Some Years Ago,
The Sum Of L20 (I Am Informed) Was Collected, In Order To Raise A
Fitting Monument Over The Discoverer Of Petra's Humble Grave.
Some
objection, however, was started, because Moslems are supposed to claim
Burckhardt as one of their own saints.
Only hear the Egyptian account
of his death! After returning from Al-Hijaz, he taught Tajwid (Koran
chaunting) in the Azhar Mosque, where the learned, suspecting him to be
at heart an infidel, examined his person, and found the formula of the
Mohammedan faith written in token of abhorrence upon the soles of his
feet. Thereupon, the principal of the Mosque, in a transport of holy
indignation, did decapitate him with one blow of the sword. It only
remains to be observed, that nothing can be more ridiculous than the
popular belief, except it be our hesitating to offend the prejudices of
such believers.
[FN#23] A Takiyah is a place where Darwayshes have rooms, and perform
their devotions.
[FN#24] Certain forms of worship peculiar to Darwayshes. For a
description see Lane (Modern Egyptians, ch. 24).
[FN#25] Shahbandar, Harbour-King, is here equivalent to our "Consul."
[FN#26] Written "Ghalayun."
[FN#27] See Lane (Modern Egyptians, chap. 24).
[p.90]CHAPTER VI.
THE MOSQUE.
THEN the Byzantine Christians, after overthrowing the temples of
Paganism, meditated re-building and re-modelling them, poverty of
invention and artistic impotence reduced them to group the spoils in a
heterogeneous mass.[FN#1] The sea-ports of Egypt and the plains and
mountains of Syria abounding in pillars of granite, syenite and
precious marbles, in Pharaonic, Grecian, and Roman statuary, and in all
manner of structural ornaments, the architects were at no loss for
material. Their Syncretism, the result of chance and precipitancy, of
extravagance and incuriousness, fell under eyes too ignorant to be hurt
by the hybrid irregularity: it was perpetuated in the so-called
Saracenic style, a plagiarism from the Byzantine,[FN#2] and it was
reiterated in the Gothic, an offshoot from the Saracenic.[FN#3] This
fact accounts in the Gothic style for its manifold incongruities of
architecture, and for the phenomenon,-not solely attributable to the
buildings
[p.91]having been erected piecemeal,-of its most classic period being
that of its greatest irregularity.
Such "architectural lawlessness," such disregard for symmetry,-the
result, I believe, of an imperfect "amalgamation and enrichment,"-may
doubtless be defended upon the grounds both of cause and of effect.
Architecture is of the imitative arts, and Nature, the Myriomorphous,
everywhere delighting in variety, appears to abhor nothing so much as
perfect similarity and precise uniformity. To copy her exactly we must
therefore seek that general analogy compatible with individual variety;
in fact, we should avoid the over-display of order and regularity. And
again, it may be asserted that, however incongruous these disorderly
forms may appear to the conventional eye, we find it easy to surmount
our first antipathy. Perhaps we end in admiring them the more, as we
love those faces in which irregularity of feature is compensated for by
diversity and piquancy of expression.
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