Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan ArchitectureBell, Gertrude Lowthian
History
Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture
Bell, Gertrude Lowthian
Iraq -- Antiquities; Mosques; Ukheidar
pre-Hellenic cities of Asia Minor, other than Troy. The very ancient
acropolis on the Yamanlar Dâgh above Smyrna possessed rectangular
towers.[225] In Caria the fortification known as the Wall of the Leleges
opposite Iassos had rounded towers and crémaillères,[226] and the walls
of Alinda rectangular towers à cheval.[227] The Lycian towns depicted
upon the bas-reliefs in the tombs at Pinara, discovered by Benndorf and
Niemann, exhibit salient rectangular towers,[228] while fortified towers
of the same character are depicted on the monument of the Nereids at
Xanthos,[229] and we have a plan of the ancient walled town of Pydnai in
which the features portrayed on the reliefs are clearly to be
recognized.[230] Nor must the towns of the Phoenicians be forgotten, the
towered walls of Mount Eryx in Sicily, of the acropolis of Lixos in
Mauritania Tingitana, of Thapsus, of Carthage, and of Tyre.[231]
With such a wide development of fortifications by means of flanking
towers, extending from the cultural spheres of the Babylonians and the
Hittites over all the western parts of Asia, and carried by the
Phoenicians into the furthest limits of the Mediterranean, it is not
surprising that the fortifications of Greek towns in the fifth century
should exhibit the same features. Assos, the finest example of this
period, carries on the tradition in the crémaillères and rectangular
towers of its walls;[232] and Messene, with its rounded and rectangular
towers, shows in the succeeding century a yet more complete
understanding of military architecture.[233] The acropolis of Selinus,
with semicircular towers, bears witness at a like age to the carrying
over of the Greek system of defences into Sicily.[234] The walls of
Ephesus, built by Lysimachus towards the close of the third century,
‘one of the greatest monuments of fortification which have been left to
us by antiquity,’[235] show the towered wall of the Hellenistic age,
while Mantineia, with its circular outer wall, is like an isolated
reversion to the round cities of Hittite lands.[236] Philon of Byzantium
formulated the laws which governed Greek fortification in the
Alexandrian age. Towers, crémaillères, and casemated walls combined to
make a system of defence all the elements of which had been familiar to
the Hittites and to the Assyrians, and the methods of attack which he
sought to counter were the same as those which can be seen on the
Assyrian reliefs.[237] Vitruvius advocates the flanking of walls by
round or polygonal rather than by rectangular towers, but his words
should be taken as a counsel of perfection, not as representing the
practice of his day, for the systematic use of rounded towers by Roman
engineers is later than Augustan times and polygonal towers are unusual
before the age of Diocletian. At Aosta, which was fortified soon after
25 B.C., the towers are rectangular,[238] but at Fréjus and at Autun,
both of which were fortified in the Augustan age, we have two of the
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