+OTHER WORKS.+ Few of the mediæval Arabic palaces have remained to our time. That they were adorned with a splendid prodigality appears from contemporary accounts. This splendor was internal rather than external; the palace, like all the larger and richer dwellings in the East, surrounded one or more courts, and presented externally an almost unbroken wall. The fountain in the chief court, the _diwân_ (a great, vaulted reception-chamber opening upon the court and raised slightly above it), the _dâr_, or men’s court, rigidly separated from the _hareem_ for the women, were and are universal elements in these great dwellings. The more common city-houses show as their most striking features successively corbelled-out stories and broad wooden eaves, with lattice-screens covering single windows, or almost a whole façade, composed of turned work (_mashrabiyya_), in designs of great beauty. The fountains, gates, and minor works of the Arabs display the same beauty in decoration and color, the same general forms and details which characterize the larger works, but it is impossible here to particularize further with regard to them. +MORESQUE.+ Elsewhere in Northern Africa the Arabs produced no such important works as in Egypt, nor is the architecture of the other Moslem states so well preserved or so well known. Constructive design would appear to have been there even more completely subordinated to decoration; tiling and plaster-relief took the place of more architectural elements and materials, while horseshoe and cusped arches were substituted for the simpler and more architectural pointed arch (Fig. 82). The courts of palaces and public buildings were surrounded by ranges of horseshoe arches on slender columns; these last being provided with capitals of a form rarely seen in Cairo. Towers were built of much more massive design than the Cairo minarets, usually with a square, almost solid shaft and a more open lantern at the top, sometimes in several diminishing stories. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--MOORISH DETAIL, ALHAMBRA. _Showing stalactite and perforated work, Moorish cusped arch, Hispano-Moresque capitals, and decorative inscriptions._] +HISPANO-MORESQUE.+ The most splendid phase of this branch of Arabic architecture is found not in Africa but in Spain, which was overrun in 710-713 by the Moors, who established there the independent Khalifate of Cordova. This was later split up into petty kingdoms, of which the most important were Granada, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia. This dismemberment of the Khalifate led in time to the loss of these cities, which were one by one recovered by the Christians during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the capture of Granada, in 1492, finally destroying the Moorish rule.