ed the greatest number of variations, cutting
off its angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan, and
endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives by which the
ground-plan of one story passes into that of the next. These problems of
transition, always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia,
Mesopotamia and Egypt to many different compositions and ways of
treatment, but in Morocco the minaret, till modern times, remained
steadfastly square, and proved that no other plan is so beautiful as
this simplest one of all.

Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the school-rooms, libraries
and other dependencies, which grew as the Mahometan religion prospered
and Arab culture developed.

The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque: it was the academy
where the Moslem schoolman prepared his theology and the other branches
of strange learning which, to the present day, make up the curriculum of
the Mahometan university. The medersa is an adaptation of the private
house to religious and educational ends; or, if one prefers another
analogy, it is a _fondak_ built above a miniature mosque. The
ground-plan is always the same: in the centre an arcaded court with a
fountain, on one side the long narrow praying-chapel with the _mihrab_,
on the other a classroom with the same ground-plan, and on the next
story a series of cell-like rooms for the students, opening on carved
cedar-wood balconies. This cloistered plan, where all the effect is
reserved for the interior facades about the court, lends itself to a
delicacy of detail that would be inappropriate on a street-front; and
the medersas of Fez are endlessly varied in their fanciful but never
exuberant decoration.

M. Tranchant de Lunel has pointed out (in "France-Maroc") with what a
sure sense of suitability the Merinid architects adapted this decoration
to the uses of the buildings. On the lower floor, under the cloister, is
a revetement of marble (often alabaster) or of the almost indestructible
ceramic mosaic.[A] On the floor above, massive cedar-wood corbels ending
in monsters of almost Gothic inspiration support the fretted balconies;
and above rise stucco interfacings, placed too high up to be injured
by man, and guarded from the weather by projecting eaves.

[Footnote A: These Moroccan mosaics are called _zellijes_.]

[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_

Sale--interior court of the Medersa]

The private h