DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0053
AT THE CONVENT
‘My dear friend,’ he lisped, ‘you are forgetting Islamic
architecture!’ No: I hadn’t forgotten it. I only wish I had.
It was really more than I could bear to see those three
professional Egyptologists sitting there, filling their bellies.
Out I came again with the atmosphere and the pictur-
esqueness and all the other tomfooleries. If you succeeded
in overlooking the handling of the material, which never
caught the character of the stone, there was still the in-
tolerable topheaviness. The turrets and the minarets! And
look at the way they placed the windows! Not the faintest
idea of the functions of a column. Everything structural
turned to ornament. Far be it from me to hurt anyone’s
feelings. Owing to favourable influences several of the
Cairo mosques had contrived to acquire a modicum of
structural stability.
Rohricht’s tall figure bent in anger.
‘And what, pray, do you refer to as a modicum?’
He had the whole company behind him, of course. I
prostituted myself with a glance in the direction of the
Egyptologists; I might just as well have turned to the
blacks.
‘I was comparing it with European architecture,’ I
replied, with the same painful amiability, ‘since, after all, we
are Europeans.’
Rohricht’s dromedary-lips drooped, and let loose a
history of architectural development, from which we inferred
that partly by direct and partly by indirect means Europe
was head over ears in debt to the genius of Islam. Though
he admired the spontaneity of my reactions, he must insist
that we were dealing with facts which mere sensibility was
unable sufficiently to appreciate.
I still held my own to some extent.
‘We must not get entangled in details,’ I remarked icily.
‘The fundamental principles of European architecture were
established long before Islam made its appearance. That we
45
‘My dear friend,’ he lisped, ‘you are forgetting Islamic
architecture!’ No: I hadn’t forgotten it. I only wish I had.
It was really more than I could bear to see those three
professional Egyptologists sitting there, filling their bellies.
Out I came again with the atmosphere and the pictur-
esqueness and all the other tomfooleries. If you succeeded
in overlooking the handling of the material, which never
caught the character of the stone, there was still the in-
tolerable topheaviness. The turrets and the minarets! And
look at the way they placed the windows! Not the faintest
idea of the functions of a column. Everything structural
turned to ornament. Far be it from me to hurt anyone’s
feelings. Owing to favourable influences several of the
Cairo mosques had contrived to acquire a modicum of
structural stability.
Rohricht’s tall figure bent in anger.
‘And what, pray, do you refer to as a modicum?’
He had the whole company behind him, of course. I
prostituted myself with a glance in the direction of the
Egyptologists; I might just as well have turned to the
blacks.
‘I was comparing it with European architecture,’ I
replied, with the same painful amiability, ‘since, after all, we
are Europeans.’
Rohricht’s dromedary-lips drooped, and let loose a
history of architectural development, from which we inferred
that partly by direct and partly by indirect means Europe
was head over ears in debt to the genius of Islam. Though
he admired the spontaneity of my reactions, he must insist
that we were dealing with facts which mere sensibility was
unable sufficiently to appreciate.
I still held my own to some extent.
‘We must not get entangled in details,’ I remarked icily.
‘The fundamental principles of European architecture were
established long before Islam made its appearance. That we
45