The minaret is often a feature of great beauty, and is pre-eminently distinctive of Saracenic mosque architecture; it may be called the belfry of the mosque. Sometimes it is engaged to the main building, and sometimes starts from the roof of the mosque. The base plan is generally polygonal, and the upper stories above the main gallery are often circular; the top is crowned with a pear-shaped cupola. That of the mosque of Sultan Hasan is one of the highest, being about 330 feet in height. One of the most ornate and beautiful is the minaret that adorns the mosque of Kāit Bey, at Cairo (see Fig. 349). From the roof of the mosque it starts on a solid square base, and develops into an octagon story, which is pierced with window openings, and has an elaborate cornice gallery, consisting of a pierced balustrade, supported by stalactite brackets. The next upper division is cylindrical, decorated with geometrical interlaced ornament; another story is above this, crowned with a cupola, on the top of which is placed a pear-shaped ball, ending in a finial. Wooden bracket-like forms project out of this, from which lamps are suspended at festivals. The minaret and dome are covered with elaborate carvings. [Illustration: Fig. 353.—Cusped inter-arching, Mosque of Cordova.] The _mimbars_ or pulpits are singular in construction, and are usually well covered with decoration (Fig. 354). [Illustration: Fig. 354.—Pulpit of the Sultan Kāit Bey: Fifteenth Century. (L.-P.)] The remains of domestic architecture are not very plentiful—at least, of any examples of the best period of the Saracen style. The main idea in the design of the houses was to have them built so that people outside should see as little as possible of the inmates or inside, and that the women especially should see as little of street life as possible; so the first row of the windows was placed high up, and all the windows were thickly latticed, so that little could be seen from the inside and nothing from the outside (Fig. 355). An interesting and picturesque feature was the _meshrebiyas_, or drinking-places, so called because they were little projecting shaded structures of lattice-work, supported on brackets, that contained the water in vessels and other drinks; the currents of air that rushed through the lattice-work served to keep the drinking water cool. [Illustration: Fig. 355.—A Street in Cairo. (L.-P.)] [Illustration: Fig. 356.—Lattice-work, S.K.M. (L.-P.)] The meshrebiyas are often very beautiful with their varied patterns of elaborate lattice-work, which is peculiarly Arabian in design. It is composed of many pieces of turned and carved pieces that are ingeniously fitted into each other to form the pattern (Figs. 356-7-8). In the museum at Kensington many examples of these lattice patterns may be seen, and also some of the meshrebiyas. [Illustration: Fig. 357.—Lattice-work, S.K.M. (L.-P.)] [Illustration: Fig. 358.—Lattice-work, S.K.M. (L.-P.)]