The Columns Are Of Stone, But, Being All Plastered White, It Is
Difficult To Decide Of What Species.
To the height of about six feet
from the ground they are painted with flowers and arabesques, in a
coarse and gaudy style; by which means, probably, it was intended to
remedy the want of pediments.
Those standing nearest to that part of the
southern colonnade called El Rodha, are cased for half their height with
bright glazed green tiles or slates, decorated with arabesques of
various colours: the tiles seem to be of Venetian pottery, and are of
the same kind as those used to cover stoves in Germany and Switzerland.
[p.331]The roof of the colonnade consists of a number of small domes,
white-washed on the outside, in the same manner as those of Mekka. The
interior walls are also white-washed all round, except the southern one,
and part of the S.E. corner, which are cased with slabs of marble,
nearly up to the top. Several rows of inscriptions, in large gilt
letters, are conducted along this wall, one above the other, and have a
very brilliant effect upon the white marble. The floor under the
colonnades, on the west and east sides, and part of the north, is laid
out with a coarse pavement; the other part of the N. side being unpaved,
and merely covered with sand; as is likewise the whole open yard. On the
south side, where the builder of the mosque has lavished all this
ornament, the floor is paved with fine marble across the whole
colonnade; and in those parts nearest to the tomb of Mohammed, this
pavement is in mosaic, of excellent workmanship, forming one of the best
specimens of that kind to be seen in the East. Large and high windows,
with glass panes, (of which I know not any other instance in the Hedjaz)
admit the light through the southern wall; some of them are of fine
painted glass. On the other sides, smaller windows are dispersed along
the walls, but not with glass panes. [The art of painting glass with
durable colours seems never to have been lost in the East.]
Near the S.E. corner stands the famous tomb, so detached from the walls
of the mosque, as to leave between it and the S. wall a space of about
twenty-five feet, and fifteen between it and the E. wall. The enclosure,
which defends the tomb from the too near approach of visiters, forms an
irregular square of about twenty paces, in the midst of the colonnade,
several of its pillars being included within it: it is an iron railing,
painted green, about two-thirds the height of the columns, filling up
the intervals between them, so as to leave their upper part projecting
above it, and entirely open. The railing is of good workmanship, in
imitation of filligree, and is interwoven with open-worked inscriptions
of yellow bronze, supposed by the vulgar to be of gold, and of so close
a texture, that no view can be gained into
[p.332] the interior, except by several small windows, about six inches
square, which are placed in the four sides of the railing, about five
feet above the ground.
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