Chapter IV: Mosaic

Among the modes of decorating specially honourable parts of the mosque or house, none was more esteemed in Cairo than mosaic work, and none was practised with greater success. By mosaic, we understand the combination of small pieces of hard substances of different colours, to form a pattern for a wall or pavement. As hard substances are numerous, and the manner of combining them is susceptible of considerable variety, the term mosaic embraces a wide range of artistic processes. Of these the most familiar is the glass mosaic of Byzantium and Ravenna, in which cubes of glass, rendered opaque, and coloured with various tints, are so arranged as to represent figures of saints. Another kind of mosaic, scarcely less celebrated, is the well-known tesselated pavement of the Romans, of which there are many examples in England, where the pattern is formed by the combination of cubes and other small pieces of marbles of different colours. There is also a sectile mosaic, called Florentine, where the coloured marble is used as a sort of veneer, and backed by stouter but common material. The “Opus Alexandrinum” consisted of small geometrical pieces of coloured marbles let into a marble ground.

Saracenic mosaic, in Egypt, is a combination of the tesselated method with the larger proportions of sectile mosaic; but it does not exactly coincide with any of the usual European processes. In its most familiar application, as a dado about four feet high, running along the wall of the sanctuary of a mosque, or round a principal room in a palace, it consists of upright slabs of marble of different colours and different widths, so arranged as to form a series of rectangular panels, divided and framed by narrower bands. Thus the tomb-mosque of El-Ghōry, built in 1503, has a niche inlaid with blue, yellow, and red marbles, in zigzag stripes, while the double dado on either side of it, running the whole width of the south-east wall, in two lines, one high up, the other low, is of red, yellow, and black marbles, arranged in square or oblong panels, the black forming the pattern, and the red and yellow the centres and borders of the design. The niche of Kalaūn has black, red, and yellow mosaic, picked out with little spots of blue tile. It is not uncommon to find fragments of tile thus used in combination with marble or earthenware: there are two specimens of this curious style in the South Kensington Museum (1499, 1499_a_). A more usual mode of varying the monotony of the tall slabs of marble and their narrower margins was by introducing between them a border of tesselated work, made of small cubes of marbles of various colours, mixed with red pottery or blue enamel, and frequently with mother-of-pearl. The contrasts between the different colours of marble, pottery, and glass, and the iridescence of the mother-of-pearl, give this peculiar class of mosaic a beauty of its own, which will bear comparison with any other kind of inlay. A fine example, from the St. Maurice collection, is now in the South Kensington Museum, and is engraved in fig. 28. It consists of three panels, enclosed in borders; the central panel is of rich porphyry, bordered with white and black marble, and with a geometrical edging of mother-of- pearl filled in with red pottery and yellow marble; the side panels are of streaked red marble within similar borders; and the whole is enclosed within a rim of greenstone. This triple panel was, no doubt, one of a series which formed the dado of a mosque or palace. Dados of this kind of mosaic are found in the mausoleums of Kāït Bey and El-Ashraf, in the eastern cemetery, and beautiful examples of red marble inlaid with blue glass and mother-of-pearl are seen in the ruined sanctuary of the mosque of El-Māridāny.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

This is the specially characteristic mosaic of Cairo, and it will be at once recognized as distinct from the mosaics of Europe. It is made of natural marbles and mother-of-pearl, with only a sprinkling of such manufactured substances as pottery or glass enamel; it is arranged in geometrical designs, with no attempt at representing human or other figures; and it is fixed in a plaster bed, and not inlet, like the “Opus Alexandrinum,” into a marble matrix. These are the salient points of the Saracenic mosaic; and the minuteness and delicacy of the tesserae, the intricacy of the designs, and the lustre of the mother-of-pearl, combine to produce an exquisitely beautiful effect.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

Precisely similar mosaics are found about the tribunes of the Coptic churches, and there is every reason to believe that the art is essentially a Christian one, preserved by the Copts in Egypt from very early times, while in the west it was suffered to die out and be supplanted by the Byzantine glass mosaic. Eusebius’s mention of variegated marbles on the walls of the church of St. Saviour at Jerusalem, in A.D. 333, seems to point to this form of mosaic, which would thus be traced back to the fourth century. Surviving specimens are, however, mainly found in Egypt; and the chief example in Europe is the apse of Torcello, the mosaics of which closely resemble the niche of a mosque or the tribune of a Coptic church at Cairo.[38]

The manner in which mosaics of this description were put together and set up against the wall was as follows:—Each piece of marble or tessera of this or other material, having been bevelled from face to back (as below), the whole mosaic is laid out on the ground, face downwards, and strong plaster is poured over it, which, entering the interstices (shaded in the cut) at the back, binds them together into one slab. Pieces of reed are then laid across the wet surface to strengthen it, and more plaster is poured on, till the thickness is about two inches. Large surfaces can thus be bound together, lifted, and plastered to the wall, without breakage. The bevelling of the edges not only gives the plaster a grip on the tesserae, but saves labour in fitting the pieces together: for instead of the whole of the sides having to be exactly parallel and accurately fitted to the adjoining side, only the faces and the top edges of the tesserae and slabs have to be ground, so as to form accurate junctures at the front alone; and the backs and sides are left quite rough. Tiles are bevelled in the same manner, and this constitutes a general distinction between Eastern and European tiles, for the latter are hardly ever bevelled. The Cairo mosaic worker, who gave Mr. Wild the foregoing account of the method of his art, also stated that no drawings were as a rule made beforehand, but the mosaic was constructed out of the artist’s head as he arranged it on the ground.

Two spandrils of a niche in the South Kensington Museum present some peculiarities in colour and materials (884, 884_a_, St. Maurice). The ground is composed of red pottery, formed from powdered water jars; the geometrical pattern is marked out by lines of mother-of-pearl, and marble and blue enamel is restricted to the small points which form the centres of the geometrical systems; the edging of the whole is of greenstone.

Most of the Mamlūk mosques of Cairo have mosaics in their niches, and in the dado on either side, but the mosaic is not always of the rich and intricate character of the panel engraved in fig. 28. In many of the mosques, notably those of El-Ghōry and Sultan Hasan, the mother-of-pearl and pottery are omitted, and the mosaic consists of marble slabs and borders, in two or three colours. In Sultan Hasan the dado is of black and white slabs, simply arranged—

The pulpit is also constructed of variegated marbles, arranged in medallions, in a European style, with a much less pleasing effect than the usual wooden panelling; and a column is also formed of alternate drums of yellow, white, and black marble.

The mosaic pavements of Cairo are of a somewhat different character from those employed for wall decoration. Naturally such substances as mother- of-pearl and glass are not suited to pavements, where they would offer very inadequate resistance to the feet. The pavements are therefore generally composed entirely of marble tesserae (and sometimes red earthenware), of larger size than the delicate pieces that are included in wall mosaics, and arranged so as to form geometrical patterns within the space of about two feet square. Eighteen squares of this description are preserved in the South Kensington Museum, of which two are engraved in figs. 29 and 31. Each square is made separately, and the pieces are set, not in plaster, but in a composition of lime and clay, impervious to water: the clay must be unburnt, just as it comes from the pit. A slab (no. 490-1872) in the South Kensington Museum is of this composition, inlaid with porphyry, glass, and greenstone. The most common application of mosaic pavements is to the durkā‘a, or lower floor of a room, which faces the entrance, and commonly contains a fountain. Mr. Wild has preserved drawings of several of these mosaic fountain floors, which would well repay reconstruction in England.[39]

The marbles most commonly employed in Cairo mosaics are the red, yellow, black, and white varieties, and the red is sometimes very beautifully streaked. It has been generally supposed that these were imported ready polished from Italy, but there is evidence that this was by no means the invariable custom. Nāsir-i-Khusrau, who visited Egypt in the eleventh century, in the reign of the Fātimy Khalif El-Mustansir, states that marbles were very common at Ramla, near Alexandria, and that the walls of most of the houses there were coated with marble plaques, artistically inlaid, and carved with arabesques. The slabs were cut with a toothless saw and Mekka sand, and the colours of the marbles were red, green, black, white, mottled, &c.[40] The traveller does not state where the marbles came from, in the rough; but there are certainly no marble quarries near Ramla, unless the ancient temples and other buildings of Roman and Christian times were utilized in this manner. The Mohammadan builders were in the habit of making raids upon the Christian remains of Egypt whenever they were in need of materials for a new mosque. We read how Beybars, when he was building his mosque outside the north gate of Cairo, in 1268, collected marbles from all the towns of Egypt, where no doubt the churches still retained something of their ancient splendour; while the sanctuary was lined with marbles and carved wood brought from the fortress of Jaffa, which he had just captured at the point of the sword. The majority of the columns used in mosques appear to have been stolen from earlier buildings, and the ancient Egyptian monuments were laid under contribution. ‘Abd-el-Latīf, the physician of Baghdād, who travelled in Egypt in the year 1200 A.D., tells us how attempts were made to pull down the granite of the Red Pyramid of Menkara, at Gīza, for building purposes, so early as the reign of the Khalif El-Mamūn, in the beginning of the third century of the Flight; and though the attempt failed, and the workmen declared that they could make no impression upon the huge mass, the practice of borrowing stone from the pyramids and temples of ancient Egypt still continued. Hieroglyphic inscriptions are occasionally found on blocks of black diorite and other stones in the mosques, _e.g._ of El-Gāwaly. It is therefore not improbable that the Ramla marble-works were supplied, at least in part, from the older monuments of Egypt, though they may have been reinforced by importation.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The red porphyry, or _rosso antico_, the green-stone or serpentine, and the black diorite and slate, which occur in mosaics, are quarried in the mountains of the Arabian desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea; and alabaster, which was sparingly used in mediaeval times, was found near Asyūt, on the Nile.