Waterhouse, Percy Leslie: The story of architecture throughout the ages: an introduction to the study of the oldest of the arts for students and general readers (London: B. T. Batsford, 1924)

SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE

121

more magnificent, but it has become much
dilapidated, and its character has been des-
troyed by alterations. Of greater interest, in
the present day, is the Giralda in the same city,
a building in the form of a massive square tower,
not unlike a minaret on a grand scale. Unlike
the Moslem builders in the East, however, the
Moors in Spain never built minarets in con-
nection with their mosque architecture, and the
Giralda appears not to have been constructed
for the purpose of the call to prayer.
Saracenic architecture flourished in Spain
until the reconquest of the country by the
Christians and the expulsion of the Moors in
1492. The Moors had obtained a footing also
in Sicily, whence they were driven out at the
end of the eleventh century, leaving behind
them buildings which very strongly influenced
the architecture of the Christian builders who
succeeded them in the island.
Upon the capture of Constantinople by the
Turks in 1453, the Christian churches there fell
into the hands of the Mohammedans. The
church of Hagia Sophia, the masterpiece of the
Byzantine builders, was at once converted into
a mosque, and, strange to say, served as the
model for the architecture which sprang up to
meet the new religious requirements. The new
style culminated, just a century later, in the
Suleimaniyeh, the great mosque built by Soli-
man the Magnificent in 1553.