moschea di damasco

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F.B. FLOOD

UMAYYAD SURVIVALS AND MAMLUK REVIVALS: QALAWUNIDARCHITECTURE AND THE GREAT MOSQUE OF DAMASCUS

In his seminal paper on the theme of copying in medievalChristian architecture, published over fifty years ago,Richard Krautheimer demonstrated how tenuous thevisual links between an archetypal building and its copiesmight be.' Often a single element or even a name was suf-ficient to evoke a connection with the prototype, a con-nection not always readily apparent to the eye of themodern art historian. A similar comprehensive studydoes not exist for the medieval Islamic world. While thephenomenon of copying undoubtedly exists, it hasreceived scant attention.2 The influence of certain power-fu l prototypes on later architecture has occasionally beennoted in passing, 3 but seldom explored in an y detail.Recently, however, attention has been drawn to thephenomenon of copying in the architecture of themedieval mosque, and to the enduring influence of theUmayyad mosque of Damascus in particular. FromUmayyad Spain to Seljuq Iran, it seems that the architec-tural forms associated with the Great Mosque of Damas-cus were replicated and, through their incorporationinto regional idioms, profoundly influenced the formalevolution of the mosque.4 In what follows I would like tosupplement this observation by demonstrating thatwhat applies to the architectural form of the Damascusmosque also holds good for its scheme of decoration. Inparticular, the forms and materials used in the decora-tion of the mosque provided the prototype for certaintypes of ornament which appear in Bahri Mamluk archi-tecture.

The Great Mosque of Damascus was built by order ofthe Umayyad caliph al-Walid I on the site of the formerchurch of St.John, and was completed by 715. 5 That theform of this mosque, with its three parallel aisles, axialnave and gabled facade, determined the course of muchof the subsequent history of the mosque in southernSyria and beyond is not in doubt. 6 What is seldom recog-nized, however, is the profound impact which the build-ing had on the development of architectural decorationin Egypt and the Levant for a little less than a centuryafter 1250, when the region came under Mamluk suzer-ainty. The failure to acknowledge the Mamluk debt to

Damascene prototypes may be attributed perhaps to thefact that much of the mosque, and almost all of its inte-rior decoration, was destroyed by fire in 1893. The de-struction of the early Islamic decoration of the mosquehas rendered it difficult to discern the impact which itmay have had on later religious architecture, obscuringthe relationship between archetype and copy. One con-sequence of this is that the role of the Umayyad mosquein the generation of Bahri Mamluk architecture hasbeen generally overlooked, or at least understated.

A study of a particular feature of the Umayyadmosque - a vine frieze formerly in the prayer-hall -complements the architectural evidence for the impactwhich al-Walid's mosque continued to have on the reli-gious architecture, not just of Syria, but of the easternMediterranean in general, for several centuries after itscompletion. The appearance of copies of this frieze in aseries of imperial Mamluk tombs of the late thirteenthand early fourteenth century may be seen as part of arevival of forms of decoration associated with the Umay-yad monuments of Syria, and with the Great Mosque ofDamascus in particular, during the reign of Sultan al-Mansur Sayf al-Din Qalawun and his son, al-NasirMuhammad ibn Qalawun. In support of this suggestionof a Qalawunid revival of archaic decorative forms, twofurther elements in this revival- mihrabs with minia-ture arcades and glass mosaic decoration - will be dis-cussed briefly.

In their accounts of the Umayyad mosque in Damas-cus medieval authors single out two elements in the dec-oration of the mosque as particularly worthy of praise:the fusayfusa (mosaics) and the karma (vine). While themosaics - large areas of which survive in the courtyardof the mosque - have been the focus of several studies,7the vine has merited at best a passing mention as a curi-osity. No trace of the vine survives in the mosque today,but two kinds of sources may be used in attempting todetermine its appearance and location: medieval liter-ary descriptions, and the visual record left by artists andphotographers who recorded the interior of themosque before the fire of 1893.


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Three pieces of information can.be gleaned from theliterary sources: first, the amount spent on the vine wa senormous; second, the vine had a golden appearance;and, third, it was located between the marble dado andthe mosaics which covered the upper part of the south-ern (qibla) wall. The earliest account of the karmaappears in the Tankh Madfna Dimashqof Ibn Asakir (d .1176). Quoting two earlier traditions, it informs us that atotal of 70,000 dinars was spent on the vine." Computingfrom the figure for the total cost of construction anddecoration cited in the same work, the sum spent on thekarmaamounts to one-eightieth of the total cost of themosque. The accuracy of this figure is, for our purposes,irrelevant. The important point is that by the twelfthcentury the fame of the karmawas such that a figure ofthis magnitude might seem plausible.

Later writers repeat this information, with occasionalvariations and additional details. Various fourteenth-and fifteenth-century sources tell us that the vine wasgolden. Ibn Kathir, for example, refers to the great gold-

en vine (karma a;izmat min dhahab) on the qibla wall. 9The most detailed account is found in Ibn Sasra's chron-icle, written in the last quarter of the fourteenth cen-tury. He puts the cost of the vine at 50,000 dinars,approximately one-twentieth of the figure given for theconstruction of the mosque as a whole, and mentionsthat it was studded with sapphires, carnelians, pearls,and other gems. It is not clear to what extent one shouldtrust the report of jewels being used, but since earlierauthors mention the use of ewels to decorate the mih-rab of the mosque, Ibn Sasra's account cannot be dis-missed out of hand."

On the basis of these medieval accounts, scholars writ-ing in the present century have suggested that the karmawas either a vine motif executed in gilded marble, a goldmosaic in the spandrels of the mihrab or, alternatively, amosaic frieze running along the qibla wall.'2 However, inone of the very rare photographs which show the inte-rior of the mosque before the disastrous fire, a band ofvegetal ornament about 60 centimeters wide is visible,

Fig. 1.Damascus. Great Mosque. Qibla wall before 1893. Creswell Archive, no . 715, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo: courtesyAshmolean Museum, Oxford)

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Fig. 2. Damascus. Great Mosque. Vine frieze above mihrab.Detail of fig. 1.running above the marble paneling of the qibla wall(figs. 1-3). 3 From Henri Saladin, wh o visited themosque before the fire, we learn that the frieze wascarved from marble.'4 It was K.A.C. Creswell who firstsuggested that this marble frieze should be identified asthe famous karma of Damascus.'5 Both the location ofthe frieze between the marble dado and the zone ofmosaic decoration which formerly covered the upperwall surface and its subject matter clearly support suchan identification. The popular perception of the vine asgolden evidently derives from the fact that the frieze washeavily gilded; the gilding is clearly visible in a paintingof the prayer niche and its environs by Frederick, LordLeighton, executed between 1873 and 1875 (fig. 4).'6While most medieval writers state that the vine ranalong the southern (qibla) wall of the mosque, nonestates that it wa s restricted to that wall. In fact proof thatthe frieze continued along the adjoining walls is pro-vided by two more photographs which show a narrowband of ornament running along the eastern and west-ern walls of the mosque.'7 It seems probable that thefrieze was continued around the northern wall of theprayer hall to form a vine which encircled the interiorspace.'1

Although the term karma usually denotes a vine, if

Fig. 3. Damascus. Great Mosque. Detail of vine frieze from adigital enhancement of fig. 1.

Fig. 4. Frederick, Lord Leighton. Interior of the Great Mosqueof Damascus. (Photo: reproduced by kind permission of theHarris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, England)one examines the Damascus frieze carefully it is clearthat to describe the karma as a vine is not strictly accu-rate. What appears instead is a composite creation con-sisting of an acanthus scroll in which bunches of grapesalternate with single vine leaves or pomegranates at thecenter of each scroll (fig. 3) . Whatever the conceptualantecedents of this form of decoration, the Umayyadkarmawas executed in a Syro-Palestinian idiom; parallelsfor both the composite iconography and two-dimen-sional style of the frieze are not difficult to find in thelate-antique art of the Levant.'9

Although it is not my intention to deal here with theorigins of the vine frieze or to discuss the factors whichmay have led to its prominence in the cathedral mosqueof the Umayyad capital, it should be pointed out that itwas not unique. Based on literary sources, Sauvaget's re-construction of the qibla wall of the Mosque of theProphet at Medina, rebuilt by al-Walid in 706-10, showsan arrangement which is almost identical to that em-ployed at Damascus (fig. 5).2r Between the marble dado

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Fig. 5. Medina, Great Mosque. Reconstruction of the qiblawall. (Drawing: after Jean Sauvaget, La mosquie omeyyade deMdine [Paris, 1947], fig. 3).and an upper zone ofmosaics is a gilded marble vegetalfrieze carried on colonnettes.2 ' Further details are lack-ing, but the similarities in the decoration suggest anattempt to impose a coherent imperial style, of whichthe karma was part.22 Ultimately, it was the fame of theDamascus vine rather than that of Medina which left themost enduring mark on both the historical and art-his-torical record. Despite the numerous laudatory refer-ences to the karma in descriptions of the Damascusmosque, the karma of Medina appears to have escapedthe attention of medieval observers; apart from a pass-

ing mention which may have been influenced by the literary reputation of its Damascene counterpart,2 3 it failto make any impression on the literary record.

From the foregoing remarks, the available information on the karma of Damascus may be summarized asfollows. The karma was a narrow marble frieze whichenclosed the interior walls of the sahn in the Umayyadmosque. Not strictly a vine, the frieze was carved withscrolling acanthus within which single vine leaves ofruits such as grapes and pomegranates appeared aintervals. The surface of the relief wa s gilded, whichgave the karma its golden appearance. Although it mayhave been repaired at various points, 2 4 the vine friezesurvived until the end of the last century. The fame othe vine derived from the prominent role which iplayed in the decoration of the early-eighth-centurymosque, and was perpetuated in literary accounts of themosque and its decoration from the twelfth centuryonwards.

Just as the fame of the mosque ensured that its impacwa s felt for several centuries in the formal arrangementof the mosques erected in Syria, Anatolia, and even further afield, so the renown of its decoration rendered ian appropriate model for the religious architecture osubsequent generations. To prove the point one haonly to turn to the structures situated in the vicinity othe mosque, for it is in some of the earliest survivingMamluk monuments in Damascus that the impact of theUmayyad mosque and its decoration is most keenly feltThe first example of the phenomenon is in the tomb othe Mamluk sultan Baybars I, who died in the city in1277. Although this tomb has never been studied indetail,2 5 it has long been recognized that the mosaicsdecorating its walls were inspired by the eighth-centurymosaics in the nearby Umayyad mosque. As will be seenshortly, it is likely that the art of glass mosaic wa s revivedfollowing the restoration of the Dome of the Rock(beginning in 1261) and the Great Mosque of Damascus(in 1269). Although the connection between themosaics in the tomb and those in the Great Mosque hasoften been noticed en passant, the fact that the references to the Umayyad mosque in its decoration are notconfined to the use of glass mosaics featuring landscapeand architectural scenes has been overlooked.I would like to draw attention to two narrow parallelgilded friezes which run around the walls of the tombbelow the band of mosaic decoration (fig. 6), for theseare clearly copies of the karma that once existed in thenearby Umayyad mosque. Not only is the juxtapositionof vine frieze and glass mosaic suggestive, but the form

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Fig. 6. Damascus. Mausoleum of Baybars. Creswell Archive no.5570, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo: courtesy Ash-molean Museum, Oxford).

of both friezes - a vegetal scroll containing pendantbunches of grapes which alternate with single splayedvine leaves (fig. 7)- and their general location be -

Fig. 7. Damascus. Mausoleum ofBaybars. Detail of vine frieze.Creswell Archive no. 5593, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.(Photo: courtesy Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)tween the marble dado and the mosaics which cover theupper walls of the tomb mirror precisely the form andlocation of the famous prototype in the Umayyadmosque. The connection between the decoration of thetwo buildings would presumably have been all the moreapparent when the vine in the nearby mosque was avail-able for contemporaries to see.

Although Baybars died in 1277, the tomb was notcompleted until 1281. An inscription above the entrancestates that it was completed by his successor, Sultan al-Mansur Sayf al-Din Qa1awun, 2 "and it seems likely that itis to the influence of Qalawun that the presence of acopy of the Umayyad vine in the Mamluk tomb shouldbe attributed. In 1283, two years after the completion ofthe tomb, Qalawun undertook a restoration of the mans-tdn of Nur al-Din in Damascus.2 7 At that time a vinefrieze wa s added to the walls of the maristdn (fig. 8).28The form of this frieze is similar to that in the tomb ofBaybars, and it is not difficult to recognize in it anotherecho of the karma formerly in the Umayyad mosque,

Fig. 8. Damascus. Maristan of Nu r al-Din. Detail of vine frieze. Creswell Archive no. 5501, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo:courtesy Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

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Fig. 9. Cairo. Mausoleum of Qalawun. Creswell Archive no . 1068. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo: courtesy AshmoleanMuseum, Oxford)

from which it is separated by only a few minutes' walk.Indeed other elements in the later redecoration of themdristdnappear to show influence from the eighth-cen-tury mosque.

Although Mamluk interest in the copying of decora-tive forms specifically associated with the Great Mosqueof Damascus began naturally enough in Damascus itself,it was not confined to that city. The monumental tombwhich Qalawun built for himself in the imperial capitalof Cairo in 1285 makes use of similar decoration. Thatthe form of the tomb, an octagon inscribed in a rectan-gle, was intended to evoke that of the Dome of the Rockin Jerusalem has been noted elsewhere.30 What haslargely escaped notice until now is that the force of thisallusion is amplified by the fact that the tomb also con-tains references to the Great Mosque of Damascus.These references are expressed not in the architectureof the tomb, but in its decoration. They are made by

transposing the most characteristic elements in the dec-oration of the Damascus mosque and replicating themin a Cairene setting.

The first of these elements is the famous vine frieze.The copy of the karma manifests itself in the familiargilded marble frieze which runs around all four walls ofthe tomb, surrounding its interior above the level of themarble dado (figs. 9-10).31 On the basis of the suggestedresemblance between this frieze and another in thechurch of Hagia Sophia (fig. 11), the frieze. has beencited as evidence for Byzantine influence on the archi-tecture of Cairo at that time, during a period of rap-prochement between the Mamluk and Byzantinecourts.3 2 This suggestion was made, however, at a timewhen little was known about the Damascus vine frieze.When one examines the evidence in the light of whatcan be gleaned about the karmaof Damascus, a quite dif-ferent picture emerges.

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Fig. 10 . Cairo. Mausoleum of Qalawun. Detail of vine frieze.Creswell Archive no. 1070, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.(Photo: courtesy Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)The Cairene frieze has little in common stylistically

with its purported prototype from Hagia Sophia.Indeed, apart from the general conception of a contin-uous vine frieze used in conjunction with marble panel-ing as a form of interior decoration, there is little to sug-gest a relationship between the two. The Cairene vinefrieze is in fact much closer in style to the Umayyadkarma, as a comparison between figures 3, 10 and 11shows. The frieze in Hagia Sophia consists of a dense,deeply undercut tangle of vines which forms a contin-uous convex molding. 33 That formerly in the Damascusmosque consisted of a two-dimensional relief in whichsingle vine leaves alternated with hanging fruit; both

Fig. 11. Istanbul. Hagia Sophia. Detail of vine frieze an d marbledado. (Photo: courtesy Dumbarton Oaks Research Library,Washington, D.C.)

these features recur in the Cairene frieze. Added to thisis the fact that, whereas the Byzantine vine frieze is exe-cuted in stucco, the friezes in both Damascus and Cairoare of marble.

It is highly likely that, at least conceptually, the Umay-yad vine frieze is related to theJustinianic decoration ofHagia Sophia, 4" but such a genetic relationship cannotbe taken as evidence for a direct relationship in theQalawunid period. The existence of similar vine friezeswhich can be clearly identified as copies of the Umayyadkarma in two earlier Damascene buildings associatedwith Qalawun confirms that one should see in the deco-ration of the Cairene tomb one more copy of the Umay-yad prototype.

Further support for the suggestion that it is to Damas-

Fig. 12 . Cairo. Mausoleum of Qalawun. Mihrab. CreswellArchive no. 507, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo: cour-tesy Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

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F.B. FLOODcus that one should look for the inspiration behind thedecoration of the tomb is found in another of its mostprominent elements, its mihrab (fig. 12). The mihrab -at 7 meters high one of the most monumental inCairo - is decorated internally with four tiers of minia-ture arcades composed of scalloped niche-heads borneon single or double columns. It was Rivoira who sug-gested that the form of this mihrab may have been influ-enced by the main mihrab in the Great Mosque ofDamascus, 3 5 an idea first rejected, then adopted, byCreswell. 3 6

The arcaded mihrab in Damascus no longer exists,but was seen by the traveler Ibn Jubayr when he visitedthe mosque in 1184. He describes it as follows:

Its mihrab is the most wonderful in Islam for its beautyand rare art, and the whole of it gleams with gold. Withinit are small mihrabs adjoining its wall and surrounded bysmall columns, voluted like a bracelet as if done by a tur-ner, than which nothing more beautiful could be seen,some of them being red as coral.3 7

The fame of this mihrab was, like that of the karma, per-petuated in literary accounts of the mosque; writing atthe end of the fifteenth century, Abu'l-Baqa informs usthat the mihrab was one of the most beautiful andextraordinary mihrabs of the Muslim world.3 8 Beforethe fire of 1893 the interior of the main mihrab of themosque was indeed filled with miniature arcades (fig.1).39 The form of these arcades was, however, relativelycrude, and on stylistic grounds this mihrab might beconsigned to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Themosque was gutted by fire during the ravages visited onDamascus by Timur in 1401, and it seems likely that themihrab in place before 1893 dates from the subsequentrestoration of the mosque. The similarities betweenwhat IbnJubayr describes and what is visible in the nine-teenth-century photograph indicate that the form of therestored mihrab was reasonably faithful to that of themihrab formerly in place. What is not clear is the date ofthe mihrab which Ibn Jubayr describes. It has usuallybeen suggested that the mihrab was one of the featuresassociated with the restoration of the mosque in 1082,during the reign of Malik Shah, when the monumentalqibla dome was replaced.'i This may be so, but it doesnot preclude the possibility that the form of an earliermihrab was preserved. The evidence for the perpetu-ation of the arcaded form in the mihrab presumed tohave been installed after 1401 indicates that even when anew mihrab was installed it might well follow the gen-eral form of that which preceded it. It could hardly be

argued that the dwarf arcade is a characteristic featureof Seljuq architectural decoration. It is, however, aprominent element in the decoration of several Umay-yad buildings,4 1 which leaves open the possibility thatthe mihrab seen by IbnJubayr was the original Umayyadmihrab, or that it preserved something of the form ofthe latter.4 2Regardless of its date, what is certain is that a mihrabwith miniature arcades in the Great Mosque of Damas-cus wa s being described in extravagant terms by visitorsto Damascus a full century before one finds a mihrab ofa similar form appearing elsewhere. The first of thesestill extant is in the mausoleum of Qalawun (fig. 12).The superlative beauty of the Damascus mihrab, likethat of the golden vine, evidently rendered it a suitablemodel for the mihrab in Qalawun's tomb; the conjunc-tion of both these features in the Mamluk tomb suggeststhat its decoration was intended to evoke that of theGreat Mosque in Damascus. Taken alongside the refer-ence to the Dome of the Rock in its plan, what we havein the form of the tomb and its decoration are refer-ences to the two most important early Islamic religiousmonuments in the area most securely under Mamlukcontrol - the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and theUmayyad mosque in Damascus. This reference is madeby copying the most characteristic or celebrated fea-tures of each building: in one case its octagonal plan, inthe other its prayer niche and the gilded vine frieze thatsat above it.

Since the form of the Umayyad karma in Damascusrelates it to the late antique sculpture of the Levant, 43 itseems judicious at this point to consider the "revival vs.survival" debate.44 Although this controversy has mainlyfocused on the use and reuse of classically inspired andclassical elements in Syrian architecture, since I havesuggested that the Qalawunid use of decorative formsderived from Damascus clearly represents a consciousrevival of archaic forms of decoration, rather than theirfortuitous survival, it seems appropriate to lay bare thepremises on which such a conclusion is based.

That Mamluk vine friezes first appear in buildingserected as part of imperially sponsored projects inDamascus, that one is found in a building with mosaicsclearly inspired by those of the Great Mosque of thatcity, and that in both their general conception and spe-cific form they are similar to the renowned vine frieze inthe nearby mosque would all support the suggestionthat these Mamluk friezes are copies of the vanishedkarma. Based on the surviving evidence, such friezes donot appear as a feature of Islamic architectural decora-

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tion in the half a millennium or so intervening betweenthe completion of the Umayyad mosque and the mauso-leum of Baybars I.45 In the single case which may haverepresented an exception to this - a marble vine friezeof similar type in the mihrab of Sultan Salih Najm al-DinAyyub's tomb in Cairo (1239-40) 4 - it has been arguedthat this postdates the tomb, being introduced in theQalawunid period.4 7

The figure of Qalawun looms large in all this, since hewa s responsible in one case for the completion, in theother for the restoration, of the two Damascene struc-tures in which copies of the vine frieze first appear. Thefact that a similar frieze was introduced into Egypt,where there is nothing to suggest that it had any histor-ical antecedents, to serve as an element of decoration inthe mausoleum of the same sultan suggests that the fea-ture was deliberately imported from Syria and was not,as Creswell assumed,4 8 the random product of Syriancraftsmen fleeing the Mongol advance. The same is trueof the mihrab in the mausoleum of Qalawun, whichthere are good reasons for seeing as a copy of the princi-pal mihrab in the Great Mosque of Damascus.

Perhaps the most potent evidence supporting theview that the appearance of these two features - vinefrieze and arcaded mihrab - represents a deliberateQalawunid revival of archaic forms is chronological:both features hardly survive the reign of Qalawun's son,

al-Nasir Muhammad (d. 1340). Transplanted from itsDamascene home to alien soil, the golden vine evidentlyfailed to flourish. It makes one last appearance in an-other royal tomb in Cairo, the tomb of al-Nasir Muham-mad built in 1303-4, before disappearing into oblivion.The incarnation of the vine frieze in al-Nasir Muham-mad's tomb is less grandiose than that in hi s father'stomb, with gilded wood substituting for the carved mar-ble of the original (fig. 13).4 9 The same is true of themihrab with miniature arcades. Unlike the vine frieze,the arcaded mihrab was not exclusive to imperial con-texts; after its use in the funerary complex of Qalawunone can trace a series of such mihrabs in Cairo and theprovinces in buildings erected during the late thir-teenth and the first half of the fourteenth century (fig.14); thereafter they die out."0 It is conceivable that thedisappearance of these non-indigenous features reflectsthe fact that their relationship to their Damascene pro-totypes became obscured through time.

By focusing on a single feature, what I have been sug-gesting up to now is that the decoration of the GreatMosque of Damascus had an impact on Mamluk archi-tectural decoration in the years between 1260 and 1340which has previously been unacknowledged. In the caseof the vine frieze this impact seems to result from theconscious copying of the karma in the Umayyad mosqueas an appropriate feature for the decoration of a series

Fig. 13 . Cairo. Mausoleum of al-Nasir Muhammad. Detail of vine frieze. Creswell Archive no . 1092, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.(Photo: courtesy Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

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Fig. 14 . Cairo citadel. Mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad (1335).Mihrab with the remnants of a miniature arcade. CreswellArchive no. 1178, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo: cour-tesy AshmoIean Museum, Oxford)

of imperial tombs in Damascus and Cairo. A similar phe-nomenon is apparent in the replication of the design ofthe main mihrab of the Damascus mosque in buildingserected during the reign of Sultan Qalawun and al-NasirMuhammad.While the discussion has so far concentrated on typesof decoration associated with the Qalawunid revival ofarchaic forms which are quite specific to Damascus, theincorporation of a reference to the Dome of the Rock inthe plan of Qalawun's tomb in Cairo indicates that it wa snot to Damascus alone that those responsible for thisrevival were looking. I would like to suggest that theQalawunid revival was not confined to copying specificelements in the form and decoration of the early Islamicmonuments of Syria, but is also manifest in the use ofcertain media which are characteristic of their decora-tion, most notably glass mosaic.

It has sometimes been argued that the use of glass

mosaic in Mamluk monuments between the reign ofBaybars and that of al-Nasir Muhammad (that is, fromabout 1260 to 1340) is evidence for a continuous tradi-tion of glass mosaic in the Levant, stretching from theUmayyad period through-to the Mamluk."i It can beargued, however, that, far from this being the case, therewas no enduring tradition underlying the use of glassmosaic in Bahri Mamluk architecture, but that the artwas revived during the reign of Sultan Baybars (that is,in the 1260's) and formed part of the repertoire ofarchaizing decoration under discussion. Furthermore,it is, I believe, possible to show that the inspirationbehind this revival was the use of glass mosaic in boththe Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damas-cus.5 2 The mosaics of both monuments were severaltimes repaired and restored during the eighty-year pe-riod from 1260 to 1340. Such programs of work on themosaics of both buildings may be convincingly corre-lated to the use of the same medium in the decorationof contemporary Mamluk buildings.It is true that there are two Ayyubid tombs in Cairo -the tomb of Sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub (1239-40), the last Ayyubid ruler of Egypt, and his wife Shajaratal-Durr (1250) - in which glass mosaics appear in thehood of the mihrab.5 3 The presumption has always beenthat the mosaics, which appear in the mihrab, were con-temporary with the completion date of the buildings.On stylistic grounds, however, the late Michael Mei-necke argued that, like the vine frieze in the mausoleumof al-Salih Ayyub, these mosaics were introduced duringor after the reign of Sultan Qalawun, and were inspiredby the Syrian decoration introduced into Cairo in his fu-nerary complex.5 4 Although this later dating is still amatter of contention,55 if one accepts it, then a muchmore coherent and intelligible picture of the use ofglass mosaic in Egypt and the Levant emerges.

It is known that Sultan Baybars ordered major restora-tions to the Dome of the Rock, including its mosaics,which commenced in 1261.56 The first recorded use ofglass mosaic in a Mamluk building is not until five yearslater, in the palace built by Baybars in Damascus knownas the Qasr al-Ablaq. This does not survive, and the earli-est surviving Mamluk glass mosaics are preserved in thetomb of Baybars in Damascus (1281, fig. 6) , a buildingconstructed by Ibrahim ibn Ghanim, the architect of thevanished palace.5 7 Both the vine frieze in this tomb andits mosaics are clearly inspired by the decoration of thenearby Umayyad Mosque.5 8 Concern about the poorstate of the mosaics in the Damascus mosque is said tohave led Sultan Baybars I to provide 20,000 dinars for

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their restoration in 1269.59 Mosaics likely to date fromthis period are among those found in the mosque.6 Itmight be argued that a gap of twelve years between therestoration of the mosque and the construction of thetomb precludes the possibility of an y connection be-tween the two events. There is, however, an interestingpassage in the history of the Mamluk writer al-'Umariwhich indicates that substantial amounts of glass tesse-rae, remnants from a restoration of the mosaics in theDamascus mosque, were damaged in the fire whichswept through the mosque in 1339.6I Al-CUmari does notspecify which restoration he is talking about, but, basedon the historical sources, only two possible candidatesexist: the restoration ordered by Baybars in 1269, or thatcarried out during the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad in1328.62 This suggests that glass tesserae (and presumablythe expertise to use them) were available for at least adecade, and possibly a lot longer, following such a cam-paign of restoration. There are thus no chronologicaldifficulties with the suggestion that the impetus behindthe revival of glass mosaic was provided by the interesttaken in the monument and its mosaics.

We have already seen that the tomb of Baybars wa scompleted by Sultan Qalawun. The interest of this sul-tan in forms of decoration associated with the GreatMosque of Damascus is apparent in his introduction ofcopies of the vine frieze into the mausoleum of Baybarsand the Maristan al-Nuri in Damascus, and of both thevine frieze and arcaded mihrab into his own tomb inCairo. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find thatSultan Qalawun also introduced the use of glass mosaicto Egypt, for the hood of the arcaded mihrab in themadrasa adjoining his tomb (completed in 1285) isfilled with a mosaic (fig. 15)."63 The subject matter of thismosaic - vegetal scrolls with clusters of mother-of-pearlgrapes or flowers issuing from a vase - shows clearaffinities with the mosaic in the head of the mihrab inthe earlier tomb of Baybars.6 4 The next recorded use ofglass mosaic in the capital, in the mihrab of Lagin in themosque of Ibn Tulun (1296),65 follows a restoration ofthe mosaics in the Dome of the Rock by Sultan Kitbughain 1294-96;66 the craftsmen responsible for both this res-toration and that ordered by Baybars may have beenbrought from Damascus.6 7 It has been suggested thatQalawun brought craftsmen from Damascus to work onhis complex in Cairo, 68 or even that the mosaics werethe product of the same workshop that had worked onthe decoration of Baybars' mausoleum in Damascus.6 9The similarities between the Cairene and Damascenemosaics and vine friezes would appear to support this.

Fig. 15. Cairo. Madrasa of Qalawun. Mihrab. Creswell Archiveno . 453, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (Photo: courtesy Ash-molean Museum, Oxford)

As mentioned previously, the series of copies of theDamascus vine frieze comes to an end in the reign ofQalawun's son, al-Nasir Muhammad. Significantly, theend of al-Nasir Muhammad's reign coincides with thedisappearance of glass mosaic from the repertoire ofMamluk architectural decoration. It is also in buildingserected in Cairo and the Levant during the reign of thissultan that the greatest number of Mamluk glassmosaics are found. One of the earliest occurrences ofglass mosaic in Cairo during the reign of al-NasirMuhammad is in a building in the Cairo citadel whichhas been identified as either the Qaca al-Ashrafiyya orone of the halls of the Qasr al-Ablaq.70 The latter palaceappears to have been inspired by an earlier palace of thesame name built by Baybars in Damascus, which alsohad mosaic decoration.7' While the motifs are less skill-fully rendered, the content of the mosaics in the Cairocitadel, in which trees and architecture are prominent,is similar to that of the mosaics in the tomb of Baybars

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and, ultimately, to those in the Great Mosque of Damas-cus.72 In view of the probability that Syrian craftsmenalso worked on the decoration of his father's funerarycomplex, it seems significant that workers were broughtto Cairo from Damascus to work on the palace of al-Nasir Muhammad, completed in 1315.73

The majority of the surviving examples of Mamlukglass mosaics can be ascribed to the activities of the AmirTankiz, viceroy of al-Nasir Muhammad in Syria and gov-ernor of Damascus between 1312 and 1340. In this pe-riod campaigns of restoration were carried out on theDome of the Rock (1318-19), the Great Mosque ofDamascus (1328-29), and the Aqsa Mosque (1328-31) .74After these campaigns, one finds glass mosaic appearingin a series of buildings associated with Tankiz.' 5 Glassmosaic was used to decorate the hood of the mihrab inthe mosque erected by Tankiz in Damascus in 1317-18, 76

Fig. 16. Jerusalem, Tankiziyya. Mihrab with mosaic decoration.Creswell Archive no. 5091, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.(Photo: courtesy Ashmolean Museum. Oxford)

in his madrasa in Jerusalem (1328-29, fig. 16),77 and inthe contemporary Madrasa al-Burtasi at Tripoli.7 8 Theimagery of these mosaics, many of which feature vegetalscrolls issuing from vessels of various types, is broadlysimilar to those found in the Cairene tombs mentionedearlier, to those of the mihrab in the mausoleum of Bay-bars in Damascus, and, ultimately, to the imagery of theUmayyad mosaics in Damascus and the Haram al-Sha-rif. 79 The dates of the structures in which mosaic deco-ration appears point to the fact that the availability ofglass mosaic was linked to the restorations of themosaics in the Umayvad monuments; it may be that thetesserae used in the decoration ofboth the Tankiziyya inJerusalem and of the main mihrab in the Haram al-Kha-lil at Hebron (restored by Tankiz in 1331-32) were leftover from the restoration of the Umayyad mosaics inDamascus.8 0 I have suggested elsewhere that the designof the latter mihrab was influenced by early Islamic fea-tures of the Haram al-Sharif.8'

The latest occurrence of glass mosaic in Cairo is intwo structures, the madrasa of Aqbugha and the mauso-leum of Sitt Hadaq, both erected in 1339, towards theend of al-Nasir Muhammad's reign.8 2 In a recent articlein which she suggests that the occurrence of glassmosaic in Cairo at this period was linked to the activitiesof Tankiz in Syria, Caroline Williams concludes, "Itseems likely ... that restoring the early Syrian monu-ments had led Tankiz to revive this ancient craft for dec-orating monuments of his ow n time." 83 In fact thismight equally be applied to the entire period between1260 and 1340, not just the period when Tankiz wasactive in the Levant. A similar conclusion was reached byNasser Rabbat:

The revival of mosaic techniques introduced into theMamluk artistic repertoire not only a medium and its ico-nography that had long been forgotten, but also the inter-pretations that had developed over time to explain theUmayyad precedents in the Great Mosque [of Damascus].Mamluk sultans such as Baybars and Qalawun seem tohave ample opportunity to admire the mosaic scenes inthe Umayyad Mosque; they must also have perceived thecapacity of these scenes to carry messages of a connotativenature. The repairs they ordered of them had also pro-duced an acceptable degree of expertise for the use of thesame techniques in new structures. 8 4

It is not my intention to deal with the iconography ofthe Mamluk mosaics here - although in most casesthey are clearly inspired by Umayyad prototypes - butto suggest that the use of glass mosaic in Bahri Mamlukmonuments should be seen as part of a revival of deco-

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rative forms closely identified with the Umayyad monu-ments of Syria and with the Great Mosque of Damascusin particular. That this is so is underscored by the factthat all the instances of Mamluk glass mosaics occur dur-ing the reigns of the three Mamluk rulers in whosetombs copies of the Damascus vine frieze exist (that is,between 1260 and 1340). If one seeks to argue for the ex-istence of a continuous tradition of glass mosaic in theLevant, then one needs to explain why examples of glassmosaic are not found after the reign of al-Nasir Muham-mad, when other features associated with the earlyIslamic monuments of Syria and Palestine also disap-pear. It can hardly be coincidental that the last great re-corded campaigns for restoring the Umayyad monu-ments of Syria during the Mamluk period were carriedout at the behest of this same sultan.85

Added to the weight of circumstantial chronologicalevidence is the fact that, even aesthetically, the Umayyadmosaics were the standard against which contemporarymosaic work was measured and evidently found lacking.In a discussion of Mamluk mosaics written just beforethe art finally disappeared from the architecture ofEgypt and the Levant al-cUmari remarks: "... this kind[of mosaic] does not turn out completely equal to thatwhich was made in olden times, as regards the purity ofcolour or beauty of aspect. The difference between theold and new consists in the fact that in the old [the tesse-rae] are uniform and of equal size, whereas in the newthey are of varying size."8 6

The implications of this correlation between restora-tions to the Umayyad monuments and the occurrenceof glass mosaic needs to be investigated further, but theavailable evidence is sufficient to suggest that the use ofglass mosaic in Mamluk architecture, like that of thegilded vine frieze, should not be attributed to any con-tinuous tradition, but to the deliberate copying andrevival of archaic forms. It seems likely that the verypresence in Mamluk buildings of decoration executedin glass mosaic was sufficient to suggest a connectionwith the early Islamic monuments of Syria; the use of themedium should therefore be seen in conjunction withthe appearance of other architectural or decorativeforms copied from the early Islamic monuments ofSyria.

Although a full exploration of the topic lies beyondthe scope of this paper, the evidence for Mamluk usageof the art strongly suggests that there was no flourishingtradition of glass mosaic in the Levant in the post-Umay-ya d period. In fact, when one pauses to consider thepublished evidence, it quickly becomes clear just how

slender the grounds are on which the continuity ofsucha tradition has been adduced. The suggestion of a localschool of Muslim mosaicists - a popular one amongthose arguing for the existence of a continuous tradi-tion 7 - cannot be substantiated, for the use of glassmosaic in pre-Mamluk Muslim buildings is inextricablylinked to the Umayyad mosaics in the Dome of the Rockand the Great Mosque of Damascus. The latter were re-stored in 1082-83, during the reign of Malik Shah, andagain under Nur al-Din in 1159;8 8 it is tempting to seethe occurrence of a post-crusader mihrab with mosaicdecoration in the Jerusalem Haram as being related tothe latter campaign.8 9 A heavily restored mihrab withglass mosaic decoration in the Great Mosque of Hims(fig. 17) might also be mentioned, although it shows suf-ficient stylistic similarities with the mosaic mihrabswhich one finds in buildings associated with the activ-ities of Tankiz to suggest that it may have been added lat-er, as part of the Qalawunid revival of the art.9 0

The Christian monuments of Palestine are, by theirvery nature, unique monuments, their decoration fre-quently the result of foreign patronage or the work ofimported artists. For this reason the occurrence of glassmosaic in the Holy Sepulchre, or in similar monuments,cannot be taken as evidence for the continuity of a localtradition.s' Although the participation of local crafts-men seems likely in certain instances - in the twelfth-century mosaic decoration of the Church of the Nativityat Bethlehem for example - in this case those crafts-men seem to have been operating under the directionof a foreign master in the execution of a project whichwas the product of Byzantine funding.9 2 It seems likely

Fig. 17. Hims, Great Mosque. Mihrab with mosaic decoration.Creswell Archive no. 5905, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.(Photo: courtesy Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

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that, on occasion, Byzantine assistance was forthcomingwith the mosaic decoration of both Christian and Mus-lim buildings.9 3 The evidence for an indigenous schoolof Egyptian mosaicists rests primarily on a dubious read-ing of an inscription formerly in the Aqsa and cited byal-Harawi (d. 1215)." 4 Stern showed that the readingcould not be trusted, and raised the possibility that theFatimid mosaics in the Aqsa mosque were executed withByzantine help.95 In fact this suggestion derives somesupport from circumstantial chronology. In 1027, theyear that the mosaics on the drum of the Dome of theRock were restored,9 6 an agreement was reached withthe Byzantine emperor regarding the rebuilding of theHoly Sepulchre.9 7 In 1035 the emperor is reported tohave sent funds, and possibly materials, to assist with thisrebuilding. 98 The mosaics in the Aqsa appear to havebeen executed in the same year.g9 Ibn al-Athir's state-ment that Salah al-Din's restorations of the Aqsa madeuse of al-fass al-mudhahhab al-qustan.tini points in thesame direction.' Although the wording is obscure, thereading "Constantinopolitan gilt mosaics" seems prefer-able to "Constantinian gilt glass mosaics," the alterna-tive suggested by van Berchem.'' In terms of the Mam-luk revival of the art of glass mosaic, it is notinconceivable that an interest rooted in the Syrian mon-uments was developed with Byzantine assistance. 0 2

The fact that the subject matter and style of many ofthe rare surviving instances of mosaic decoration ineither the medieval Muslim or Christian monuments isoften clearly related to that of the Umayyad monumentsis in itself significant.'0 3 It might be argued that the par-allels are intentional and represent a desire to surpassthe glories of the Umayyad mosaics.'0 4 If, however, alocal tradition did exist, then one might reasonablyexpect it to have developed an iconographic repertoireof its own rather than constantly harking back to archaicpredecessors. This might lead one to wonder at whatpoint emulation begins to appear more as a sign of ico-nographic bankruptcy due to the lack of a flourishingtradition than a profound political statement. As Salam-Liebich remarks in her discussion of the iconographicrelationships between the Umayyad and Mamlukmosaics: "This suggests that by Mamluk times the art ofglass mosaic was not a flourishing one; it was expensiveand therefore rarely and sparingly used. Consequently,it had no chance to develop a vocabulary of its own, andrelied instead on the classical past."'5

In the light of the various and disputed traditionsregarding a Byzantine role in the Umayyad mosaics atMedina, Damascus, and C6rdoba,"'6 one wonders

whether the apparent failure to develop a continuousindigenous tradition of glass mosaic in the medievalIslamic world led to the perception of such decorationas in some wa y foreign or exotic. For all their aniconismand culturally modified iconography, there is little inthe Umayyad mosaics at eitherJerusalem or Damascuswhich cannot be paralleled in the work of Byzantinemosaicists. In addition to their fame and the much-deserved admiration which the Umayyad mosaicsinspired, in an era in which the skills to rival such large-scale high-quality work in mosaic was lacking, the exoticcharacter of such decoration may well have been a fac-tor in the periodic revivals of the art.'0 7

If there was no tradition of glass mosaic in the Levantin the post-Umayyad period, then one must considerthe likely source of the tesserae used in the restorationsof the Umayyad mosaics, or in the periodic use of glassmosaic which one finds in Jerusalem and elsewhere. 1 08Part of the answer may lie in the fact that the tesseraewhich dislodged themselves from the Umayyad mosaicsappear to have been collected for reuse.'0 9 Glass mosaicwas also used sparingly; Mamluk usage wa s confined tonarrow friezes or the concave head of the mihrab. It maybe that sufficient expertise for mounting the mosaicscould be gleaned from studying the Umayyad decora-tion in situ, although technical studies to determine anydifferences between Umayyad and later mosaics haveyet to be undertaken.

In any case it seems likely that the idea of a flourishingschool of Muslim mosaicists spanning the six hundredor so years between the erection of the Umayyad monu-ments and the Qalawunid period should be rejected."0Instead, one should probably envisage the art as eitherdefunct or maintained at a very low level, with periodicrepairs to the Umayyad mosaics generating both the ma-terials and the expertise to permit a limited use of glassmosaic in contemporary monuments. As the series ofmosaic mihrabs associated with the patronage of Tankizshows, a workshop brought into existence in the courseof a restoration program might continue to flourish fora generation or so, applying its skills even to monu-ments which had previously lacked this kind of decora-tion. In our ow n century a good example of the samephenomenon is the workshop created for the restora-tion of the stucco and colored-glass windows in theDome of the Rock in the 1920's. This art wa s defunct inJerusalem, but was revived for the restoration."' Theworkshop thus created was responsible for installingsimilar windows in buildings which had previouslylacked them," 2 and its successor continues to be re-

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sponsible for producing replacement windows for thebuildings of the Haram until the present day. None ofthese facts can, however, be taken as testifying to the ex-istence of a flourishing industry inJerusalem in the cen-turies following the major renovations ordered by Sulay-man I.

Before concluding, it seems appropriate to considerthe means by which the features discussed above werecopied, the modes of transmission by which they weretransposed from Syria to embellish the monuments ofthe Mamluk capital. As Jonathan Bloom has pointedout, it is probable that the transmission of monumentalarchitectural forms was often the result of the word -of descriptions both oral and literary."' In this case theidentification and evocation of a characteristic featureare often more important than the style in which it isevoked, which explains why the relationship betweenprototype and copy is often rendered opaque to themodern eye.' 4 Certain types of architectonic decorationmay also have been transmitted in the same way: onecan, for example, imagine a description such as IbnJubayr's of the mihrab in the Damascus mosque provid-ing the basis for the arcaded mihrab in Qalawun's tomb.

In other instances it seems more likely that the initialtransmission of a particular decorative element or styleshould be attributed to the presence of artisans familiarwith it. One can, for example, easily envisage the simi-larities in form between the mosque of Ibn Tulun inCairo and its Mesopotamian prototypes as the result ofverbal transmission; it is harder to argue this for itsstucco decoration. In the case of the vine frieze the simi-larities in detail between the Umayyad karma, the friezesin Damascus, and their Cairene counterparts suggestthat we may well be dealing with the movement of crafts-men. The migration of skilled artisans from Damascusand Aleppo toJerusalem and Cairo to work on variousimperially sponsored building projects during the BahriMamluk period is well attested,"5 and the appearance ofglass mosaic in Egypt at this time may well be due to theimport of both craftsmen and materials from theLevant.

Having established that there was both a revival and areplication of types of decoration identified with theGreat Mosque of Damascus and the Dome of the Rock,we need to turn finally to look at the significance of thephenomenon, to consider wh y the new rulers of Egyptand the Levant felt it necessary to hark back to earlyIslamic themes in their imperial architecture. The an-swer, or a large part of it, lies perhaps in the nature ofthe dynasty itself. The Mamluks began as the elite mil-

itary slave corps of the last Ayyubid ruler of Egypt, al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, who seized power at his death.The new rulers of Egypt and Syria were Turks: many ofthe Mamluk sultans, including those who ruled duringthe period from 1260 to 1340, spoke the language oftheir Arab subjects only imperfectly, if at all." 6 Thus thenewly ascendant dynasty shared neither the language,nor the culture, nor the history of those they ruled.Moreover, the early years of the dynasty were character-ized by chronic political instability, a result both ofexternal pressures (the advance of the Mongols, for ex-ample, or the threat still posed to the new regime by theAyyubid princelings in Syria and the crusader kingdomsin the Levant) and of internal frictions generated by thestruggle for power among the various Mamluk factionswhich emerged to fill the political vacuum after 1250. Insuch a climate the issues of succession and legitimacyloomed large. In the years following their seizure ofpower some of the Mamluk sultans issued coins onwhich they are named, not as imperial overlords of theIslamic world, but as lieutenants of the Ayyubid ruler ofEgypt, a man who had been dead several years."7 Thatsuch a patent piece of fiction was deemed necessary isan indication of just how keenly the issue of legitimacywas felt.

A dramatic use of symbolic legitimization can be dis-cerned in the revival of the caliphate by Baybars in1261.18 The institution of the caliphate, although devoidof any real power, had long been a powerful weapon inthe armory of those seeking to confer an aura of legiti-macy on their rule. Since the eighth century the caliph-ate had been firmly fixed in Baghdad. From the tenthcentury onwards the caliph, nominally the spiritualleader of the Sunni Muslims, had become a hostage tofortune as a succession of non-Arab dynasties occupiedBaghdad, granting the caliph their protection and gain-ing defacto legitimacy in the process. Through this fic-tional pedigree a sense of continuity with the historicalpast was maintained.

The murder of the caliph by the Mongols when theyseized Baghdad in 1258 sent shock waves throughoutthe Islamic world. Three years later, in 1261, Baybars re-established the institution in Cairo. If Baybars's inten-tion was to confer an aura of legitimacy on his own rule,then the new caliph played his role well. Eight days afterhis installation in the citadel of Cairo he gave the khutbain the mosque of the citadel, recognizing Baybars as sul-tan over Egypt, Syria, Diyarbakir, the Hijaz, Yemen,Mesopotamia, and all other lands he might conquer."9Henceforth the center of the Islamic world wa s no long-

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er Baghdad but Cairo, which fell heir to the traditions ofa vanished culture.In a climate in which the issue of legitimacy was com-

pelling, the trappings of that legitimacy were oftenacquired by forging (in every sense) links with the his-torical past and by fabricating a continuity with thatpast. Perhaps in no earlier period is the desire to forge alink with the glories of the past as apparent as it is inMamluk architecture between 1260 and 1340. One ofthe ways in which this manifests itself is in an almostobsessive interest in the two most significant earlyIslamic religious monuments in the Levant: the Domeof the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus. Theattention to the upkeep, to the repair, and to the resto-ration of these two buildings over these years is unparal-leled at any other period. There were, for example,three recorded phases of restoration to the Dome of theRock in these eighty years,' 2 compared with a total ofeight in the six hundred years that followed. 2 ' Are we toassume that the wear and tear on the monument overthese years was particularly excessive, or, as seems morelikely, that the considerations which underlay the activ-ities of the Mamluk sultans and their viceroys were morethan utilitarian? It is particularly striking that the last re-corded major Mamluk restorations of both the Dome ofthe Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus were dur-ing the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad, the end of whichcoincides with the disappearance of features such asvine friezes, arcaded mihrab, and glass mosaic, which Ihave suggested were directly inspired by the same twobuildings.

It is evident that the ability of these references to theearly Islamic monuments of Syria to fulfill the functionjust ascribed to them, that is, to service internal Mamlukneeds, is inextricably linked to the perception of theprototypes, to their external status. The status of theDome of the Rock as the third holiest shrine of Islamensured its fame throughout the medieval Islamicworld. The renown of the Umayyad mosque in Damas-cus is hardly less apparent in the medieval sources, andis predicated both on the basis of its sanctity and thesplendors of its decoration. The sanctity of the mosque,derived largely from its association with the Islamic con-quest of Syria, is reflected in a tradition ascribed to theeighth-century traditionist, Sufyan al-Thauri. Accordingto it, the value of one prayer in Mecca is equal to onehundred thousand prayers anywhere else, in theMosque of the Prophet in Medina to fifty thousandprayers, in the Aqsa mosque ofJerusalem to forty thou-sand prayers, and in the Great Mosque of Damascus to

thirty thousand prayers.'2 2 That the Damascus mosqueranks fourth, after the three most important mosques inthe Islamic world, is an adequate indication of its reli-gious status. In another tradition the equality of themosque of Damascus with -the mosque of Jerusalem isstressed, for a spot is indicated in the mosque of Damas-cus in which prayer has the same value as prayer in themosque ofJerusalem.'2 3 Other sources report that wor-ship will continue in the Damascus mosque for fortyyears after the destruction of the world." 4

Added to this belief in the sanctity of the Damascusmosque is its status universally acknowledged inmedieval Islamic sources - as one of the wonders of theworld. The number of wonders in the medieval Muslimworld varies from three to five or even thirty, dependingon which source one consults, but whether a greater orlesser number of wonders is cited, the Great Mosque ofDamascus is consistently among them.'2 5 On a humanlevel, the impact which the Umayyad mosque and itsdecoration had, notjust on foreign visitors and pilgrims,but even on those who worshiped daily within its walls, isamply illustrated by a story related by al-ThaCalibi, writ-ing in the early eleventh century:

Also, there is the mosque of Damascus, one of the won-ders of the world in its beauty and uniqueness; to describeit adequately would take too long. Al-Lahham relates froma certain elder of Damascus, who lived close by themosque, that the latter said that he had never missed a sin-gle act of worship in it since he reached the age-of reason. . .,an d that he had never once entered it without his eyealighting on some piece of inscriptional carving or orna-mentation or some other aspect of its beauty which he hadnever noticed before. This on e story is sufficient witness toits uniqueness.' 2 6

A similar sentiment is apparent in the belief that even ifone stayed in the mosque for one hundred years, at ev-ery instant of each of those years one's eyes would fall onanother marvel. 27

There was clearly an aesthetic dimension to the won-der which the Umayyad mosque in Damascus inspiredin the medieval Islamic world. In addition to its associ-ation with the Muslim conquest of Syria and its religioussignificance, the cost and quality of its decoration arefrequently cited among the reasons for the high regardin which the mosque was held.2 Several medieval au -thors, in a somewhat idiosyncratic enumeration, countthe Great Mosque of Damascus not just as one, but astwo, wonders of the world. They tell us that among thefive wonders, the Damascus mosque ranks fourth due toits superlative beauty and the large amount expended

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on its construction. The fifth wonder is the mosaic, mar-ble paneling, and carved marble decoration with whichit was embellished.'29 This occasioned much admiration:the marble paneling on account of the mystery of how itwa s held in place; the carved decoration on account ofthe skill and beauty of its execution. One 'should pre-sumably include the famous marble vine frieze amongthe marble decorations that rendered the mosque sucha wonder in the eyes of the medieval Arab writers; theprominence of the karma in literary accounts of themosque is proof enough of this.

Seen in this light, the sudden appearance in Mamlukbuildings of elements which are clearly inspired by, ifnot copied from, the decoration in the Umayyadmosque of Damascus, appears more intelligible. In thecase of three royal tombs, that of Baybars, Qalawun, andal-Nasir Muhammad. it seems likely that copying themost renowned features of the Damascus mosque repre-sents an attempt to appropriate for these buildingssome of the kudos associated with the prototype. Al-though I have not explored any iconographic dimen-sion to the phenomenon, this has an obvious relevanceto both the perceived significance of the various fea-tures that formed part of the Qalawunid revival of earlyIslamic decorative styles and, consequently, to the rolethey played in that revival. Several scholars havedetected paradisal or eschatological allusions in themosaics of the Damascus mosque.'3 0 The occurrence ofgolden vines at various points in the surviving mosaics ofthe western riwdq suggests that there was an underlyingcoherence to the decorative program of the mosquewhich is now difficult to appreciate, and there are goodreasons for seeing the karma, and possibly the miniaturearcade, as imbued with similar paradisal significance. 3 '

It may be that the intertextual references in BahriMamluk architecture are related to a contemporary re-interpretation of Umayyad iconography.'3 In terms ofthe golden vine frieze, however, the fact that, with oneexception, its use is restricted to funerary architecturesuggests that its original significance may have been asapparent to Muslims in the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies as it was in the eighth. Similarly, the reserva-tion of the motif for royal contexts suggests that theancient association between the ruler and the goldenvine survived well into the medieval Islamic period.'3 3Both aspects are equally relevant to the imperial mauso-lea of Mamluk Cairo in which highly charged architectu-ral and architectonic forms served equally as expres-sions of extravagant (if not strictly orthodox) religiosityand secular glorification.'34

It should be pointed out that the perpetuation of cer-tain architectural features which derive from the formof the Damascus mosque - the axial nave or the gabledentrance, for example - in the medieval mosques ofSyria is quite a different phenomenon from the one Ihave been discussing. What we are dealing with here isthe deliberate copying of archaic architectonic and dec-orative forms which are specifically identified with, andtherefore seen as characteristic of, the Umayyadmosque. There is good historical precedent for the lat-ter phenomenon, not least in the apparent attempts ofthe Andalusian Umayyads to create the Great Mosque ofC6rdoba in the image of the mosque erected by theirforebears in Damascus. This included both the replica-tion, however schematic, of architectural forms knownto characterize the latter mosque and the use of certaintypes of decoration - notably glass mosaic - whichwere associated with the Umayyad prototype.' 3 5 It is alsoworth noting here that certain scholars have seen in thegilded marble vegetal ornament that occurs in the span-drels of the C6rdoban mihrab an echo of the famouskarma. 36

Among the features of such conscious attempts toevoke the glories of past architectural traditions as em-bodied in potent archetypes is the tendency to be peri-odic, episodic, and typically to involve the transpositionof characteristic architectural forms and decorative fea-tures from one cultural context to another. They areoften, but not always, associated with the search forimages of legitimacy and continuity by newly emergentdynasties or following periods of political disjunction.'3 7One further example of the impact of the Damascusmosque which falls into this category is the influence itappears to have exerted on the development of Seljuqarchitecture. It was Sheila Blair who first pointed outthat the addition of the monumental south dome to thecongregational mosque of Isfahan in 1086 followed a vis-it by Malik Shah to Damascus in 1082.'13 At that time thedome of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus had justbeen replaced by order of the Seljuq vizier Abu NasrAhmad b. Fadl as part of the restorations to the mosque,including the mosaics, following a fire of 1069.'39 Thespectacular appearance of the new dome is described bythe geographers,'4 0 and it seems likely that the additionto the Isfahan mosque was inspired by a desire to emu-late the monumental dome in Damascus, even if in anIranian idiom.

The significance of the Damascene references in Sel-juq architecture merits further investigation, m4' butthere is a curious parallel here with the case of the

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arcaded mihrab, for it was not an Umayyad feature, ittoo may have been introduced following the fire of1069, possibly at the same time as the dome. MalikShah's emulation of the new dome, on the one hand,and the Mamluk copying of the arcaded mihrab, on theother, suggest that it was less the Umayyad associationsof the Great Mosque of Damascus which rendered it sus-ceptible to imitation than more general considerationsof status and antiquity. It may be , therefore, that in thedesire to acquire some of the sanctity or cachet of afamous prototype, the copying of characteristic ele-ments reveals a chronological eclecticism, based not onconsiderations of antiquity alone, but on a perceptionof the mosque as an accretion of famous features. If thearcaded mihrab was in fact a Seljuq innovation, then thereplication of this feature in the Bahri Mamluk monu-ments of Cairo may reveal an important factor in thephenomenon of copying in medieval Islamic architec-ture, for it is indicative of a perception of architecture asaccretional rather than chronologically discrete. Appar-ently it was not the most ancient features of the proto-type, or those associated with a particular phase in itshistory, that were copied, but the most remarked upon,the best known, and therefore the most characteristic.

The architecture of the Qalawunid period is charac-terized by a search for a defining Mamluk style, a searchwhich manifests itself both in the appearance of novel orexotic elements and a use of resonant archaisms.'42While the effect in both instances was to introduce non-indigenous features into the repertoire of Egyptianarchitecture, the archaizing revival I have been discuss-ing looked primarily to Syria for its inspiration. In an eraof political instability and cultural turmoil, the earlyIslamic monuments of Syria were enduring symbols ofcontinuity and stability. The attention paid to these mon-uments by each of the succeeding dynasties which cameto control the region in the post-Umayyad period was asmuch an undertaking designed to stamp a dynastic markupon them as it was an attempt to preserve their materialfabric. In the imperial architecture of the Qalawunidera, both secular and religious,' 43 this homage to thearchitectural past takes the form of a dynamic dialogueconducted using quotations from particular structuresseen to characterize or embody that past. The phenom-enon is characterized both by the revival of archaicforms of decoration- such as glass mosaic- and bythe deliberate copying of specific features associatedwith the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque ofDamascus: the octagonal plan, in one case, and thearcaded mihrab and golden vine frieze, in the other. In

his classic study of copying in medieval Western architec-ture Krautheimer concludes that its defining character-istics are "the disintegration of the prototype into its sin-gle elements, the selective transfer of these parts, andtheir reshuffling in the copy."' 44 The Qalawunid transpo-sition of Damascene elements meets all of these criteria.

The appropriation of the characteristic features ofthese buildings in the imperial architecture of MamlukCairo and Damascus is an act which looks towards thepast in order to convey a message about the present andthe future. It is both a blatant attempt to create linkswith an ancient and venerable architectural heritageand, by fostering a sense of continuity, however con-trived, it is a visible expression of the belief of the newregime in its own ability to endure. To this extent onemight compare the copying and revival of archaic formsin the realm of architecture with the revival of the mostancient and legitimizing of institutions, that of the cali-phate itself. Just as the roots of the caliphate, which hadbeen firmly fixed in Baghdad for almost half a millen-nium, were, soon after they had been cut by the Mongolonslaught, reestablished in Cairo, so too were appropri-ate forms of decoration transplanted from Syria to theimperial capital. It seems likely that, in copying the mostcharacteristic features of the Umayyad mosque inDamascus, one of the wonders of the world, the Mamluksultans were attempting to appropriate some of thatwonder for their own dynastic architecture. In the pro-cess they were inadvertently preserving copies of a pro-totype which did not survive into our own age.Edinburgh, Scotland

NOTES

Authors note: A large part of the research for this paper wa s con-ducted while I held the Nasser D. Khalili Fellowship in Islamic Artand Architecture at Oxford University (1993-95). The paper is ded-icated to the memory of the late Professor Michael Meinecke, with-ou t whose pioneering and painstaking work on Mamluk architec-ture so little would be possible.1. Richard Krautheimer, "Introduction to an 'Iconography of

Mediaeval Architecture',"Journal of the Warburgand CourtaulInstitutes 5 (1942): 1-33.

2. But see, for example, Ebba Koch, "The Copies of the QutbMinar," Iran29 (1991): 95-106.

3. Gfilru Necipogiu-Kafadar, "The Sileymaniye Complex inIstanbul: An Interpretation," Muqarnas 3 (1985): 100-1;idem, "Challenging the Past: Sinan and the Competitive Dis-course of Early Modern Islamic Architecture," Muqarnas 10(1993): 169-80.

4. Jonathan M. Bloom, "On the Transmission of Designs in

1_

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UMAYYAD SURVIVALS AND MAMLUK REVIVALSEarly Islamic Architecture," Muqarnas10 (1993): 23-24. Seealso George Marcais, "La mosquee d'El-Walid a Damas et soninfluence sur l'architecture musulmane d'Occident," RevueAfricaine50 (1906): 37-56.

5. KA.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (Oxford, 1969)[hereafter EMA] 1: 151-205.

6. Creswell, EMA 1: 204-5: Michael Meinecke, "Mamluk Archi-tecture. Regional Artistic Traditions: Evolution and Interrela-tions," Damaszener Mitteilungen 2 (1985): 166; Gfilru Necipo-glu, "Anatolia and the Ottoman Legacy," in Hasan-UddinKhan and M. Frishman, eds., TheMosque: History,ArchitecturalDevelopment and RegionalDiversity(London, 1994), pp. 141-58.

7. J. Lassus, "Note sur les mosaiques deJhrusalem et de Damas,"Bulletin d'etudes orientales3 (1933): 31-34; E. de Lorey, "L'Hel-lenisme et l'Orient dans les mosaiques de la Mosquee desOmaiyades," Ars Islamica 1 (1934): 22-45; Max van Berchem,"The Mosaics of the Great Mosque of the Umayyads inDamascus," EMA 1: 323-72; Barbara Finster, "Die Mosaikender Umayyadenmoschee von Damaskus," Kunst des Orients 7(1970/1): 83-141; G.R.D. King, "The Origins and Sources ofthe Umayyad Mosaics in the Great Mosque of Damascus,"Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1976; G. HellenkemperSalies, "Die Mosaiken der Grossen Moschee von Damaskus,"Corso di Cultura sull'Arte Ravennate e Bizantina 35 (1988): 295-313; R. Fortsch, "Die Architekturdarstellungen der Umaiya-denmoschee von Damaskus und die Rolle ihrer antiken Vor-bilder," DamaszenerMitteilungen (1993): 177-212.

8. N. Elisseeff, La description de Damas d'Ibn CAsdkir (Damascus,1959), p. 53 . The same figure is quoted by Yaqut: Mujam al-buldan, ed. M. de Goeje (Leipzig, 1867), 2: 592-93.

9. Ibn Kathir, al-Biddya wa'-nihayaffal-tar'nzh (Cairo, 1932-) 9:149; M. Quatrem&re, Histoire des sultans mamlouks de ltgypte,vol. 2, pt. 1 (Paris, 1842): 269, 271; H. Sauvaire, "Descriptionde Damas," Journalasiatique, IX m' serie. 7 (1896): 423; IbnFadl Allah al-cUmari, Masdlik al-absdrfimamdlik al-amsdr,vol.1, ed. A. Zaki (Cairo, 1924): 187; Ibn Shaddad, al-AClcq al-khatirafi dhikr umard' al-Sham wa'l-Jazfra (Damascus, 1956),p.7 9 ; Rev. J. Reynolds, The History of the Temple of Jerusalem(London, 1836), p.418 ; Creswell, EMA 1: 239.

10. A Chronicle of Damascus 1389-1397 by Muhammad ibnMuhammad in $asra, trans. W.M. Brinner (Berkeley-LosAngeles, 1963) 1: 161; 2:120.

11. Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadani, Abrige de livre des pays, trans. H.Masse (Damascus, 1973), p.133. Al-Muqaddasi mentions bothturquoise (fayriziyya) and cornaline (aqfqfyya): al-Muqad-dasi, Ahsan at-Taqdsim fi macrifat al-Aqdlfm, ed. M. de Goeje(Leiden, 1877), p.158 . Al-Idrisi and Ibn Hawqal also mentionthe use of precious stones in the mihrab: Guy Le Strange, Pal-estine under the Moslems (London, 1890), p.236; P-A. Jaubert,La Geographied'Edrisi(rpt., Amsterdam, 1975), p.352.

12. Marcais, "La mosquee d'EI-Walid," p.54; King, Origins andSources, p. 154.

13. For others, see H. Saladin, Manueld'artmusulman : I'Architec-ture (Paris, 1907), figs. 34, 36.

14. Based on a visit made in 1879, Saladin mentions, "une frisede rinceaux de marbre blanc et dore se dcoupant sur unfond de marbre fonc6: Manuel 1: 84.15. Creswell, EMA 1: 174-76.

16. For a color reproduction of this important but little-knownpainting, see the catalogue accompanying an exhibition heldat the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Visions of the Ottoman

Empire (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 6 3 .17. Saladin, Manuel. vol. 1, figs. 32-33; Creswell, EMA, vol. 1, pl.62a.18. One might see a hint of this in Ibn Shakir's statement that

textiles were hung across the entrances to the mosque and onthe wall below the level of the vine: Quatremere, Histoire1, 1:273. To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence thatcurtains or textiles were hung other than along the entrance(northern) wall, except perhaps on festive occasions.19. See, for example, a very similar design on a fifth- or sixth-cen-tury synagogue screen from Hammath near Tiberias: E.L.Sukenik, "The Ancient Synagogue of el-Hammeh," Journal fthe Palestine OrientalSociety 15 (1935): 151, pl. XIVb.

20. Jean Sauvaget, La mosque omeyyade de Medine (Paris, 1947),p.80, no.6, fig. 3.

21. Ibn Abd Rabbihi, Al-clqd al-Farfd,vol. 3 (Bulaq, 1305/1887),p.282. "A band of about the length of a forearm covered withgilt branches and trees in low relief": R.A. Jairazbhoy, "TheHistory of the Shrines at Mecca and Medina," Islamic Review50 (1962): 31, fig. XIII; Sauvaget, Medine,p. 7 9 . Sauvaget givesa width of about 25 cm for the Medinan frieze, considerablyless than the estimated 60cm of the Damascus karma: Cres-well, EMA 1: 176.

22. In addition to the similarities in the nature and arrangementof various zones of decoration on the qibla walls of bothmosques, one might also include an epigraphic band con-taining a golden inscription: Sauvaget, Midine, pp. 79-80. Inboth the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and the GreatMosque of C6rdoba this appeared on a blue ground: Elis-seeff, Description,p. 55 ; Creswell EMA 1: 235.

23. In CIlmawi's description of the Prophet's Mosque, written in1566, he mentions a karmaon the qibla wall on which 70,000dinars, the sum usually quoted for the cost of the Damascusvine, wa s spent: H. Sauvaire, "Description de Damas,"JournalAsiatique, IX" m srie, 7 (1896): 186. Creswell suggested that,"the author seems to be confused here, for this detail appearsto have been taken from earlier descriptions of the GreatMosque of Damascus" (EMA 1: 239 and n. 3). In view, how-ever, of the evidence just cited for the existence of a vinefrieze in al-Walid's mosque at Medina, it may be that CIlmawiis drawing on the many earlier descriptions of the Damascusmosque in his brief mention of this identical feature in theProphet's Mosque at Medina.24. On the accompanying photograph tonal variations are ap-parent along the length of the frieze which may indicaterepairs and restorations. The mosque sustained fire damageon several occasions in the post-Umayyad period, most nota-bly in 1069 and 1401, and the karma may have been repairedin the aftermath of the blazes. A picture taken immediatelyafter the prayer hall was gutted by fire in 1893 shows large sec-tions of the karma still intact along the qibla wall: R. Spiers,"The Great Mosque of the Omeiyades, Damascus," Architectu-ral Review 8 (1900): 163, fig. 25. These might have served asthe basis for a restoration of the frieze, but were apparentlyswept away in the subsequent rebuilding.25 . But see Michael Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qalfain inKairo: Untersuchungen zur Genese der mamlukischenArchitekturdekorationen," Mitteilungen de s Deutschen Archdol-ogischen Instituts. Abteilung Kairo 27 (1971): 63-67; idem, Diemamlukische Architektur in Agypten und Syrien [648/1250 is923/1517] (Glfickstadt, 1992) 1: 37-40.

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76 F.B. FLOOD26. E. Combe, J. Sauvaget, and G. Wiet, Repertoire chronologiqued 'epigraphiearabe(Cairo, 1931-) [hereafter RCEA], no.4884.27. RCEA: no.4820; Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qald'un,"pp. 67-68.28. Ernst Herzfeld, "Damascus: Studies in Architecture I," ArsIslamica9 (1942): 10, fig. 55.29. The parallel incised lines on the strapwork of the stucco win-dow grills of the mdristdn are a characteristic feature of Umay-

yad stucco and marble grills such as those still to be found inthe western riwdq of the Umayyad mosque.30. R.S. Humphreys, "The Expressive Intent of the MamlukArchitecture of Cairo: A Preliminary Essay," Studia Islamica35(1972): 117; Meinecke, "Mamluk Architecture," pp. 169-70.31. Like its Umayyad prototype, this wa s evidently repaired atcertain points after its creation, for a fragment of a similarfrieze appears alongside woodwork from the Fatimid palacerecovered from Qalawun's complex in a photograph takenearlier this century in the Museum for Islamic Art in Cairo(Creswell Archive Negative no. 998).

32. Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qala'uin," p. 76, pl. XIa. See,however, the earlier discussion of the vine frieze in the Umay-yad mosque in relation to the decoration of Baybars' mauso-leum (ibid., p. 7 3).

33. Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qaldaun," pl. XIa; T.F. Math-ews, The Byzantine Churches of Istanbul:A PhotographicSurvey(University Park-London, 1976), p.306, fig. 31-71; E.S.W.Hawkins, "Plaster and Stucco Cornices in Haghia Sophia,Istanbul," Actes du XIr' Congr&s internationald' tudes byzantines(Belgrade, 1964), 3: 131-35, fig. 1.

34. As I will show in a forthcoming study of the karma and itsantecedents, both are likely to derive from the late-antiqueSyrian tradition of using vine friezes as architectonic framingdevices.

35 . G.T. Rivoira, Moslem Architecture, Its Origins and Development(Oxford, 1918), p.9 5 .36. Compare EMA 1 (Oxford 1932), p.1 6 9 and n. 6, where Cres-well denies that the description of IbnJubayr cited above re-fers to the mihrab in the Damascus mosque, with his latercomments on the mausoleum of Qalawun, where he cites thesame description in his text as evidence that the arcaded mih-rab originated in the Great Mosque of Damascus (The MuslimArchitecture ofEgypt [Oxford, 1959] [hereafter MA E 2: 202).37. MJ. de Goeje, ed., The Travels oflbnJubairEditedrom a Ms. inthe University Library of Leyden, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden, 1907),p. 268; R.J.C. Broadhurst, Th e Travels of bnJubayr (London,1952), p.2 79 .38. Quatrem&re, Histoire2, 1: 282; see also H. Sauvaire, "Descrip-tion de Damas,"JournalAsiatiqueX me shrie, 7 (1896): 422.39. For further photographs of the mihrab, see Saladin, Manuel,vol. 1, figs. 34-35.

40. Creswell, MAE2: 202.41. Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qala'in," p. 74, pls. VIIa andVIIc; Robert Hillenbrand, "Review Article: Qasr Kharana Re -Examined," Oriental Art 37, 2 (1991): 111; F.B. Flood, "TheEarliest Islamic Windows as Architectural Decoration," Per-sica 4 (1990-2): 87-89.42. Spiers suggested that the lower part of the mihrab in placebefore the fire may have been part of the original Umayyadmihrab ("Great Mosque," p.16 7).43. See n.l9 above.

44 . J.M. Rogers, "A Renaissance of Classical Architecture in

North Syria," Les annales archiologiques arabes syriennes 2(1971): 347-56; Terry Allen, A ClassicalRevival in IslamicArchtecture (Wiesbaden, 1986); Yasser Tabbaa, "Survivals andArchaisms in the Architecture of Northern Syria, ca. 1080-ca1150," Muqarnas10 (1993): 29-41.45 . See, however, my comments below (n.141) on the GreaMosque of Diyarbakir. In the latter case we are not dealingwith contemporary copies of the karma,but with the possibility that spolia featuring vine scrolls were arranged in a manner inspired by the Umayyad vine frieze.46. Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qala'fin," pp. 55-57, pl. XIe-f. There are actually tw o vine friezes included in the decoration of the mihrab; a lower one of marble and an uppeone of wood (Creswell, MAE 2: 102, pl. 106c). The mausoleum has recently been restored and the surviving fragmentsof the marble vine frieze reassembled in the mihrab: N. Ham-pikian, MausoleumofSultan as-Sale Nagm ad-DinAyyfib (CairoDeutsches Archdologisches Institut, 1993). I am grateful toMay al-Ibrashy for obtaining a copy of this pamphlet for me.

47. Tw o peculiarities of this vine frieze are particularly notewor-thy, for they are also featured on the vine frieze in Qalawun'stomb: the occurrence of single splayed vine leaves in alternate scrolls and the fact that the vine separates the hood othe niche from the body. The latter feature also appears inthe tomb of Sultan Qalawun, where the vine frieze is continued in the mihrab. The vine friezes in both the Umayyadmosque and the tomb of Baybars I are carried above the mihrab rather than in it, which suggests that this wa s an innova-tion introduced when the Damascene vine scroll wa s movedto Cairo. The fact that there are two friezes in the Ayyubidmihrab, one of marble, one of wood, also suggests a chron-ological relationship with the Qalawunid examples, for in thetomb of Baybars one of the nine friezes is marble, the otherwooden. The occurrence of single splayed vine leaves is com-mon to all the Mamluk friezes and to the Umayyad prototype.Taken in conjunction with the evidence for Sultan Qalawun'srole in transposing the karma to Cairo, these facts wouldappear to support Professor Meinecke's suggestion that thefrieze in the Ayyubid tomb is contemporary with or postdatesthat in Qalawun's mausoleum.48. Creswell, MAE 2: 276.49. Ibid., p.236.

50. Creswell, MAE 2: 202; L. Hautecoeur and G. Wiet, Les mosques du Caire (Paris, 1932), 1: 294. In addition to the marblemihrabs, one also finds examples executed in stucco: see, forexample, the mihrab on the exterior wall of the mosque ofCAmr, datable to 1303-4: MAE, vol. 2, pl. Illb. The vogue forsuch mihrabs in the capital seems to have spawned provincialimitations; see, for example, the stucco mihrab in themosque of al-Amri in Qus, datable to ca. 1330, in which thedwarf arcade has the double colonnettes associated withmany of the Cairene examples, ibid., pl. lla.51. M. Rosen-Ayalon, "Une mosaique mdi6vale au SaintSepulchre," Revue biblique 83 (1976): 248-51; N. Kenaan,"Local Christian Art in Twelfth-Century Jerusalem," IsraeExplorationJournal 3 (1973): 174.52. Whether or not the existence of Umayyad mosaics at Medinamay have influenced the Qalawunid revival is not clear, but inview of the proximity of the Syrian models and the appear-ance of Damascene ornament in Cairo, it seems more likelythat it wa s the role of Damascus that was preeminent.

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UMAYYAD SURVIVALS AND MAMLUK REVIVALS53 . Creswell, MAE 2: 138, pls. 42 and 107a. The mosaics in the

mausoleum of Salih al-Ayyub have now disappeared. but seeMeinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qalhfin," p.5 7.

54. Ibid., pp.55-58 . A date of 1315-16 for the addition of themosaics has been suggested; idem: Die mamlukischeArchitektur2: 118, 9C/55.

55. See, for example, Doris Behrenris-Abouseif, "The Minaret ofShajarat ad-Durr at Her Complex in the Cemetery of SayyidaNafisa," Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archdiologischen Institut,Abteilung Kairo 39 (1983): 14.

56. CUlaymi Mujir al-Din Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad, Kitadbal-uns al-jalft bi-ta>nrkhal-Quds wa 'l-Khall, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1283/1866): 433-34; H. Sauvaire, Histoire de Jrusalem et d'HibrondepuisAbraham jusqu i lafin du XV siecle deJ. C. (Paris, 1876),p. 239; Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qala'fin," pp. 74-75,77; idem, Die mamlukischeArchitektur2: 14, 4/38. It may be thatthe mosaics in the Dome of the Chain were restored at thesame time (Creswell, EMA 1: 54 , 162, 222; Rosen-Ayalon,"Une mosaique medievale," p.25 0 ).57. Jean Sauvaget, Les monuments historiques de Damas (Beirut,1932), no. 40 . On this architect, see L.A. Mayer, IslamicArchi-tects and Their Works (Geneva, 1956), p.7 1 .58. Nasser'O. Rabbat, The Citadelof Cairo. A New Interpretation ofMamluk Architecture(Leiden, 1995), p.1 6 2 .

59. Creswell, EMA 1: 331; Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum desQalaifin," pp. 74-75, 77; idem, Die mamlukische Architektur 2:33, 4/142.

60 . E. de Lorey, "Les mosaiques de la mosquee des Omayyades aDamas," Syria 12 (1931): 346-48, figs. 11-13.

61. Al-cUmari, Masdlik al-absdr,p.193; Creswell, EMA 1: 237; Mei-necke, DiemamlukischeArchitektur 2: 184, 9C/400.

62 . For the later restoration, see Meinecke, Die mamlukischeArchi-tektur2: 145, 9C/211.63. Creswell, MAE 2: 197, pl. 108c.

64. Although this has been subject to some crude restoration, itshows a similar combination of vessel and vegetal scrolls(Erica Cruikshank Dodd, "On a Bronze Rabbit from FatimidEgypt," Kunst des Orients8 1/2 [1972]: 70, fig. 24).65. Creswell, MAE2: 226, pl. 81b.

66. Mujir al-Din, Kitab al-uns aljaill, p.4 36; Sauvaire, Histoire,p. 2 43 ; Meinecke, Die mamlukischeArchitektur2: 79 , 10/8.67. Michael Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, An Architectural Study(London, 1987), p.2 3 7 .

68 . Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qala'fin," p. 7 1.69 . Rabbat, Citadel,p.166.70 . Rabbat, Citadel, pp. 160-1; idem, "Mamluk Architectural

Mosaics"; I am grateful to Nasser Rabbat for supplying mewith a copy of the latter, unpublished, paper. If they are origi-nal, an earlier example would be the mosaics in the spandrelsof a mihrab in the madrasa of Baybars in Cairo (1309-12),which feature fruit trees similar to those in the mosaics of theUmayyad mosaics in Damascus (Creswell, MAE2: 253-54, pl.99a).

71. Creswell, MAE 2: 247; Meinecke, "Das mausoleum desQalafin," pp. 68-69.'

72 . Rabbat, Citadel, p.160.73 . Viktoria Meinecke-Berg, "Quellen zu Topographie und Bau-geschichte in Kairo unter Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad b.

Qala'iun," ZeitschriftderDeutschenMorgenldndischen Cesellschaft,Supplement 3 (1977): 547, n. 19; see n. 115 below.

74 . Meinecke, "Das Mausoleum des Qala'un," pp. 74-75. For the

restoration of the Aqsa, see Meinecke, "Mamluk Architec-ture, p.17 4 , n. 61.75 . Meinecke. Die mamlukischeArchitektur 1: 96-97.

76. K. Wulzinger and C. Watzinger, Damaskus:Die islamischeStadt(Berlin-Leipzig, 1924), p.58, pl. 19b; de Lorey, "Lesmosaiques," p. 2 3 , fig. 14; Abd al Qadir al-Rihawi, "Fusayfu-sa > al-Jami c al-Amwi," Les annales archiologiques syriennes 10(1960): 38-44, fig. 4; Meinecke, Die mamlukische Architektur,vol. 1, pl. 57d; ibid., 2: 181-2, 9C/387-8; Caroline Williams,"The Mosque of Sitt Hadaq," Muqarnas 11 (1994): 62, fig. 6.The qibla wall of the mosque is said to have been decoratedin a similar fashion (Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, p.237).The use of mosaics in the lunettes of the windows recalls thedecoration of the mausoleum of Baybars.

77 . Burgoyne, MamlukJerusalem, p.237 , p1.18.17.78 . Hayat Salam-Liebich, The Architecture of the Mamluk City of Tri-

poli (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p.49, fig. 8; Williams, "SittHadaq," p. 6 1, fig. 5. Note the presence of the miniaturearcade in the hood of the same mihrab.

79. Miriam Rosen-Ayalon, "A Neglected Group of Mihrabs inPalestine," Studiesin Islamic Historyand Civilization n HonorofProfessorDavidAyalon Jerusalem-Leiden, 1986), p. 560.80. Burgoyne, MamlukJerusalem,p.237. For both these mihrabssee Rosen-Ayalon, "A Neglected Group," pp.558-61, pls.V-VI.81. FB. Flood, "Light in Stone

moschea di damasco

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