John D. Hoag - Western Islamic Architecture: A Concise Introduction

Koran, The, E. H. Palmer, trans. (Oxford University Press, 1947), is used throughout this essay whenever The Koran is quoted.

Quoted by K. A. C. Creswell, A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture , Penguin Books, 1958, p. 4.

Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. IV, pp. 2930.

Very few survive, but the enclosure around the cenotaph of Sultan Qalaun in Cairo gives an idea of how they must have looked (plate 86).

Oleg Grabar, The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Ars Orientalis , Vol. III, 1959.

Ibid.

R. W. Hamilton in his Khirbet al-Mafjar (Oxford, 1959, pp. 343 f.) has suggested that the owner may have been Walid ibn al-Yazd, poet and pleasure lover, who became Caliph in 74344 and was assassinated the same year.

See Irwing Lavin, The House of the Lord: Aspects of the Role of Palace Triclinia in the Architecture of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Art Bulletin, XLIV, March, 1962, pp. 127.

See Oleg Grabars discussion in The World of Islam, Studies in Honor of Philip K. Hitti, London, 1959, pp. 99 ff.

K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, Vol. II, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940, pp. 94 ff.

This holds true even for Sicily and Spain where, in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries respectively, structures purely Islamic except for minor decorative details were erected for Christian patrons.

The belfry and the three-tiered cupola above it were added in the sixteenth century.

As quoted by K. A. C. Creswell, The Muslim Architecture of Egypt, Vol. I, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952, p. 33.

The origins were discussed in Chapter II, p. 24.

Creswell in The Muslim Architecture of Egypt (Vol. I, p. 99) cites the Qaat ad-Dardir as the earliest surviving example. The iwans were vaulted in brick, while the higher central lantern had a wooden roof.

Creswell ( ibid ., p. 201) finds the closest parallels in the twelfth-century architecture of Norman Sicily.

This type of portal is related to the half dome over a square niche in the great hall at Ukhaidir (plate 24). The half dome recurs at the Bab al-Amma of Samarra (plate 34) supported by squinches. In the Maristan of Nur ad-Din at Damascus of 1154 (plate 96) the squinches have so multiplied into muqarnas that there is not much of the half dome left. The form was first introduced into Egypt from Syria in Baybars madrasa of 126263.

Ever since the late thirteenth century, horseshoe arches both round and pointed, types of corbels, and patterns in stucco ornament suggest the presence of Moorish craftsmen in Cairo; they were probably Spaniards fleeing the Christian conquest of their country.

The pediment appears to be a re-used fragment, probably of late Roman date. For the history of the semidome portal see note 17.

A list is given by Tamara Talbot Rice, The Seljuks in Asia Minor, London, 1961, pp. 196205.

Behcet nsal, Turkish Islamic Architecture, London, 1959, p. 34.

According to Tamara Talbot Rice ( op . cit ., p. 138), such pendentives, characteristic of Seljuk and Ottoman architecture, were first used in the Chidsa Rabi near Meshed in 1026.

Ibid ., p. 41.

It is a strange coincidence to find the same projecting squinches of muqarnas used not many years later in the Alhambra (plate 68).

A erefe is the balcony of a minaret. This is the first time a minaret was built with three, hence erefeli.

Behcet nsal, op. cit. , p. 24.

The same desire for uninterrupted floor space appears when the columns supporting the center domes of several of the smaller Byzantine churches of the city were, about this time, replaced by arches reaching almost to the outer walls.

Celal Esad Arseven, LArt Turc, Istanbul, 1939, p. 167.

Barnette Miller, Beyond the Sublime Porte, New Haven, 1931, p. 35.