There Is Nothing, I Believe, New In The Arab Mosque; It Is An
Unconscious Revival Of The Forms Used From The Earliest Ages To Denote
By Symbolism The Worship Of The Generative And The Creative Gods.
The
reader will excuse me if I only glance at a subject of which the
investigation would require a volume, and which, discussed at greater
length, would be out of place in such a narrative as this.
The first Mosque in Al-Islam was erected by Mohammed at Kuba, near
Al-Madinah: shortly afterwards, when he entered Meccah as a conqueror,
he destroyed the three hundred and sixty idols of the Arab Pantheon,
and thus purified that venerable building from its abominations. He had
probably observed in Syrian Bostra the two forms appropriated by the
Christians to their places of worship, the cross and the
parallelogramic Basilica; he therefore preferred for the prayers of the
"Saving Faith" a square,-some authors say, with, others
[p.92]without, a cloister. At length in the reign of Al-Walid (A.H. 90)
the cupola, the niche, and the minaret made their appearance; and what
is called the Saracenic style became for ever the order of the Moslem
world.
The Hindus I believe to have been the first who symbolised by an
equilateral triangle their peculiar cult, the Yoni-Linga: in their
temple architecture, it became either a conoid or a perfect pyramid.
Egypt denoted it by the obelisk, peculiar to that country; and the form
appeared in different parts of the world: thus in England it was a mere
upright stone, and in Ireland a round tower. This we might expect to
see. D'Hancarville and Brotier have successfully traced the worship
itself, in its different modifications, to all people: the symbol would
therefore be found everywhere. The old Arab minaret is a plain
cylindrical or polygonal tower, without balcony or stages, widely
different from the Turkish, modern Egyptian, and Hijazi combinations of
tube and prism, happily compared by a French traveller to "une
chandelle coiffee d'un eteignoir." And finally the ancient minaret,
made solid as all Gothic architecture is, and provided with a belfry,
became the spire and steeple of our ancestors.
>From time immemorial, in hot and rainy lands, a hypaethral court,
either round or square, surrounded by a covered portico, was used for
the double purpose of church and mart,-a place where God and Mammon
were worshipped turn by turn. In some places we find rings of stones,
like the Persian Pyroetheia; in others, circular concave buildings
representing the vault of heaven, where Fire, the divine symbol, was
worshipped; and in Arabia, columnar aisles, which, surmounted by the
splendid blue vault, resemble the palm-grove. The Greeks adopted this
idea in the fanes of Creator Bacchus; and at Pozzuoli, near Naples, it
may be seen in the building vulgarly called the Temple of Serapis. It
was equally well known
[p.93]to the Kelts: in some places the Temenos was a circle, in others
a quadrangle.
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