splendid vestiges of taste and elegance which have survived their dominion nearly five hundred years. In the land illuminated by his genius and enriched by his industry, the Spanish Moslem is forgotten or absolutely unknown to the majority of the people; his memory is execrated as that of an infidel; his works are denounced as barbaric; the effects and the influence of his civilization are disputed or depreciated; his temples have been mutilated or entirely destroyed; his palaces transformed into the squalid haunts of mendicity and vice; while the leather-clad shepherd watches his flock on the once famous site of gardens adorned with magnificent villas and beautiful with all the luxuriant and fanciful horticulture of the East.

The Hispano-Arab age of architecture embraces a period of six hundred and ninety years from the foundation of the Mosque of Cordova in the eighth century to the completion of the Alhambra in the fifteenth. In that time it passed through many phases, whose peculiarities are clearly indicated by its surviving monuments, but whose order of progression is imperfect and whose limits are not accurately defined. Although the great temple of Islam, raised by Abd-al-Rahman, was largely composed of materials taken from the remains of classic antiquity, Arabic architecture borrowed nothing in design from the stupendous Roman ruins of the Peninsula. Admiration of their proportions and beauty had awakened a desire, not so much to imitate them, as to create something with which they might worthily be compared; edifices which would correspond with the tastes and necessities of an impetuous, highly organized, and passionate race, immoderately fond of variety and adornment, easily intoxicated with religious enthusiasm, devoted to the arts and whims of riotous sensuality. The gigantic mass of the pyramid, the elaborately sculptured façade of the Persian palace, the elegant forms of the Grecian temple and the Roman triumphal arch, might excite the awe of the Arab; but they appealed but slightly to his ardent sensibilities, and to his enthusiastic nature which wantoned in the creation of a thousand extravagant and fantastic visions. Ideas evoked by the masterpieces of antiquity, however, opened a new and alluring prospect to his talents and his ambition, and he soon became as proficient in the most durable of the arts of peace as he had been in the prosecution of conquest and the extension of dominion.

No people ever utilized to such an extent as the Arabs the materials perfected by the skill and the labor of their predecessors; and, it may be added, none in ancient or in modern times enjoyed such opportunities for, and reaped such benefits from, the ignoble work of spoliation. From the Bay of Biscay to the Himalayas, sumptuous palaces and temples were constructed by the Moslem conqueror from the splendid relics of Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Sassanian, and Indian civilization. Great capitals rose near the sites of cities whose origin was lost in antiquity, whose history went back to the beginning of the world. These works, while they displayed rather the consciousness of power than the evidences of taste, were eminently useful in laying the foundation of new forms of architecture, whose decorations were to exhibit forms of unparalleled magnificence and beauty. The plans of these structures were at first of the simplest character, their ornamentation coarse and barbaric. It was only when the supply of materials, great as it was, became exhausted, and the Arab architect was restricted to the efforts of his own unaided genius, that was developed that peculiar style, which, differing in its arrangement in every country, yet preserved a general resemblance in all, a type suggestive of the poetic rhapsodies of the Koran and the exigencies of a system of domestic seclusion and mystery; whose luxury recalled, by contrast, the heat and privations of the Desert; whose legends breathed a spirit of pious resignation and gratitude; whose adornments bewildered the eye with their complexity of form and variety of color; whose apartments were admirably contrived for the gratification of all the caprices of unbridled indulgence. The intimate connections and common belief of the different portions of the great Moslem empire disseminated far and wide the various stores of learning and experience acquired by each; the principles of every branch of art became more thoroughly understood, and their application facilitated and promoted through the encouragement afforded by increasing wealth and royal liberality. The early predilection displayed by the Arab student for the exact sciences contributed largely to the development and perfection of architectural excellence.

At first, the art of building had been merely constructive, without embellishment, merit, or originality; the materials, the plunder of antiquity; the style, a feeble and debased imitation of the simplest parts of those noble piles which had been the admiration and the glory of the ancient world. Familiarity with these models, acquaintance with the principles of mathematical science, a spirit of emulation excited by the hope of substantial reward, erelong produced a race of builders whose creations denote a new and splendid epoch in the history of architecture. As in the beginning, no conditions could have been more unfavorable to the development of this art; in the end, on the contrary, no people ever attained to greater distinction in the graceful outlines, the exquisite beauty, the elaborate decoration of their edifices. The importance of these results is manifest from the circumstance that they were ordinarily achieved by the use of the most homely materials and by the application of the simplest rules of geometry.

The Arabs of Africa and Spain usually employed in their more massive constructions a conglomerate material composed of lime, clay, and pebbles, called “tabbi” or “tapia,” which was well known to the Romans and is mentioned by Pliny. This mixture, which formed the body of the edifice and in time acquired an extraordinary solidity and hardness, was often faced with dressed stone or a coating of cement, which united compactly with the central mass, and whose excellent quality is attested by specimens of masonry that have existed, practically intact, for the long period of eleven centuries. In some instances, large bricks, often deeply grooved to admit the mortar, were used instead of tapia; in others, the entire wall was composed of hewn stone; the Mosque of Cordova presents examples of all three of these methods of construction. Where the clay of the material contained oxide of iron, which was sometimes the case, it imparted to the building a delicate tint, like that of the petals of a rose, as in the Alhambra, which derived its name from the color of its walls.

The excellent preservation which characterizes the Moorish monuments of the Peninsula after centuries of spoliation and neglect attests the substantial nature of their foundations, and the care and skill which must have been employed in their erection. Many of these structures, from their massive proportions, their projecting buttresses, their elevated towers and bristling ramparts, suggested rather a defensive fortress than the abode of princely luxury or a temple dedicated to the God of mercy and of peace. While no creed was so much abhorred by the Arab as that of the Magi, still he did not disdain to crown the summits of his mosques and minarets with the flame-shaped battlements of Persia, emblematic of the adoration of Fire. The Mosque of Cordova, the Giralda of Seville, and many of the edifices of Northern Africa display this striking and favorite ornament, which was preserved throughout the entire Moslem domination in the Peninsula, and glitters alike in the mosaics of the Alhambra, in the golden embroidery of textile fabrics, and among the rich and splendid illuminations of the Koran.

In both the strengthening and the embellishment of his work, no artist ever made use of the arch with greater effect than did the Moslem. The variations of its curve indicate successively the different phases assumed by Hispano-Arab architecture from the eighth to the fifteenth century. Some of its adaptations, for instance, that of the ajimez, or double window divided by slender columns, probably originated in Moorish Spain, whose buildings offer exquisite examples of its employment for the combined purposes of utility and decoration. The earliest arch, and the one most frequently adopted during the Ommeyade Khalifate, was the horseshoe form, whose symbolic derivation ascends to the primitive ages of phallicism and recalls the homage once paid to the vivifying principles of Nature. The emblems of that worship, a worship whose impressions Christianity could modify but was unable to extirpate, were, from the earliest times, regarded as potent talismans against every species of malign or demoniac influence. In the Middle Ages, European Christians wore these emblems as amulets; they carved them upon the altars of their shrines; they perpetuated them in their spires and the pinnacles of their cathedrals; they revered them in the sacred forms of the cross and the crucifix. It has been from time immemorial a custom in Northern Africa to place by the entrances of houses, as a security against the evil-eye, the symbol familiar to Hindu superstition as the Yoni. From this ancient practice was derived the sweeping curve of the ultra-semicircular arch, which occupies such an important place in Arab architecture, and whose appearance was considered an augury of good fortune to all who passed the portals of Moslem palace, mosque, or private residence. The facility of modification which this object affords has caused it to be represented under a great variety of forms; and the persistence of a custom whose origin is popularly unknown and whose peculiar significance has long been forgotten is demonstrated by the practice of fixing a horseshoe above the doors of dwellings, as a sign of auspicious greeting, still prevalent in many parts of the world.

The other Indian symbol, the Lingam, sculptured upon the eternal rock-temples of Hindustan, carried by the Egyptian priests in solemn procession during the festivals of Osiris, carved upon the Roman Termini, and fashioned into the crest of the cap peculiar to the Doges of Venice, it may be added, appears, to-day, delineated with startling fidelity to nature upon the coinage of the most practical and progressive of modern nations,—the United States of America.

The survival of the emblems and ceremonies of phallicism in both the Christian and Mohammedan systems demonstrates the ineradicable influence that worship has always maintained over the superstitious of every class, a class whose members are generally the most zealous for those observances which they do not comprehend; and presents one of the most curious and entertaining episodes in the annals of human inconsistency and unquestioning devotion.

The employment of the arch, at first solely utilitarian, with the progressive development of artistic conceptions, became in the end merely a means of architectural adornment. The effect of the delicate filigree arcades of the Alhambra, whose fragile materials seem inadequate to support the cornices and entablatures apparently resting upon them, is illusory; they are mere structural fictions of the Moorish designer. A regular series of progressions is traceable from the bold horseshoe sweep of the early khalifate, through the engrailed, the slightly pointed, the polyfoil, the ogival arches, to the highly ornate and graceful curves of the palace of the Alhamares. Throughout all its modifications, however, certain characteristics survived; among them the spring of one or several arches from a bracket formed by the moulding of the capital, an arrangement peculiar to Arab architecture, and preserved long after the arch had ceased to be an essential element of its construction. Every variation of the segment of a circle which human ingenuity could devise furnished new resources to the Arab. The horseshoe form was more or less pronounced; the Roman received fresh embellishment at his hands; the ogival was plain, festooned, or serrated. The columns were unusually slender, after their type had been definitely established; in the edifices first erected, they were necessarily dissimilar in dimensions, in material, in form, in color, and in ornamentation, constituting, as they did, the spoil of a hundred edifices, collected in many and widely separated countries. In the Mosque of Cordova, the most striking instance of this indiscriminate employment of the plunder of antiquity, the columns had no bases, and were disposed at random without regard to the rules of architectural symmetry.

The weight of evidence seems to fully justify the opinion that the ogival or pointed arch, whose adaptation is so prominent a feature of Gothic construction, was introduced into Europe either through Sicily or Spain. Its invention cannot be attributed to the Arabs. It was known in Asia long before the time of Mohammed. It appears in the ruined palace of the Persian kings at Ctesiphon. It is by no means certain that it was not used in Sicily before the invasion of the Arabs. The latter were familiar with its form before the ninth century, for it was employed extensively in the Mosque of Tulun at Cairo.

The capital offers as great a variety in form and decoration as the arch; in some, the Corinthian, in others, the Composite order, prevailed; many again presented the most ornate and fantastic patterns, examples of the florid and decadent taste of Constantinople; in the last period golden inscriptions from the Koran in the graceful Arabic script replaced the Ionian volute and the classic acanthus.

In the art of mural decoration the Arab stands alone and unrivalled. The exterior of his edifices, as a rule, was bare and sombre, but within, the glowing imagination of the artist revelled in a myriad forms of exquisite taste and beauty. A religious system, whose simple doctrines appealed rather to the heart than to the senses; social customs, whose jealous observance forbade even the appearance of publicity, screened from the eyes of the curious the celebration of religious ceremonies and the instructive exhibition of domestic life and manners. For these reasons, few openings appeared in Moslem dwellings; windows were discouraged by the traditions of the harem; a single door was generally considered sufficient; and even the approaches to the mosques, whose crowds of worshippers necessitated many entrances, were so contrived that the interiors were not visible from the street.

In some cases where the peculiar sacredness of the structure appeared to justify a prodigality of adornment, the Spanish Arab departed from the rule which he ordinarily observed. The twenty-one portals of the great temple of Cordova were surmounted by ornamental panels, composed of bricks and stucco disposed in arabesque designs, one of the earliest forms of this charming method of mural decoration. Here also are exhibited the first examples of the marble lattice, whose interstices admit the air but exclude the light; and of the ajimez, or niche-shaped window, with its sweeping border and diminutive columns of verde-antique and alabaster. Carved in the lattices and mingled with the Persian ornaments of the doorways is to be seen the ancient suastika, or Sanskrit cross, symbolic of happiness and moral regeneration, and revered by the Aryan race as a precious talisman more than a thousand years before the Christian era. The recurrence of this emblem upon the walls of a Semitic temple—now dedicated to a worship to which the tenets of both Mohammedan and Hindu are equally abhorrent—is ironically suggestive of the instability of religious institutions. Another singular circumstance is the appearance of the Latin cross upon some of the capitals, unquestionably sculptured there before the erection of the building. When the antipathy of Moslems to the Christian emblem of salvation is remembered, this fact becomes not only extraordinary, but inexplicable. The Giralda of Seville, now believed to have been raised as a memorial of conquest, and to have served the double purpose of minaret and observatory, in the eyes of the Andalusian Moslems only inferior in sanctity to the Djalma of Cordova, displays, to a remarkable degree, the talent of the Moorish artist in the work of mural embellishment. Its majestic proportions, the unique and lavish character of its ornamentation, extended its renown to the uttermost regions of the East and made it the architectural pride and glory of Mohammedan Spain. Both it and the Mosque of Cordova are known to have been painted; the interstices of the elegant tracery of brick arabesques which covers its sides are said to have presented the brilliant hues of scarlet and azure, while the projecting designs were gilded, the whole forming a blazing mass of color whose combinations must have produced an inconceivably gorgeous effect.

The Byzantine derivation of many of the characteristics of early Hispano-Arab architecture is emphasized in the Giralda, whose construction, aside from its decorations, is almost the counterpart of that of the Campanile of Venice, with which it was practically contemporaneous. Inclined planes, or ramps, instead of stairways, afford, in both, access to the summit; and, while the Giralda is by far the more beautiful, their general similarity in plan, dimensions, and appearance cannot fail to impress the most heedless observer.

On the two principal structures of Moorish Spain devoted to the service of religion, the use of enamelled tiles as an element of external decoration, an art whose latest adaptations were also peculiar to the Arab and which was subsequently carried to such a degree of perfection, is first to be remarked. The Mosque affords but a few coarse and ill-arranged specimens; those of the Giralda are of far superior material and finish, and from the comparatively small number remaining we can form some idea of the appearance of this magnificent tower when, intact, its summit was girdled with these brilliant ornaments, whose polished surfaces flashed like jewels in the Andalusian sunlight.

The improvement in the manufacture and disposition of encaustic tiles is an index of the progress of the Spanish Moslems in the mechanical arts, as well as in the application of the principles of architectural ornamentation. During the final period of their dominion in the Peninsula, the use of tilework was practically confined to interiors, and it was in the Alhambra that it attained its highest development. In the bewildering complexity of patterns, in the accuracy with which their minute pieces are united, in the variety of colors, and in the exquisite taste with which they are combined, the mosaics of that palace are absolutely unapproachable by any similar work which has ever been produced by human skill. Their surfaces have all the brilliancy and polish of the finest porcelain. The edges of fragments which have been detached show marks of the file, evidence of the painstaking and conscientious labors of the Moorish artisan. These enamels are remarkable not only for their elegance, but for the radical difference which they present to the mosaics employed during the existence of the Khalifate of Cordova. The latter were not ceramic, but were prepared by laying the colors upon the wall, and then covering them with minute cubes of glass embedded in a transparent cement.

The Mihrab of the Great Mosque shows what results can be accomplished by this simple process. In its rich panels, arches, and cupolas, in the belts of inscriptions glowing with a score of brilliant hues, in the graceful interlacing arabesques, the crystal mosaics, in themselves imperishable, shine with undiminished lustre after a lapse of more than nine hundred years. The most celebrated productions of this description extant in the churches and mosques of Constantinople and in the cathedrals of Venice and Ravenna bear no comparison, save in the character of the materials employed, to those which adorn the sanctuary of the famous Moslem temple. The designs were undoubtedly traced by Arab artists, whose versatility is disclosed by their extraordinary proficiency in an art with which they must have been hitherto unfamiliar, and in whose successful manipulation they surpassed the masterpieces of Byzantine genius. No explanation has been given to account for the sudden disuse of a method of architectural embellishment at its culmination, in an example which has called forth the praise of thirty generations; but it is a well-established fact that, after the destruction of the khalifate in the tenth century, the employment of Byzantine mosaics, the most exquisite of the ornamental processes known to the Spanish Arabs, disappeared forever from the Peninsula. It may have been that its exotic derivation was to some extent responsible for its sudden and absolute extinction. The soseifesa, from the Greek ψήφοσις, “made of little stones,” as this mosaic was known to the Moors, was a distinctive product of Byzantine ingenuity. The material destined for the Mosque, as well as the workmen skilled in its use, were sent to the Khalif Al-Hakem II. by the Greek Emperor of Constantinople; and it was from these foreigners that the Moors learned the leading principles of an art which, long practised on the shores of the Bosphorus, had now become familiar to many cities of the Mediterranean coast. The jealous pride of the Arab—who was not averse to borrowing architectural ideas from different nations that were his masters in the science of construction, and many of which bowed under his yoke as tributaries—revolted perhaps at the open appropriation of an entire system from an enemy of his religion, and especially at the confession of intellectual inferiority that such an act might imply.

In the perfection of enamelled mosaics, however, his originality was undisputed; his artistic conceptions were untrammelled; and the proofs of his creative genius are written upon walls and columns which have excited the admiring wonder of architectural critics from countries unknown to both Europe and Asia at the date of their completion. The dadoes of the Alhambra, its pavement and its roofs, before systematic neglect and vandalism had accomplished their destructive work, undoubtedly presented a spectacle of unique and dazzling splendor. The total disappearance of at least one-third of the palace, and the shameless mutilation of the rest, have unfortunately deprived the architect of standards of comparison at different epochs, by which the various steps in the progressive development of the application of encaustic tiles might be definitely traced.

The most distinguishing characteristic of Arabic mural ornamentation, however, is the stucco work, which seems to have been of contemporaneous origin with the earliest monuments of the khalifate. Such was its prodigious improvement that specimens of the rude tracery executed in the eighth century on the walls of the Djalma of Cordova, and the delicate, lace-like effects produced in the fourteenth by the builders of the Alhambra, bear to each other scarcely a single point of resemblance. The secret of the composition of this material, which in time became as hard and durable as stone, is lost. It is supposed to have been made of pulverized marble, lime, and gypsum, mixed in certain proportions with the whites of eggs, and then, while in an almost fluid condition, run into moulds. It contained some substance noxious to all insects, for neither flies nor spiders are ever noticed on the walls of the Moorish palace. This singular property, which has contributed as much as any other cause to the preservation of this precious monument of Arab art, has been attributed by popular tradition to the presence of garlic in the mortar; but the odor of that plant, however pungent, must certainly have been dissipated in the course of years; and no substance known to modern chemistry will, if exposed to atmospheric influences, retain for centuries its qualities unimpaired. The moulding of the stucco ornaments facilitated their reproduction, and the multiplication of an infinite variety of designs. Of the latter, Contreras counted one hundred and fifty-two, all different, in a single apartment, the Hall of Comares in the Alhambra. Their effect was that of the richest embroidered tapestry, an illusion heightened by the hangings of embossed and painted leather often suspended beneath them. The peculiar textile resemblance of Arab mural decoration owed its origin to the drapery of the tent, and is a reminiscence of the nomadic life of the Desert.

In the presence of this gorgeous embroidery in stone, now resembling tissues of silken and gold brocade, and again assuming the delicate texture of lace, whose filmy and transparent meshes almost seem to move with every passing breeze, all appearance of solidity is lost. This pleasing artistic deception extends even to the construction of the arches, which appear to sustain the weights resting upon their curves by the influence of some mysterious principle unknown to the laws of mechanics. The explanation of the apparent phenomenon, however, disclosed a method as simple as it is ingenious. Upon the capitals were placed light but strong wooden beams, which, covered with plaster, were lost in the maze of ornament, while they formed the real support of the arcades whose substantial character is demonstrated by their successful resistance to the violence of the elements and the vandalism of man through many centuries. The interiors of the apartments of public institutions and royal habitations were covered with this kind of ornament disposed in high relief, and in which the stalactitic or pendentive vault—original with the Moorish architect—constituted a most attractive and prominent feature.

It would be impossible to enumerate the wonderful variety of forms which this plastic material was made to assume under the skilful manipulation of the artist. Diminutive colonnades, surmounted by delicate engrailed arches, medallions, festoons and wreaths, the armorial bearings and mottoes of the Alhamares, Arabic texts and legends which can be read from right or left with equal facility, and geometrical designs, whose elements are susceptible of an infinite number of changes and combinations, are the salient points which strike the eye and appeal to the imagination in those palatial halls which in their original condition must have exhibited a magnificence which baffled all description.

The stalactitic patterns, in whose elegant arrangement and marvellous diversity the constructive genius of the Moor especially delighted, were applied, not only to the cupolas, but in the angles along the frieze and upon the plane surface of the walls. The domes of the principal chambers of the Alhambra are entirely composed of these pendentives, whose pieces, in the most elaborate of their examples of artistic taste, number many thousand. The tenacity and strength of the material was vastly increased by the use of twigs and rushes buried in the fresh and yielding mortar, which was fastened to a wooden framework by nails plated with tin, which even now, when exposed to the air, show no evidence of corrosion.

With the exception of the columns, so conspicuous a peculiarity of Arabic construction, marble was sparingly used, although the quarries of Spain had been renowned from the highest antiquity for the quantity and excellence of their products. While a difference of opinion prevails among antiquaries upon this point, it is reasonably certain that the columns supporting the arcades of the Alhambra were originally gilded. In the Hall of Justice some of them are encased in mosaic, which produces an unique, if not a pleasing, effect.

Of equal originality and magnificence were the ceilings and the doors of the grand Moorish edifices. The art of marquetry offered to the Arab workman a field in which his characteristic love of detail and intricate combinations, aided by his unflagging industry, found full expression. In the buildings of the khalifate, the ceilings, instead of being either flat or vaulted, usually conformed in number and inclination to the roofs, which in the Mosque were nineteen, one for every nave. The rafters, carved upon three sides, enclosed spaces forming a regular series of panels painted with brilliant colors, and whose mouldings and other elevated portions were covered with gold. The woodwork was not infrequently inlaid with rare and precious substances, such as ebony and ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, lazulite, and various gems. In the later periods of the Moslem domination, the same materials were used, but more correct ideas of architectural construction governed their disposition. The primitive angular ceilings were supplanted by the hemispherical dome, whose surface, covered with superb geometrical tracery, blazing with vermilion, blue, and gold, displayed, in all its perfection, the utmost skill of the Moorish artisan. The doors and the lattices of the harem corresponded in style and workmanship with the ornamented interiors of the buildings, and it was not unusual for a single lattice which screened an opening but a few feet square to contain fifteen hundred pieces, combined in many complex and graceful geometrical patterns. The mimbar and the lectern of the Mosque of Cordova, already described in these pages, whose odoriferous and precious woodwork was fastened together with golden nails and enriched with jewels,—long the pride of the faithful and now the subject of the fruitless speculations of the historian,—were also examples of Arab marquetry produced in the very infancy of that art. The perfection subsequently attained in the carving of hard woods, which were often inlaid with arabesques in gold, silver, and copper, has never been surpassed.

In Sicily, less fortunate in this respect than Spain, not a single well-authenticated edifice of the Mohammedan domination is known to exist. The two great structures—the Ziza and the Cuba—in the vicinity of Palermo, assigned by doubtful authority to the tenth century, and certainly remodelled, if not entirely reconstructed, by the Normans, are the only examples by which we can form any conception of the architecture of a kingdom not inferior to the Cordovan khalifate in everything that implies an advanced state of intellectual culture and civilization. Their proportions are bold and massive; their exteriors, while by no means ornate, are decorated with a series of lofty recessed arches extending from the foundation to the frieze, the latter being formed by an Arabic inscription of gigantic dimensions which cannot now be deciphered. These buildings, with the exception of a few mosaics and some stalactitic ornamentation evidently of the time of the Normans, possess none of the distinguishing features of contemporaneous Saracenic architecture, a fact which has cast a well-founded suspicion upon their imputed Arab origin. The unprotected situation of Sicily, which exposed it to the incursions of every marauder, its succession of semi-barbarous rulers, its long and bloody civil wars, the unrelenting hostility of the See of Rome to everything connected with Mohammedanism, may account for the total disappearance of the superb architectural monuments which history informs us abounded during the Moslem rule. The same fate has befallen the productions of the mechanical and industrial arts, none of which, of any importance, or, indeed, of established authenticity, are preserved in either national museums or private collections. The memorials of Moslem civilization in Sicily, of which such copious and interesting details survive in the works of contemporaneous native authors, have therefore been practically annihilated. The absolute dearth of these objects of architectural and artistic ingenuity is the more extraordinary when the magnitude of the manufacturing and commercial interests of mediæval Sicily, the protection and encouragement afforded the Moslems by their conquerors, and the close relations they sustained with neighboring countries are considered.

The military structures of Mohammedan Spain exhibit the same general characteristics as do the other surviving examples of defensive architecture during the Middle Ages. As might be supposed from the purposes for which they were destined, and from their exposure to the uninterrupted warfare of many centuries, they have undergone radical changes, and at this distance of time it is usually impossible to determine which portions are of Arabic and which of Castilian origin. The only perfect surviving exemplar of Moorish fortification in the Peninsula is the Gate of the Sun at Toledo. The defensive works of the Spanish Arab were generally on an immense scale, and their construction was in strict conformity with the best known principles of military engineering. The walls were of great thickness and solidity, the towers square and disposed at frequent intervals, as, for instance, those of Granada, whose lines of circumvallation, while not of extraordinary extent, contained more than thirteen hundred. Covered ways and barbicans provided with battlements defended the approaches and protected the fortress itself from sudden and unexpected assault. The citadel, which frequently enclosed a considerable area, and whose precincts presented the appearance of a diminutive city, was at once the seat of the court with its numerous retinue, the head-quarters of the army, and the depository of the products of the mint and the arsenal. It communicated by means of subterranean passages, known only to certain officials of the government, with the other defences, and always with the outer wall of the city, thus affording a speedy and unsuspected means of escape in time of conspiracy or insurrection. With the exception of the Gate of the Sun at Toledo, Moorish citadels exhibit little attempt at ornamentation; the serious and important destination of these gigantic works is realized in their frowning aspect and their massive walls, which offered neither temptation nor opportunity for the exercise of decorative skill. Water was provided for the garrison not only by immense cisterns, but by galleries cut for long distances through the solid rock, below the bed of the stream which usually encircled the eminences upon which these strongholds were erected. Occasionally, when the situation of a tower afforded unusual security, its interior was finished with all the pomp and beauty of a royal residence.

The mosque, one of the most characteristic types of Arab architecture, preserved to the last in its plan and principles of construction the striking peculiarities of its origin. Although its design has been supposed to have been derived from the basilica, there can be little doubt that it was modelled after the Hebrew temple. Its rectangular form, its rows of colonnades, its mihrab, corresponding to the holy of holies, the fountains for ceremonial lustration, are all suggestive of the numerous points of resemblance existing between the Moslem and the Jewish faith. In spite of inherited prejudice, but a vague and ill-defined boundary has always separated these two great divisions of the Semitic race, which trace their common origin to Abraham. The simple luxuries of the Desert were commemorated, not only by the grateful sound of rippling waters, but by the perfume and the shade of the orange-trees of the court, which refreshed the senses of the worshipper and suggested to his vivid imagination dreams of a material and voluptuous paradise. The moderate height of the building exaggerated its already vast dimensions; the eye, bewildered by the forest of columns, vainly attempted to penetrate its interminable depths; and the impression of the infinite was heightened by superimposed tiers of interlacing arches, whose combinations recalled the graceful foliage of their prototype, the palm grove of Arabia.

The Moorish architecture of the Peninsula, as the reader has no doubt already observed, is remarkable rather for elegance than for grandeur. It was not like that of Egypt, dependent for its effect upon the lofty, the imposing, the colossal. The spirit of Grecian art, which found expression in structures whose perfect symmetry of form and correctness of detail have never been equalled, furnished to the Arab architect none of those artistic conceptions which were the inspiration of painters, sculptors, and builders in subsequent ages. The genius of the Arab was in general rather adaptive than creative, rather imitative than original. But while many of its ideas can be traced to the examples of former civilizations, a people who profited by and improved upon the suggestions of a score of races can hardly be said to have borrowed from any. While art, especially as applied to architecture, is an infallible index of the sentiments and mental peculiarities of the people by whom it is developed, none can claim absolute originality for its productions; all are necessarily dependent upon their predecessors for much of the creative influence by which they are actuated. This is particularly true of the Arabs of the Occident. Every nation of antiquity as well as of the contemporaneous world paid intellectual tribute to the great Moslem Empire of the West. Its mosques were Jewish, its fortifications Roman, its minarets Byzantine. The finest ornamentation of the exterior of its magnificent temple was derived from Ctesiphon, that of the interior from Constantinople. Its stuccoes came from Syria, its enamels from ancient Nineveh. The infinite combinations of its geometrical designs and its method of hanging doors had been familiar to the Egyptians three thousand years before they were employed in Spain. The capitals of the earliest columns are clumsy imitations of Grecian models. The researches of antiquaries have disclosed the germ of the pendentive vault in Persia, and the carved and painted ceiling of wood was used in the Orient long before the appearance of Mohammed. Even rubble-work, the basis of every kind of Arabic architecture, was a process which had been adopted in the construction of edifices from a remote antiquity.

Hispano-Arab architecture is ordinarily divided for convenience into three arbitrary and ill-defined periods,—the age of its origin, embracing the works attributable to the Ommeyade Khalifate; the age of its transition, which includes all constructions erected by the principalities which arose after the dismemberment of the Moslem empire; and the age of its culmination, which began with the rise of the independent kingdom of Granada in the thirteenth century and closed with the unrivalled excellence of the Alhambra. The monuments of the first period, of which the Mosque of Cordova is the most striking, and, indeed, practically the sole perfect exemplar, are widely scattered and incomplete.

The sumptuous edifices which abounded in every city have disappeared or have been mutilated almost beyond recognition. Barbaric violence has annihilated the palaces which lined the Guadalquivir, and whose richness and beauty were the admiration of the world. Ecclesiastical malignity has demolished to their very foundations or sedulously effaced the characteristics of the innumerable temples raised for the propagation of a hostile religion, and the extent of this systematic enmity may be inferred from the suggestive fact that of the seven hundred mosques required for the worship of the Moslem capital, but one has survived. Diligent antiquarian research has failed to establish even the sites of all but three or four of the remainder, of whose existence and splendor both history and tradition afford abundant and indisputable evidence. The ignorance and prejudice of successive generations have, in addition to the above-named destructive agencies, contributed their share, and no unimportant one, to the obliteration of these memorials of Arab taste and ingenuity.

The Mosque of Cordova represents every phase of Arabian constructive and decorative art during the period of two centuries which elapsed between its foundation and completion. It is, therefore, to that extent an architectural epitome of the development of Moslem civilization, in which, in a measure, can be deciphered the history of the race under whose auspices it was erected and adorned. While the technically independent character of Moorish architecture in the Peninsula has been long established, its originality is, as has already been stated, for the most part dependent upon ingenious combinations of elements afforded by the examples of former civilized nations. This fact becomes evident when the various portions of the Great Mosque are examined in detail, and is especially apparent in the magnificent decorations of the sanctuary. Here, while the plan and the designs were clearly of Arabic origin, the materials and the method of their application, and, indeed, even some of the artisans, were Byzantine. But these precious mosaics bear but little resemblance to those of contemporaneous Christian churches, which were identical with them in composition and in the manner of attaching them to the walls. What in the one instance seems the perfection of artistic beauty and excellence, in the others appears glaring, harsh, and grotesque; the sublime artistic genius, alone capable of creating these marvels, is absent. The Mihrab of the Mosque of Cordova had no prototype in Islam or elsewhere, and both its plan and details have defied all imitation.

The evolution of Arabic art in Spain is one of the most curious problems in the annals of its exotic civilization. Its origin and the impulse that first prompted its development, as well as the principal models from which it obtained its ideas, are buried in obscurity. No country in Europe contains such a variety of gigantic and well-preserved memorials of Roman imperial greatness as the Peninsula. But with the exception of the city walls and the castles, there is no evidence that the Arabs were ever so impressed with their grandeur as to make even an ineffectual attempt to imitate them. The isolation of Mohammedan Spain, whose dominant sect was discredited, and whose dynasty was proscribed by the ruling Houses of Syria and Persia, was long unfavorable to the maintenance of those relations by means of which an interchange of ideas and the rapid progress of a nation in the arts of peace is ordinarily effected. The steps by which the architectural conceptions of many Oriental nations became the inspiration of the builders of the Western Khalifate are therefore undiscernible. It is possible, however, that these ideas, apparently borrowed but developed under similar conditions along the same lines of thought, are after all original. The great importance attached by the Arabs to mathematics, in the study of which they attained to such unrivalled proficiency, must, as already suggested, have contributed more to architectural improvement than any other cause. The application of algebra to geometry—an invention ascribed, with a considerable degree of certainty, to the Spanish Moslems—immeasurably facilitated the development of every art dependent upon mechanical and mathematical conditions, and none is more indebted to it, in this respect, than the art of construction. Long anterior to the tenth century, the epoch of the most advanced civilization of the khalifate, the schools of Cordova, Seville, Valencia, Malaga, and Toledo gave instruction in geometry, drawing, and other branches of mathematics pertaining to architecture, the lessons being supplemented by practical demonstrations of the application of their principles under the direction of experienced masters. Under such circumstances, the standard of Moorish taste was formed, and its ideas of constructive excellence definitely established in the first and most important stage of its development. The genius which inspired its early creations, the dreams which spurred on its youthful ambition, were never lost until the crowning glory of its achievements fell before the conqueror, and its artisans and their productions alike were trampled in the dust by the ruthless chivalry of Castile.

The age of transition has left no memorials from which an intelligent idea of its progress can be obtained. The Giralda of Seville is the only one which exists in tolerable preservation, and it affords an example of exterior ornamentation alone. In the Alcazar may be observed labors which were evidently completed at different epochs; but no information is available of the dates at which they were executed, nor can it now be ascertained how much is of Arab origin and how much should be attributed to Mudejar influence. The damage this palace has suffered, and the material alterations it has undergone at the hands of monarchs devoid of taste and of appreciation of the noble works of the Moors, have practically destroyed its identity, and have rendered it, on account of its absurd and incongruous additions and reparations, the despair of both the archeologist and the architect. The characteristics of Arabian art are better preserved and more easily traced in the edifices of Granada erected by the dynasty of the Alhamares, and which represent the final period of its development.

The Alhambra—a structure in whose luxurious elegance are embodied the results of seven centuries of progress—is the type and crowning triumph of this epoch. In its sumptuous apartments are to be found none of the peculiar features to be observed in the buildings of the first era of the Moslem domination; none of the severe dignity, the sombre majesty, the fatalistic conceptions, the tendency to exclude all but the simplest forms of ornamentation, which distinguish the earliest portions of the Djalma of Cordova. The horseshoe arch has disappeared or has been radically modified; its importance as a talisman is apparently no longer recognized; and it has given place to other symbols of less obscure origin and meaning. Here one of the most important of Koranic precepts is violated; animal forms are represented in paintings as well as in sculpture; and the curiosity of the artist is gratified by a delineation of physiognomy, costume, and manners, unique of its kind, and still abhorred as idolatrous by the orthodox zealots of the Mohammedan world. The conditions of domestic life, exacted by and dependent upon the traditions of the harem, are everywhere observed,—in the frowning exterior; in the isolated courts; in the guarded communications; in the ponderous doors; in the mysterious lattices; in the exquisite decorations; in the distribution of appliances for physical enjoyment which have exhausted the resources of Oriental luxury. The Arabic love of variety and magnificence, so characteristic of an impulsive, a versatile, a highly romantic race, is visible on every side; in the arrangement of columns, now single, now grouped; some smooth, others belted with rings, the majority once covered with gilding, a few still encased in an enamel of sparkling mosaic; in the composite curves of the arches, each disclosing the distinctive traits of its original type,—horseshoe, ogival, semicircular,—some engrailed, others stalactitic, all of incomparable grace and symmetry; in the spandrels, at short distance, apparently identical, yet upon close inspection moulded in a score of fantastic designs, through whose lace-like interstices the rays of sunlight diffuse a mellowed glow; in the maze of polished tilework, whose bewildering combinations are but broken sections of the nine polygons of geometry, arranged by the aid of algebraic science; in the fretted walls with their gorgeous arabesques; in the intertwined mottoes, doubly legible; in the cupolas, whose decorations of azure, scarlet, and gold sparkle in the semi-obscurity of the interior like a setting of precious gems. The eye of the hypercritical architect sees in the Alhambra but a confused jumble of incongruous ideas; a construction without recognized precedent; a monument which belongs to no order of architecture, and which transgresses the established rules of that science as radically as the productions of many authors, whose genius is the delight of millions, do the unities of time and place, once universally considered the essentials of poetic excellence. But it is this very irregularity, this independence of the arbitrary and inflexible principles of art, that, to the unprofessional observer, constitutes its greatest charm. The originality of its component parts when analyzed may be disputed, but no question can arise as to the consummate skill that arranged and combined them in a whole, which, although it may offend the canons of artistic criticism, if strictly construed, is yet beautiful, harmonious, enchanting. The famous Arabian palace is the masterpiece of the Moorish architects of Spain; the crowning achievement of the labors of twenty generations; the embodiment of the most elegant conceptions of the art, the industry, and the intellectual culture of that polished age. So long as the slightest portion of it survives, it will convey an instructive lesson to the student and the antiquary, and call up memories of that great empire, whose literary remains, whose scientific discoveries, whose large tolerance, whose inquiring spirit, were at once the harbingers and the incentives of modern civilized life. All that is valuable in the economic institutions of society, in its multitudinous inventions, in its facility of intercommunication, in the excellence of its fabrics, in the perfection of its agricultural operations, has long been recognized as dependent upon the practical and judicious application of the principles of science. Of these considerations, the Alhambra, which was the centre of the most accomplished and progressive community of the Middle Ages, is particularly suggestive. It is a monument of national genius. It is a symbol of national progress. It looked down upon the libraries which sheltered the fragments of that civilization whose learning had enlightened the mediæval world. In its halls the prodigal luxury of the Moorish princes daily exhibited exquisite specimens of the experience and dexterity of the artisans of the kingdom,—the masterpieces of the weaver, the cutler, the armorer, the jeweller, the enameller. Its painted battlements towered above the lists where Moslem and Christian knights had competed for the prize of chivalry and daring, bestowed by the emir surrounded by the pomp of arms and the beauty of the seraglio. Thus was the Alhambra the emblem of the greatness and splendor of Granada, the boast of its monarchs, the wonder of strangers, the pride of the people. Its glory has departed, its lustre is tarnished, but the mournful traditions with which poetry and romance have invested its history can never pass away; and its fate is emphasized by the mottoes of the sovereigns who respectively founded and mutilated it, still emblazoned upon its walls, the arrogant vaunt of the Spaniard, “Plus Ultra;” the pious device of the Moor, “There is no conqueror but God.”

The injunction of Mohammed concerning the representation of animal forms was disregarded almost from the earliest days of Moslem dominion. Even before the tenth century, Mussulman artists who depicted living beings seem to have abounded in the countries subject to Islam. A biography of them is given by Makrisi, in which great talents are ascribed to those of Egypt. Their works were displayed not only in wood and stone, but on silk, velvet, and cloth of gold. The treasury of the Fatimite Khalif, Mostansir, contained peacocks and gazelles of life-size, made of the precious metals enriched with magnificent gems. Al-Amin, the son and successor of Harun-al-Raschid, possessed a number of magnificent barges, fashioned like birds and animals and painted in imitation of their living models, whose oarsmen were concealed from view. As these monsters, apparently instinct with life, moved mysteriously over the Tigris, they excited the astonishment of the multitude as inventions of the genii. From the statement of the great historian, Ibn-Khaldun, who visited Granada in 1363, the representation of well-known events, as well as of the features of distinguished personages on the walls of houses in that city, must have been common. He was greatly scandalized by this unorthodox custom, which, although deriving its origin from the Castilians, was constantly practised by those who called themselves good Mussulmans, among whom were numbered many artists who had been instructed by the Byzantine and Persian residents of the capital.

Nor was sculpture, an art implying an even more flagrant violation of Koranic precept than that exhibited by the less conspicuous objects produced by the brush and the pencil, neglected by Mohammedans. Arabic histories are full of allusions to these productions. Khumaruyah, Sultan of Egypt, in the ninth century had a great hall in his palace filled with statues of the women of his harem. The knockers on the doors of many of the mansions of Bagdad were carved in the shapes of grotesque animals. Existing examples, few as they are, of the sculpture of the Hispano-Arab period show to what an extent religious prejudice was defied by the Mussulmans of Spain.

The doctors of the law disagreed as to the interpretation of the command of the Koran which banished from the realm of art one of its most useful and suggestive features. Some regarded it in the light of an absolute prohibition to be construed in its broadest significance; to others it seemed to refer only to the fabrication and worship of idols. The Spanish Arabs, who had greater liberality and a larger share of philosophical indifference than their Oriental brethren, apparently adhered to the latter opinion. At all events, the admonition generally respected as a cardinal principle of the orthodox believer was ignored from the very foundation of the khalifate, and even the sanctuary of Islam was defiled by the presence of sculptured forms of animal life; in the Great Mosque of Abd-al-Rahman, the Seven Sleepers and the raven despatched from the ark by Noah are chiselled upon the capitals; over the portal of Medina-al-Zahrâ stood the effigy of the beautiful favorite whose vanity had suggested the erection of that magnificent edifice; its principal fountain was embellished with the figures of twelve different quadrupeds of gold incrusted with precious stones; in the designs of its rich hangings were interwoven wild beasts and birds of brilliant plumage, whose forms, delineated with amazing skill, appeared to move with the swaying of the silken tapestry; in one of the squares of the capital stood a lion, cast in bronze and plated with gold, whose eyes were rubies, and from whose mouth gushed the refreshing waters brought from the springs of the distant sierra. In the fairy palace of Rusafah, equal to its rival in the splendor of its appointments and inferior only in dimensions, silver swans floated upon the glossy surface of the lakes, and the fountains displayed the effigies of men and animals carved in marble and jasper by a cunning hand. The talismanic horseman of King Habus, described in history and immortalized by fiction, is another instance of this disregard of Koranic injunction, again confirmed by the two marble lions of the Moorish mint and by the famous twelve of the Alhambra.

But the most curious of these examples of violated law are the paintings upon the ceiling of the Hall of Justice in that palace, and which are supposed to have been executed during the fourteenth century. Two of them represent scenes of war and the chase, but no data survive by which it can be determined whether they are historic or legendary. The third contains portraits of ten kings of Granada, whose rank is indicated by the royal blazons represented in the central painting. The faces, sober, dignified, majestic, are evidently drawn from life, and a tradition exists that the features of some of them were recognized by old Moslems of Granada when, after the Reconquest, they were for the first time exposed to public inspection; while the turbans, the flowing robes of various colors, the swords with curious hilts and scabbards of gold and silver, the yellow slippers, at once suggest the Orient; and place before the eye the exact costumes, and perhaps the lineaments, of those princes who long maintained in a corner of hostile Europe the legends, the belief, and the civilization of the Mohammedan world. These unique works are of Arabic origin, a fact established by the monograms traced upon them, which denote unmistakably the nationality of the artist. In numerous particulars they indicate lack of experience and cultivation. The figures are rudely delineated, the positions strained and awkward. None exhibit the slightest grace; some are absolutely grotesque; the colors are not distributed harmoniously; no attention is paid to the rules of perspective; the lines are sharply and unpleasantly defined; there is no symmetry of proportion, no dexterous imitation of those natural features which impart to a painting life and energy. The mechanical arrangement is as crude as the pictorial execution. Upon a wooden framework, pigskins were stretched and fastened, and over these a layer of gypsum was spread, forming the foundation for the colors. The flatness of the latter and the golden ground of the portraits are indications of Byzantine taste and influence.

Among the architectural decorations employed by Moorish artists, none were more popular or more susceptible of variety of arrangement and harmony of effect than those formed by the letters of the Arabic alphabet. The inscriptions on the walls of Moorish edifices constitute no inconsiderable part of their choicest ornamentation. Those of the Peninsula are principally devoted to mottoes of a religious nature or to legends illustrating the grandeur and munificence of the sovereign. In some instances, a poem, evidently composed for the purpose, and celebrating the virtues of the prince or the beauty of the building it adorned, glittered upon the panelled walls or encircled the apartment with characters of living fire. The square Cufic letters used in the first buildings of the khalifate were eventually superseded by the graceful curves of the Neshki, of African script, which is seen in all its perfection in the Alhambra. So admirably are these characters adapted to the purposes of decoration that Spanish and Italian workmen, ignorant of their significance and supposing them to be arabesques, have frequently inserted Koranic inscriptions among the carvings of Christian churches; and it is said that they are even to be seen upon the proud façade of St. Peter’s at Rome. What a circumstance of exquisite irony it would be, as a French writer pertinently suggests, if, over the portal of the grandest temple of Christendom, the fountain of trinitarian orthodoxy, the stronghold of Catholicism, the seat of the infallible Vicar of Christ, should be found inscribed the Mohammedan declaration of faith proclaiming the mission of the Arabian Prophet and the unity of God!

The colors most affected by the Spanish-Moslem in his interior decorations were vermilion and ultramarine, both esteemed by artists as much for durability as for brilliancy; and the permanence of those used by the Moors of Granada, whose vivid tints have been perfectly preserved through the lapse of ages, attest their extraordinary purity and excellence. While these remained the basis of artistic coloring, others—such as green, black, yellow, and purple—were sparingly employed, excepting in the mosaics, which blaze with a mingled mass of gorgeous hues.

No feature of Moslem civilization has lingered more persistently in the Peninsula than its architecture. The scanty knowledge of the Visigothic builder was swept away by the Conquest. The pride of the Castilian, bred to arms and incompetent by education and experience, revolted at the restraints and drudgery incident to such an occupation. As a result, Arabic artisans constructed most of the edifices erected for years after the fall of the Saracen power, and the predominance of their artistic ideas gave rise to a new style called Mudejar, whose creations are often difficult to distinguish from those of the original Moorish order. No more flattering tribute can be paid to their accomplishments than the circumstance that no class of buildings profited so much by their talents as those erected under the auspices of the Church. After the capture of Cordova by the Castilians, Moorish masons and carpenters were compelled to work for a specified period every year on these sacred structures, in consideration of which they were exempted from the payment of taxes. Turbaned artificers, vassals of the clergy, assisted in the construction of some of the noblest piles of the Peninsula; the walls of great monasteries, the windows of lofty spires, exhibit the engrailed and horseshoe arches of the Moor; his skill was exercised in the chiselling of the intricate designs which cover the fronts of magnificent cathedrals; a chapel in the grand metropolitan church of Toledo, the seat of the Primate of Spain, which dates from the thirteenth century, is a beautiful specimen of Mudejar art. This influence is also apparent in many of the finest ecclesiastical edifices of France,—in the churches of Maguelonne, in the cathedral of Puy, and in the ancient abbeys of Provence and Languedoc. It is said by Dulaure, in his “Histoire de Paris,” that Moorish architects assisted in the construction of Notre Dame.

The absence of all remains of sepulchral architecture dating from the Mohammedan period deprives posterity of one of the most reliable standards by which the customs, the sentiments, and the characteristics of a nation may be determined. In common with all Semitic races, the Arabs seldom reared imposing monuments to the dead. No trace of a tomb which enclosed the body of any of the Ommeyade khalifs has been discovered; the very place of their erection was lost in the tempest of ruin which accompanied the Almoravide conquest. The few existing in the Alhambra were simple marble sarcophagi, without ornament, upon whose lids were sculptured long inscriptions in letters of gold on a ground of blue. Of these slabs but one remains, for the tombs, abandoned to the curiosity of the rabble when Granada was taken, perished, and the bones of the princes who had illumined all Europe by their genius and learning were unceremoniously cast outside the walls.

Deprived to a great extent of the artistic resources to be obtained from the representation of the forms of animal life, the Moslem utilized with unrivalled skill the segments of geometrical figures and the graceful foliage of the vegetable world for the manifold purposes of decoration. Every line in the complex designs of mosaic is the side or the curve of a polygon, a circle, or an ellipse; the eminently beautiful domes of wood and of stucco were suggested by the symmetrical productions of nature,—the hemispherical were modelled after the section of an orange, by which name they were known to the Arab; the stalactitic were striking adaptations of the pomegranate divested of its seeds. The arabesques are but reproductions of vines and tendrils combined in wonderful mazes of tracery; the lotus, that sacred emblem of India and Egypt whose mysterious significance was long a secret of the sacerdotal office, is sculptured upon panel, cornice, and capital; the rose nestles amidst the entwined ornamentation of the walls; the frondage of the palm is simulated by the sweeping arches which cross and intersect like the drooping branches of the date-forests of the Nile. By other classes of natural and inanimate objects, by the jewels of the firmament, and by the denizens of the sea, was contributed the inspiration that imparted to architectural adornment its choicest forms of elegance and beauty. The great marble shell, fifteen feet in diameter and carved from a single block, which covers the sanctuary of the Mosque of Cordova, is one of the most curious and highly finished works that ever proceeded from the chisel of the Moslem sculptor. Its fidelity to nature, its perfect proportions, the striking position it occupies, render it one of the most interesting objects in the ancient temple whose holy of holies it embellishes. Stars are scattered in endless profusion throughout the Alhambra; in the centre of mosaic designs; through the belts of floral patterns which encompass the halls; in the lofty ceilings, where in the uncertain light their golden lustre recalls the sparkle of their originals on the spotless ground of the Southern heavens.

The painted windows, sparingly distributed in buildings erected by the jealous Moslem, were yet one of their most enchanting and characteristic features. No trace of them appears in the constructions of the khalifate; their existence during the age of transition is a matter of conjecture; and it is only in the last half of the final period of Hispano-Arab architecture that this art attained its highest development. The labors of the Gothic artist have from time immemorial been celebrated as the most perfect of their kind; and the jewelled designs whose tints illumine the aisles of mediæval cathedrals would seem to be of incomparable brilliancy of color and harmony of effect. And yet competent judges have pronounced that these superb works were rivalled, if not surpassed, by the rich and elegant combinations of Arabian genius. There is no reason to believe that the execution of the windows was inferior in beauty to the decoration of the walls; the same dexterity of hand, accuracy of eye, and correctness of taste must have presided over both; and a glaring deficiency in any prominent part must have been prejudicial to all. The patience which was not exhausted by years of toil upon an object intended for the uses of the harem, and to be seen by comparatively few, would not be likely to neglect the designs whose gorgeous hues were a principal attraction of the palace, the ornament and the glory of the capital. The stained glass employed was of every color, and corresponded in pattern with the arabesques of the interiors; and the blazons and devices of royalty disposed at intervals through the mass of ornament reminded the observer of the greatness of the monarch under whose auspices the work was completed. The exquisite charm of these effects when combined with those of the walls and cupolas must be imagined, for no description can convey an adequate idea of their surpassing excellence.

Such was the rise, the progress, the culmination of architectural construction and embellishment in the states of Mohammedan Spain. The modifications—dependent upon economic conditions, upon wide and varied acquaintance with the masterpieces of other races, upon the development of more correct conceptions of the harmonious and the beautiful—which were undergone by this branch of the arts are more pronounced than is usually noticeable in the material and intellectual progress of a people from a state of barbarism to the highest point in the scale of civilization. The character of the Arab is, however, anomalous, independent of precedent, and apparently subject to few of those laws whose operation prescribes the career and fixes the ultimate fate of nations. The simplicity of form and comparative absence of decoration characteristic of a nomadic race are conspicuous in its first great architectural achievement,—a temple dedicated to the unity of God. In glaring contrast appears the culminating effort of its labors, a palace reared for the purposes of voluptuous indulgence, where even the principles of durable construction were apparently sacrificed to the pomp and prodigality of excessive adornment, a precursor of impending dissolution, an unmistakable indication of decadence. Thus the Arabs, like all races that preceded them, have recorded their deeds in the forms and inscriptions of their architectural monuments; permanent registers of the grandeur and depth of religious sentiment; suggestive memorials of proficiency in the arts of peace; potent manifestations of national genius, energy, and culture.

The artistic tastes of the Moslems, always largely controlled by pious considerations, were displayed, not only in the construction of splendid edifices, but in the embellishment of their most common accessories. The well-curbs, cylinders of marble or of enamelled pottery, girdled with raised inscriptions in gold and originally placed in court-yards, are examples of the persistence of Oriental tradition as well as of the reverence with which the Arab regarded that element which was the most precious treasure of the Desert.

The use of water for the purposes of ceremonial lustration is a custom of unknown antiquity. It was constantly employed in the sacerdotal mysteries of Egypt, India, Persia. The inhabitants of those countries venerated it as representing an active force in their systems of cosmogony. The Egyptians worshipped the Nile; the Hindus still sacrifice to the Ganges. By the former the rare geological formation of water crystals was regarded with peculiar reverence, because the drops thus mysteriously inclosed in their transparent envelope were believed to be spirits imprisoned by divine agency. In the traditions of Phœnicia the sacredness of springs was continually referred to; the Greeks assigned to each element a place in Olympus; the superstitious Roman sculptured his well-curbs with scenes of mythology or with graceful garlands of flowers. No nation of antiquity, however, ascribed such extraordinary importance to the divine virtues of water as the Hebrews. In the time of Abraham wells were regarded as of peculiar sanctity. Their locality confirmed the sacredness and obligation of an oath; it was a token of alliance, a place of reconciliation for enemies, a symbol which ratified and enforced the validity of contracts. The only permanent characteristic recognized by the nomadic Israelite was the possession of a well, which established the residence and station of his tribe.

The sacred character which invested the sources of water was intensified by the climatic conditions which magnified its importance and increased its value. It is not strange that the heat and drought of the Desert should have imparted to that indispensable fluid some of the beneficent attributes of Divine Power. The unsettled state of tribal existence is attributable solely to its scarcity. Its profusion was synonymous with fertility, prosperity, abundance. Its prominence, actual and symbolic, in the Jewish religious system constantly recurs in the Bible. The Hebrews made use of it on every important occasion, in every ceremony which called for the exercise of its mysterious virtues. They sprinkled it over the victims of sacrifice. They purified themselves with it before entering the precincts of the Temple. The veneration with which they regarded its ceremonial usage was transmitted to Christianity, which has consecrated its application as a rite indispensable to salvation. The dispersion of the Jews by the Romans familiarized every nation that received them with their customs, and not a few adopted the latter after more or less modification. Many of the fugitives settled in Yemen and other parts of Arabia, where their influence subsequently played an important rôle in the formation of the creed of Mohammed, whose doctrines are so largely of Hebrew and Christian derivation. From them the Arabs absorbed many traditions centuries old, which had been transmitted through numerous nations to the credulous Jews, who thus became the depositaries of all.