A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c18.8

c18.8

The almost universal presence of domes and arches, usually of the pointed kind, in Muhammadan buildings is due to the fact that Muslim architecture is based on the style practised at Baghdad in the time of the great Abbasid Khalifs (Caliphs), of whom Hārūn-ar-rashīd (786–809) is the best known. The Baghdad style was derived from the ancient vaulted architecture of Mesopotamia, as transmitted through the modified developments of Sassanian times (A. D. 226–641). The beginnings of the familiar forms of Muhammadan architecture have been recently traced by General de Beylié in the buildings of Samara in Mesopotamia, erected in the early part of the ninth century, and abandoned in 875, when Baghdad became the capital of the Khalifate. From Baghdad the style spread rapidly throughout the Muhammadan world, and became to such a degree universal that it is hardly possible to imagine a mosque of brick or stone without domes and arches.¹