The first mosque at Kûfah therefore consisted of a great ṣaḥn surrounded on three sides by a ditch and on the fourth, the qiblah side, by an open colonnade carrying a roof, and the arrangement was exactly the same as that of Muḥammad’s house, except that the qiblah wall and the palm-trunk columns were replaced by marble columns. Balâdhuri gives a tradition that the mosque at Kûfah was built out of part of the materials taken from the palaces of al-Mundhir at Ḥîrah,[399] and Ṭabari says that the castle at Kûfah was of burnt brick taken from Persian buildings at Ḥîrah. Ziyâd rebuilt the mosque. He summoned, according to Ṭabari,[400] Persian builders, and expounded to them the plan of the mosque and its extent, and that which he desired regarding the length of its roof, saying that he wished to erect an edifice which should not have its parallel. To which a man, who had been one of the builders of Chosroës, replied that could only be accomplished by using columns from the Jebel Ahwâz which should be carved and polished and filled with lead and iron clamps (_safâfîd_ = skewers). The ceiling should be 30 ells high (_circa_ 17 metres!), and it should be roofed. The mosque should also have side and end walls. This scheme was adopted by Ziyâd. Balâdhuri mentions that he placed a maqṣûrah in this mosque also, and that both at Baṣrah and at Kûfah he strewed pebbles on the ṣaḥn to prevent the people from getting dusty.[401] At Baṣrah and at Kûfah the ṣaḥn was the principal feature of the mosque, as indeed it had been at Medînah; this was not the case at Fusṭâṭ. The first Egyptian mosque was built by ‘Amr ibn al-’Âṣ in the year A.D. 642. It stood in the midst of vineyards and consisted merely of a covered place, 50 x 30 cubits in extent (28·92 x 17·34 metres), enclosed in a brick wall.[402] The people assembled in the open space which surrounded it. The roof, which was very low, must have been supported on columns, though these are not mentioned. The brick walls were unplastered, and the floor was strewn with pebbles. ‘Amr set up within it a wooden minbar, but this was resented by ‘Umar, and it was removed. ‘Is it not enough’, wrote the khalif, ‘that thou shouldst stand while the people sit at thy feet?’ This episode is of the highest significance in the history of the minbar. It is clear that it was regarded at that time as a throne rather than as a pulpit, and as such unsuited to any but the khalif. It was not until the close of the Umayyad period that the minbar lost its secular significance and became a part of the ritual furnishing of the mosque. With this change it is probable that its form changed also, and instead of the two steps and a seat of the Prophet’s minbar, the high pulpit of the modern mosque came into use. That this pulpit was copied from the pulpits of Christian churches is not improbable. The minbar which was set up in the time of ‘Abd al-Azîz ibn Marwân (A.D. 685-705) in the mosque of ‘Amr is said to have been taken from a