mouldings and entrelac, Mohammadan in character, and I should say not far removed from the early thirteenth century in date. There are also motives which are repeated with variations upon all the churches of a like epoch, grotesque lions and the cross-legged figure which has been described upon one of the gates of Baghdâd. The building was so dark that my photographs were not successful, but an outer doorway of Mâr Girjis gives an adequate idea of the scheme of decoration (Fig. 169). The straight arch, which serves here as lintel, is a universal characteristic; so, too, are the ornaments pendant from the voussoirs. The doorways in the cloister that lies to the west of Mâr Tûmâ, the episcopal church of the Syrians, exhibit beautiful variants of the same theme (Fig. 170).[147] In this church the door leading from the nave to the sanctuary is framed by an entrelac enclosing in its windings the figures of Christ and the Twelve Apostles. [Illustration: FIG. 171.--MÔṢUL, MÂR TÛMÂ.] [Illustration: FIG. 172.--MÔṢUL, MÂR SHIM’UN.] [Illustration: FIG. 173.--MÔṢUL, PLASTER WORK IN ḲAL’AT LÛLÛ.] [Illustration: FIG. 174.--MÔṢUL, TOMB OF THE IMÂM YAḤYÂ.] Three extra aisles have recently been added to the original building, and I understood the church to be shared between the Syrians and the Chaldæans. If the Christian architects continued to make use of a primitive Oriental plan, it is even more certain that they continued to be dependent upon Eastern artists for their decorative schemes, and were in no way linked with the West. Their decoration is the same as that which is to be found in contemporary Mohammadan buildings. For instance, a lintel which now lies in the atrium of Mâr Shim’ûn, a church which has been almost entirely rebuilt, is carved with an entrelac unmistakably Mohammadan (Fig. 172). Over one of the doors of Mâr Tûmâ there is a band of ornament which may perhaps have been taken from a Mohammadan building, though it is more probable that it formed part of the original Christian work (Fig. 171).[148] The style of this deeply undercut relief is so marked that it imprints itself upon the memory. I saw other examples of it in the beautiful tomb of the Imam Yaḥyâ which, according to an inscription, was built by the Sultan Lûlû (Fig. 174).[149] A mosque for the Friday prayers existed in the time of Ibn Baṭûṭah close to the Tigris, and this is in all probability the building which is praised by Mustaufî, who says that “the stone sculptured ornament is so intricate that it might stand for wood carving.”[150] This particular kind of stone relief, which is to be found both in Moslem and in Christian buildings, does in fact closely resemble wood carving, and the Christian examples cannot be of a different date from the Moslem. The first recorded mosque in Môṣul was built by Marwân II, the last of the Omayyad khalifs (744-750), not far from the Tigris, according to Ibn Ḥauḳal; so far as I know, no trace of it has survived. Nûr ed Dîn, the