PALACE AND MOSQUE AT UKHAIḌIR OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY PALACE AND MOSQUE AT UKHAIḌIR A STUDY IN EARLY MOHAMMADAN ARCHITECTURE BY GERTRUDE LOWTHIAN BELL OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1914 TO MY FRIEND DR. WALTHER ANDRAE IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF HAPPY AND PROFITABLE DAYS SPENT IN THE FIRST CAPITAL OF ASSYRIA WHICH HAS BEEN REVEALED BY HIS LABOUR AND RECREATED BY HIS LEARNING PREFACE I have attempted in this book to bring together the materials, so far as they are known, which bear upon the earliest phases of Mohammadan architecture, to consider the circumstances under which it arose and the roots from which it sprang. No development of civilization, or of the arts which serve and adorn civilization, has burst full-fledged from the forehead of the god; and architecture, which is the first and most permanent of the arts, reflects with singular fidelity the history of its creators. Not only does their culture stand revealed in the crumbling walls which sheltered them and in the monuments raised for perpetual remembrance over their bones, but the links which bound them to that which had gone before are therein confessed, as well as their own contribution to the achievements of their predecessors, to mechanical skilfulness, to utility, and to beauty. It is the nature and the extent of this contribution which is of vital importance to the student, and it is this which lends to architecture its keenest significance. What, then, was the contribution of the first builders of Islâm?