Nothing Affords The Meccans Greater
Pride Than The Vast Size Of Their Temple.
Nothing is more humiliating
to the people of Al-Madinah than the comparative smallness of their
Mosque.
Still, with a few exceptions, Arab greatness is the vulgar
great, not the grand.
[FN#5] That is to say, imitations of the human form. All the doctors of
Al-Islam, however, differ on this head: some absolutely forbidding any
delineation of what has life, under pain of being cast into hell;
others permitting pictures even of the bodies, though not of the faces,
of men. The Arabs are the strictest of Misiconists; yet even they allow
plans and pictures of the Holy Shrines. Other nations are comparatively
lax. The Alhambra abounds in paintings and frescoes. The Persians never
object to depict in books and on walls the battles of Rustam, and the
Turks preserve in the Seraglio treasury of Constantinople portraits, by
Greeks and other artists, of their Sultans in regular succession.
[FN#6] This is at least a purer taste than that of our Gothic
architects, who ornamented their cathedrals with statuary so
inappropriate as to suggest to the antiquary remains of the worship of
the Hellespontine god.
[FN#7] At Bruges, Bologna, (St. Stefano), and Nurnberg, there are, if I
recollect right, imitations of the Holy Sepulchre, although the
"palmer" might not detect the resemblance at first sight. That in the
Church of Jerusalem at Bruges was built by a merchant, who travelled
three times to Palestine in order to ensure correctness, and totally
failed.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 143 of 571
Words from 39620 to 39877
of 157964
