DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26747#0440
37(3
SATvACENIC ARCHITECTURE.
Book IX.
BOOK IX.
SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTER I.
INTBODUCTION.
The first century of the Hejra forms a cliapter in tlie history of man-
kind as startling from the brilliancy of its events as it is astonishing
from the permanence of the results attained. AVhether we consider
the first outhurst of Mahometanism as a conquest of one of the most
extensive empires of the world hy a small and previously unknown
people, or as the propagation of a new religion, or as hoth these events
comhined, the success of the movement is withont a parallel in history.
It far surpassed the careers of the great Eastern conquerors in the
importance of its effects, and the growth of the Eoman empire in hril-
liancy and rapidity. From Alexander to Napoleon conquests have
generally heen the result of the genius of some gifted individual, and
have left, after a short period, hut slight traces of their transient
splendour. Even Rome’s conquest of the world was a slow and painful
effort compared with that of the Arahians ; and, though she imposed her
laws on the conquered nations, and enforced them hy her military
oiganisation, she neither attempted nor had the power to teach them a
new faith; nor could slie hind the various nations together into one
great people, aiding her.with heart and hand in the great mission she
had undertaken.
It is true that a poor and simple, hut warlike and independent,
people like the Arahs could not long exist close to the ruins of so
wealthy and so overgrown an empire as that of Constantinople without
making an attempt to appropriate the spoil which the effeminate hands
of its possessors were evidently unahle to defend. It was equally
impossible that so great a perversion of Christianity as then prevailed
in Egypt and Syria could exist in a country whicli from the earliest
ages had been the seat of the most earnest Monotheism, without pro-
voking some attempt to return to the simpler faith which had never
been wholly superseded. So that on the whole the extraordinary suc-
cess of Mahometanism at its first outset must be attributed to the
utter corruption, religious and political, of the expiring empire of the
SATvACENIC ARCHITECTURE.
Book IX.
BOOK IX.
SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTER I.
INTBODUCTION.
The first century of the Hejra forms a cliapter in tlie history of man-
kind as startling from the brilliancy of its events as it is astonishing
from the permanence of the results attained. AVhether we consider
the first outhurst of Mahometanism as a conquest of one of the most
extensive empires of the world hy a small and previously unknown
people, or as the propagation of a new religion, or as hoth these events
comhined, the success of the movement is withont a parallel in history.
It far surpassed the careers of the great Eastern conquerors in the
importance of its effects, and the growth of the Eoman empire in hril-
liancy and rapidity. From Alexander to Napoleon conquests have
generally heen the result of the genius of some gifted individual, and
have left, after a short period, hut slight traces of their transient
splendour. Even Rome’s conquest of the world was a slow and painful
effort compared with that of the Arahians ; and, though she imposed her
laws on the conquered nations, and enforced them hy her military
oiganisation, she neither attempted nor had the power to teach them a
new faith; nor could slie hind the various nations together into one
great people, aiding her.with heart and hand in the great mission she
had undertaken.
It is true that a poor and simple, hut warlike and independent,
people like the Arahs could not long exist close to the ruins of so
wealthy and so overgrown an empire as that of Constantinople without
making an attempt to appropriate the spoil which the effeminate hands
of its possessors were evidently unahle to defend. It was equally
impossible that so great a perversion of Christianity as then prevailed
in Egypt and Syria could exist in a country whicli from the earliest
ages had been the seat of the most earnest Monotheism, without pro-
voking some attempt to return to the simpler faith which had never
been wholly superseded. So that on the whole the extraordinary suc-
cess of Mahometanism at its first outset must be attributed to the
utter corruption, religious and political, of the expiring empire of the