&c.,
are quotations from the Koran and classic Arabic poetry.

[Illustration: Section of Mosque at Cordoba]

When through the breaking up of the power of the Moors in Spain, the
architecture introduced by them seemed fated to share their decline, a
kind of revival of it took place in Constantinople through the conquest
of that city by the Turks in 1453. Unfortunately however the style made
no real progress there, the mosques and other buildings erected by the
new owners being rather Byzantine than Saracenic, even that known as the
Suleimanyeh, built between 1550-1556, and the Ahmediyeh, dating from
1608-1614, greatly resembling St. Sophia.

In India the mosques and palaces erected by the Mahommedan conquerors
and their successors are even more beautiful and impressive than the
Buddhist and Hindu buildings described in the section on Asiatic
architecture. Their distinctive characteristics, as in Egypt, Persia,
and Spain, are the skilful combination of the dome, the arch and the
minaret, and the lavish surface decoration of the interior, with certain
other peculiarities that were the outcome of local tradition. More
attention was given, for instance, to external appearance, huge
recessed gateways and colonnaded cloisters surmounted by rows of purely
decorative domes on pilasters, being of frequent occurrence. At the same
time, stalactite vaulting was rarely employed, whilst horizontal courses
of corbels or arches in which each stone projects slightly beyond that
on which it rests, were used as supports for the domes instead of
pendentives.

[Illustration: Section of Taj Mahal, Agra]

Among the most noteworthy still-existing examples of Indo-Saracenic
architecture are the early 15th century Jumna Musjid or Great Mosque at
Ahmedabad, that has certain details recalling Hindu post and lintel
structures; the late 15th century Adinah mosque at Gaur, which has 385
domes; the 16th century Jumna Musjid at Bijapur, that has the singular
feature of a central space covered in by a dome upheld by intersecting
arches, set in a number of squares with flat roofs; the Mosque built by
Akbar in the second half of the 16th century at Futtehpore Sikhri, the
gateways of which are specially characteristic; and the remarkable
buildings at Delhi and Agra, erected in the 17th century under the
enlightened Shah Jehan, including in the former city the Jumna Musjid
and the fortified palace, and in the latter the Moti Musjid or Pearl
Mosque, and