In the Land of Mosques & Minarets

, but again the Roman, or Lombard, or the later architecture of the Renaissance,

the architectural forms of Europe, and possesses in addition a certain feeling which baked clay and plaster suggests better

cen in Algeria are even more interesting than the great Mosque of Saint Sophia, or the palace corridors of the Alhambra itself, which are, in fact, but a mixture of several styles. Terra-cotta and baked clay are all right in their way, but their way is the Mohammedan builders' way, not that of the modern school architects who simulate cut stone in the same plastic products, and build up Turkish baths in palatial tw

re more "mixed" in their language and institutions than any other lands yet become affected of twentieth-century tourists. The mixture is perhaps the more likable because of its catholicity. It is certainly more interesting; but school-board and self-taught linguists will need all thei

he plan herewith is the accepted conventional type of great mosque before it got crowded up in the cities. To-day in most

a is no indication of the gorgeousness of their interiors.

Plan of

D Fountain. E Tribune from which the Muezzin calls to prayer. F Three praying-

ture and mouldings, fine rugs and hangings, and a labyrinth of architectural

can but wonder and speculate. He will never understand it, at least he will never feel it as does the Mussulman himself. It is unfortunate that we outsiders are

Na

awa

use means nothing

Naz

obsc

iques." There, in a certain anecdote, a knight calls his Mussulman opponent "un

the slim, graceful tower of purely Arab origin. Properly speaking it is in the application to the Mussulman place of worship, the mosque, that we know the minaret in its mo

the Syrians adopted menortho. Of the exotic origin of the word there is no doubt, but a minaret is first of all something more than a m

rish builder, the words of Théophile Gautier must be accepted as final: "The minarets of

height approximates two hundred feet, and though the mosque itself is ruined, its firm, square minaret, brilliant wi

ei, also at Cairo, runs

seem almost as if they were another species from the Cairene type. In reality they are not. They are o

he same building line or at the same angle, and the sky-lines of even the Frenchified cit

rtunity offers. The Arab looks on stolidly and doesn't in the least seem to object, though it answered him well enough previously that the doorway of his favourite mosque should be half-hidden and almos

ame sounds as though it might have some relation to a fly-screen, and in a certain sense it is

of wood or even iron, sometimes ornate and finely

tiers in Provence, or moucharabias in the Mitidja; but the Arab curio dealer can give the Christian or Hebrew antique dealer of other lands a good fair start and then beat him as to the profits he can draw from the inexperienced tourist collector. One thing you may be sure of, Arab or M

in an A

or a fine example of a moucharabia, all green and red and gold, but he will

eans a square house, though indeed it was the patriarch Abraham who supposedly set the conventional design upon which all others have since been built. Two workmen, one a Greek a

osque and all its dependencies was preconceived in the heavens, before even the creation of man, and that that poor mortal was only formed in

mb, for instance, of a celebrated marabout or holy man. That erected at

he Algerian warfare of 1845, is as admirable and wort

ge at Cairo thinks it a great inconvenience that he should be made to put on a pair of babouches over his shoes in order to enter, forgetting that it is a Holy Place and that one of the tenets of the Mussulman religion forbids walking rough-shod over the rugs

ples of Moorish architecture. The town-dwelling Arab built his mosques and his houses, during the last two centuries, less luxuriously perhaps than his predecessors (and often with the aid of Italian workmen), but he did not debase the Moorish fo

e of the city, possess always a certain infallible form. The fundamental principles are the

the Ottoman Empire there is a certain specious Byzantine cachet, which, if not actually a debasement, is a qualifying note which differentiates the

nts. The first mosque of magnificent proportions was erected in the year 20 of the

Africa, and of Andalusia. The most famous of this class are those at Mecca and Medina; that of Iba Touloum at Cairo; that of Djama Ez-Zitouna at Tunis; those at Mahdia and Gafsa

w me a place, then, where I may build a mosque, where Mussulmans may henceforth assemble for their prayers without coming into contact with those of the Christian cult." Then fina

call to prayer in full view and hearing of the faithful. It is to the honour of the Khalif el-Walid th

rm of the minaret is nearly always quadrangular, and the tiny terrace or platform high above supports, invariably, a smaller pavilion whose roof is usually composed of four sloping sides which, in turn, is surmounted by the conventiona

the unalterable azure of the African skies. Of this class are those of Ez-Zitouna and the Kasba at Tunis; of Sidi-bou-Medine and Mansourah at Tlemcen; those at Tangier and Fez; and of course that of t

orm or feature. They are of all dimensions and proportions. The gamut runs from the square to the hexagon, to the octagon, and to

beginning with the twelfth century in Spain, the thirteenth in the Moghreb

tine varieties of the Ottoman Empire; and still farther ea