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
interior of tombs,[285] and an early example of the same motive can be
seen in the gateway at Perge, a city which lay under the direct
influence of Antioch.[286] The lightening of the massive wall by means
of niches and blind openings can be traced through pre-Greek
architecture in Mesopotamia (Assyrian palaces and temples) and in Egypt
(from the Eighteenth Dynasty and even earlier) down to the Achaemenid
period. The systematic application of this principle to the wall-face,
and its union with imitative architecture in relief as a decorative
scheme took place, as far as can be determined at present, in the
Hellenistic age.
In the third and in the second century B.C. the division of the wall
into two zones by means of a moulding appears at Delos, Priene,
Magnesia, and other parts of western Asia,[287] and a little later it is
found in what is known as the incrusted style at Oscan Pompeii. The
lower zone consists of unpainted stucco decoration representing a stone
wall, composed of one or of two rows of orthostatae, and above them
several courses of dressed stones. The upper zone, which was at first
undecorated (it represented space, the upper air), takes on later the
semblance of a colonnaded gallery[288] in imitation of the open
galleries characteristic of Eastern Hellenistic architecture.[289] The
podium façade carrying an open arcade is, as Professor Delbrück is
careful to point out, in origin different from the galleried wall, but
in façade schemes the two run together so as to be almost
indistinguishable. The theme is represented in relief upon the façade of
the Bouleuterion at Miletus[290] and frequently in Pompeii, where,
however, the engaged columns do not stand upon a podium.[291] Behind the
columns, both at Delos and in the Pompeiian examples, the wall is still
divided into two zones by a moulding. In all cases it is a theme which
stands as a representation in relief of plastic architecture, of deep
colonnades such as those which were to be seen on the Mausoleum at
Halicarnassus.[292] The blind order of the Ephebeum at Priene may be
cited as another striking example of imitative architecture.[293]
Similarly the superimposition of one blind order upon another, a
decorative motive so familiar in Roman theatres and amphitheatres, finds
its prototype in the colonnades of Hellenistic stoae, such as those
erected by Attalus in Athens and in Pergamon.[294]
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