Late Antique Architectural Sculpture at

Central Periphery?
Art, Culture and History of the Medieval Jazira

(Northern Mesopotamia, 8th–15th centuries)
Papers of the Conference held at the University of Bamberg,
31 October–2 November, 2012
Edited by
Lorenz Korn and Martina Müller-Wiener
Reichert Verlag 2017

Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.
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Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Central Periphery? Art, Culture and History of the Jazira

(Northern Mesopotamia, 8th–15th centuries): Introduction
Martina Müller-Wiener and Lorenz Korn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Taxing, Trading and Ruling in the Early Islamic Jazira

Chase F. Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Processes of Regionalisation in Late Antique and Early Islamic Bilād al-Shām

and al-Jazīra: Material Culture and the Organisation of Space
Martina Müller-Wiener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
The Architecture of the Abbasid Residence at ar-Raqqa/ar-Rāfiqa –

Aspects of cultural interaction
Ulrike Siegel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Practitioners of the Mathematical and Medical Sciences and their Relationship

to the Jazira from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries
Sonja Brentjes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
The Life and Times of the Artuqid Ruler Najm al-Dīn Alpı
(ruled 548/1154–572/1176)
Carole Hillenbrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Late Antique Architectural Sculpture at the Mayyāfāriqīn Mosque

(Silvan Ulu Cami)
Elif Keser-Kayaalp and Linda Wheatley-Irving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
The Artuqid Residence at Āmid (Diyarbakır)

Lorenz Korn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
The Amid-Mardin Triangle as a Node of Routes in the 12th and First Half
of the 13th Century, with a brief look at two subsequent periods
Thomas A. Sinclair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
The Frontispiece Problem in the Early 13th-Century Kitāb al-Aghānī

Robert Hillenbrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Messianic Expectations Among Anatolian Turkmens –

Heritage from Central Asia or local syndrome?
Şevket Küçükhüseyin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
6 Contents
Mosul: A Centre of Artistic Production During the Early Ilkhanid Period

Annette Hagedorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
The Berlin Dragon Door-Knocker in its Scientific and Historical Context

Joachim Gierlichs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Acknowledgements
The organization of the conference “A Landscape of Its Own, or a Cultural Interspace? Art,
Economies and Politics in the Medieval Jazira (Northern Mesopotamia)” and its publication
was generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. We would like to thank the foundation
most warmly for its generous support. We are equally grateful to the contributors for their
valuable papers and to the speakers who could – for various reasons – not publish their papers
in the present volume. We are gratefully indebted to the University of Bamberg for support-
ing and hosting the conference. The organization of the conference could not have taken
place without the efforts of many persons, and we would like to express our great apprecia-
tion to Elisabeth Diethelm for her unfailingly reliable and friendly work, supported by Verena
Daiber, Anja Dreiser, and Ilse Sturkenboom. We also extend our thanks to Anja Dreiser for
helping with the editorial work.
(Silvan Ulu Cami)1
Elif Keser-Kayaalp – Linda Wheatley-Irving
Mayyāfāriqīn (modern Silvan) in southeast Turkey was one of the four cities of the medieval
district of Diyār Bakr in the northern Jazira, just 75 km northeast of the city of Āmid (mod-
ern Diyarbakır).2 Architectural historians have known about its Artuqid Friday mosque since
at least Gertrude Bell’s publication of a brief description, plan, and two photos in her book
Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir, published in 1914.3 Working at the mosque from 3–9 May
1911, she was able to record it on the eve of a comprehensive renovation which removed
many ancient features and added new ones, completed in 1913. The relatively recent avail-
ability of Bell’s complete set of photos and notes online, as well as more recent photos taken
of the ancient parts of the restored mosque, makes a general reassessment of the mosque a
worthwhile exercise.4 We consider our paper an initial step in this direction.
Students of the mosque are fortunate in that a twelfth century resident of Mayyāfāriqīn,
Ibn al-Azraq, saw fit to mention it and other local buildings in his rich history of the city
known as Tārīkh Mayyāfāriqīn wa-Ᾱmid. He provided crucial information: first, the mosque
was in origin a late antique structure, founded shortly after the Islamic conquest and located
near the city’s cathedral; second, it collapsed in 547/1152 at the end of the reign of the Ar-
tuqid ruler Ḥusām al-Dīn Timurtash; third, its reconstruction with dome was completed five
years later under his son Najm al-Dīn Alpī. The resulting structure was rectangular with four
aisles and had an Iranian-style dome chamber on squinches in its centre; and was ornamented
inside and out in a mixture of late antique, medieval Islamic, and other styles.
It is only due to its sparse publication that the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque has not featured
more prominently in discussions of twelfth century/Artuqid architecture and art. One topic
in this field concerns the presence of architectural sculpture derived from classical or late an-
tique styles.5 Obviously, a consideration of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque’s classicizing architec-
tural sculpture, particularly its mouldings and north façade spandrel frieze which have clear
antecedents, has something to offer to this debate. We will preface our remarks by a study
of the mosque as a whole building, including its historical context as one religious building
1 The present article originated with Elif Keser-Kayaalp’s conference paper entitled, “The significance of
the Syrian Orthodox architectural heritage in the development of the architectural tradition of the medi-
eval Jazira.” We would like to thank the many scholars (contacted individually or through the H-Islamart
and H-MideastMedieval listservs) who answered our questions, read texts for or with us, or who sent us
their unpublished translations. Considerations of space prevent us from including more than a fraction of
what we have learned from them.
2 We use modern place names only when they are related to the medieval names.
3 Bell 1914, 159–160; pl. 84 fig. 3 (= S_133), pl. 92 (plan); pl. 93 fig. 2 (= S_162).
4 All online image sources used in the preparation of this article are cited in the bibliography. We have
provided a key to the most important openly available photos of the mosque in the appendix. In the body
of the paper, any references to Bell’s photos are in the format of a capital letter followed by a three digit
number. Many can also be found in Bell/Mundell Mango 1982 and other publications. We were unable to
access Bell’s material held at the Royal Geographical Society, London.
5 We describe both styles as “classicizing,” whereas Julian Raby distinguishes between the two (Raby
2004).
126 Elif Keser-Kayaalp – Linda Wheatley-Irving
amongst others in its city, as well as its structure. Finally, we will turn to the thematic ques-
tion of the conference, and propose an answer based on the limited topic of our paper.
Previous religious architecture in Mayyāfāriqīn and the rebuilding of the Friday mosque
As known from the history of Ibn al-Azraq, the Tārīkh Mayyāfāriqīn wa-Ᾱmid, the re-
built Artuqid mosque existed in a religious architectural landscape within and just be-
yond Mayyāfāriqīn’s walls that by the twelfth century must have been rather crowded.6
Mayyāfāriqīn had thriving Christian communities whose history stretched from late antiq-
uity, when the city was known as Martyropolis in Greek, to Ibn al-Azraq’s day and beyond.7
Ibn al-Azraq provided the city’s early Christian history on the basis of a manuscript which
he had received from a priest at a local Melkite church, and had had translated into Arabic,
updating its information with his own comments.8 The translation provided the basis of the
Tārīkh’s variant of the account of the city’s founding under Bishop Marūthā, known from
other hagiographical sources, in (anachronistic) coordination with the emperor Constantine,
his mother Helena, and Constantine’s ministers. The “great church,” i. e. the city’s cathedral,
was one of the three churches (out of a total of six) not described by Ibn al-Azraq as being in
ruins in his day.9 The large late antique basilica immediately to the north of the mosque, and
recognizable by its proximity to it, can be identified as the cathedral.10 Ibn al-Azraq’s reports
of the city’s earliest mosques actually preceded his discussion of its early churches; in two
accounts which anticipate his attribution of the churches, he described how each of the city’s
Muslim conquerors was responsible for one of its seven mosques: six built on the outskirts,
and one in the city centre.11 In the version that he considered authoritative, Ibn al-Azraq
recorded that ʿUmar b. Saʿīd built the mosque in the city centre, “separated from the great
church,” and, enlarged over time, it became the Friday mosque of the author’s own day.12
Moving closer in time to the Artuqid period, we note that Mayyāfāriqīn cannot be in-
cluded in Syria and the Jazira’s “two missing centuries”, a term used to describe the absence
of dynamic urban life, including building, which characterized the post-Abbasid period up to
6 Recent introductions to Ibn al-Azraq, the two manuscripts of his history held in the British Library, and
the author’s followers: Ibn al-Azraq/C. Hillenbrand 1990, 1–25, Robinson 1996, 7–13, and Munt 2010,
151–153. The following abbreviations are used: Ms. A = BL. Or. 5803; Ms. B = BL. Or. 6310; Ms. A is
the more complete of the two. Historical overview: Minorsky/C. Hillenbrand 1990.
7 Late antique history: Fiey 1976b; Christians in eleventh century Marwanid heyday: Samir 1985.
8 This section of Ibn al-Azraq’s history (found in Ms. A only, ff. 7b–12b), remains unedited and untrans-
lated. Cf. Robinson 1996 and Munt 2010 for both the early Christian and early Islamic sections of the
history, including Ibn al-Azraq’s intentions regarding the inclusion of the early Christian material.
9 Ms. A, ff. 9a–10a, discussed in Fiey 1976a, 42–43 and Fiey 1976b, 24–30.
10 The identification is made explicit in Ms. A, f. 6b, to which Fiey did not refer. We are grateful to Harry
Munt for sharing his unpublished translation of ff. 6 a–b and his comments. Mundell Mango made the
identification on independent grounds: Bell/Mundell Mango 1982, 124–125. The cathedral and a church
dedicated to the Virgin were surveyed by Bell along with the mosque in 1911 but subsequently vanished;
cf. Bell’s photos S_117 (right side), 168–198, and Bell/Mundell Mango 1982, 58–65, 123–130.
11 Ms. A, f. 6b; cf. Robinson 1996, 13, 20 and Munt 2010, 165 and n. 80.
12 Ms. A, f. 6b; Harry Munt, pers. comm. Thus Albert Gabriel’s belief that the mosque stood on the site of a
late antique mosque is confirmed (Gabriel 1940, 1, 226), as is Mattia Guidetti’s observation that a city’s
late antique Friday mosque was often built beside its cathedral, sharing the prominence of its location and
sometimes also a courtyard (Guidetti 2013).
Late Antique Architectural Sculpture at the Mayyāfāriqīn Mosque 127
the rise of the Seljuks.13 The histories of Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Ibn al-Azraq and his followers
contain sporadic reports of religious building in or beside the city throughout this period,
including Friday and smaller mosques and dynastic domed mausolea.14 The fact that major
religious buildings were constructed in Mayyāfāriqīn from the tenth to the twelfth centu-
ries, prior to the Artuqid reconstruction of its Friday mosque, and the fact that various early
churches and mosques were still in use in Ibn al-Azraq’s day, show that the mason’s craft was
active throughout most of this period, and not directed solely toward civic works such as the
city walls, palatial quarters, and bridges, as important as these were.
We are well informed by Ibn al-Azraq as to when the Mayyāfāriqīn Friday mosque col-
lapsed, and when it was rebuilt. The collapse was a near-tragedy, coming just after the high
point of Timurtash’s career:
“He received an edict entitling him to the land. The robe of honour arrived [from the ca-
liph] and the edict was read in the mosque to the assembled people. After two nights, on the
night of Monday 22 Rabī’ I 547, the mosque collapsed and the minbar area and the arcades
fell down. The rest of the building was pulled down and the foundation of the dome-chamber
was dug. Work on it began from the end of 547.”15
The completion of the dome and by implication the rest of the mosque, under Timurtash’s
son Alpī, coincided with an Islamic holiday: “In the middle of the month of Shaʿbān of that
year [552 H.; circa 21 September 1157 C.E.], the dome of the mosque was completed, and
[people] prayed in it on Laylat al-niṣf (“Night of Repentance”).”16 The inscription on the
dome rim is damaged and does not provide a date, but Alpī’s name as patron is preserved.17
Ibn al-Azraq’s texts do not refer to a dome in the pre-collapse mosque, but are specific that it
was rebuilt with one. There were certainly precedents in the city for domed architecture in the
form of dynastic domed mausolea, but given the attention paid to this particular dome, it must
have been viewed as extraordinary. We imagine that the dome was intended to commemorate
Timurtash’s formal recognition by the sultan, which had taken so long to arrive.
The structure of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque

Scholars before and after Bell who studied the mosque suffered from lack of access to large
images of the full corpus of her photos and an insufficient appreciation of Ibn al-Azraq’s
manuscripts, which for the most part were unedited and untranslated at the time.18 We will
use her photos, plan and brief remarks as the basis for our description of the pre-modern
mosque’s structure, with our focus being on some of the more contentious issues. For the
mosque in general, we have provided a key in the appendix to the on-line photos of Bell as
well as the most important photos of Richard Brotherton.
13 Heidemann 2002, 4–12; Mayyāfāriqīn’s exclusion is noted in 32–33.

14 Summarized by C. Hillenbrand in Minorsky/C. Hillenbrand 1990, 930–932.
15 Ibn al-Azraq/Savran 1975, part 2, Ms. B, 38 = Ms. B, f. 133a; transl.: Ibn al-Azraq/C. Hillenbrand 1979,
556. Cf. also the shorter account in Ms. A: Ibn al-Azraq/C. Hillenbrand 1990, 203 = Ms. A, f. 175a; transl.
134–135. C. Hillenbrand’s translations are not based on Savran’s editions.
16 Ibn al-Azraq/Savran 1975, part 2, Ms. A, 87 = Ms. A, f. 181b; transl. Suleyman Dost.
17 Gabriel 1940, 1, 343–344, inscr. no. 123.
18 Later publications on the mosque: Guyer 1925, 118–121 and pl. 9b; Gabriel 1940, 1, 212 fig. 159, 221–
228 and figs. 167–172, 343–344 inscrs. 123–124; 2, pls. 77–79, 109; Herzfeld 1948, 132–133; Creswell
1952, 2, 162–164; and Sinclair 1985, 49–59.
Plan, walls, openings, and dome chamber

The mosque is rectangular in plan, with overall exterior dimensions of roughly 50.6 by 22.5
m, as measured from Bell’s plan, and four aisles formed by pier arcades (fig.1). Behind the
open north aisle is a central dome chamber supported on pier arcades. The spacing of the
dome chamber’s east and west piers determined the unequal widths of the aisles, as well
as the spacing of the east façade’s openings. The transition from the piers to the dome is
managed by two tiers of squinches and blind arches. All of the columns and capitals which
compounded the dome chamber’s piers, indicated in Bell’s plan, are absent from the modern
mosque. The aisle piers closest to the dome chamber terminated in mid-section, and were
finished by massive ashlar masonry which was preserved to only a few courses in height
(S_154). There were several miḥrābs, preserved either entirely or partially, which are indi-
cated on Bell’s plan. The most prominent are the miḥrāb of the Ayyubid [Shihab al-Dīn] al-
Muẓaffar Ghāzī at the east end of the qibla wall, dated by inscription to 624/1226–27,19 and
between it and the dome chamber, a later miḥrāb whose niche is framed in cable moulding
from top to bottom.
The north façade (fig. 2) bore all the exterior ornamentation (discussed below). Its central
entrance was flanked on either side by large, ornate framed niches (no longer extant), fol-
lowed by additional doors and large windows. Above this level, a blind arcade surmounted
by a row of consoles ran the length of the façade, and must have once supported a cornice
(detail, fig. 3). Remains of a minaret are still visible on the north façade’s east end. The east
façade was gabled when Bell saw it, indicating that the mosque once had a pitched roof, and
its window arrangement demonstrates that it was contemporary with the dome chamber.
The rebuilding under Timurtash and Alpī would have been accomplished with an exten-
sive use of spolia, not least of all from the earlier mosque itself. Parts of the mosque contin-
ued to be rebuilt after Alpī. The east and west squinches form pairs, with those of the east
clearly later. The west end of the north façade was also partially rebuilt. Bell’s plan (fig. 1)
indicates by crosshatching several vertical breaks in the masonry of the north façade on either
side of the dome, visible in the photos, which she attributed to specific building campaigns
over the centuries but which we interpret as structural.20
Ceilings and roofing: Remains and reconstruction

The remains of brick vaulting can be seen in the northeast corner of the mosque and in the
southernmost aisle west of the dome. Since the space to be spanned was only 5 m at most,
these vaults were probably relatively shallow, as was the case at the Dunaysīr (Kızıltepe)
Great Mosque, built by Alpī’s grandson less than fifty years later.21 We propose that the vaults
all rose to roughly the same height above the piers, and that above the backs of the barrel
vaults there was a small upper storey under the gable, covered by a single pitched roof on
timber trusses and illuminated by the highest window (S_122), which stood directly above
the middle row of aisle piers (S_159). On the dome chamber’s north side were a row of con-
soles underneath holes, which must have supported a timber ceiling and tile roofing in this
section.22 In addition, we propose that a masonry or timber framework rested on top of the
19 Gabriel 1940, 1, 344, inscr. 124.

20 Bell 1914, 160 and plan, pl. 92.
21 Gabriel 1940, 2, pl. 29, 1; dating: idem, 1, 302, no. 18 (on miḥrāb), 601/1204.
22 Sinclair 1985, 52, 61 fig. 7.
dome chamber columns and the aisle pier ends, supporting a timber ceiling on the east and
west sides of the dome as well. Such a variety of roofing systems has a parallel in Eugenio
Galdieri’s reconstruction of the original vaulting for the bays surrounding the Iṣfahān Great
Mosque’s south dome.23 On the exterior, the upper level of the dome chamber appears as a
square supporting an octagon which in turn supports the dome. On the square’s leftover tri-
angular spaces, there are triangular “buttresses” resting against the octagon. They are located
over the squinches, and perhaps were connected to their construction.
The mosque’s place in regional architectural history:

Bell saw the mosque as related to the Ᾱmid Great Mosque, built or rebuilt by the Great
Seljuk sultan Malikshāh in 1091, while Albert Gabriel and Ernst Herzfeld added the Umayy-
ad Mosque of Damascus, whose transept was rebuilt under Malikshāh in 1082–83. Both
mosques are rectangular with three aisles parallel to the long side and feature transepts and
pitched roofs.24 The neighbouring late antique cathedral and other more distant basilicas pro-
vide additional comparisons. The mosque was larger than the cathedral, which measured
roughly 39 by 24 m, and was closer in size to Basilica A (54.4 by 28.6 m) and Basilica B
(51.1 by 25.7 m) at the great pilgrimage centre of Resafa, Syria.25 Located with its long axis
parallel to the cathedral’s, the mosque’s own pitched roof along with its dome and minaret
would have enabled it to compete successfully with the church (S_117, 168) for domination
of the city’s skyline, perhaps as its predecessor mosque had done. K. A. C. Creswell and
Lorenz Korn recognized that the mosque’s overall plan, prominent dome, and other details
owed a debt to earlier Iranian Seljuk domed mosques in brick, starting with the Iṣfahān Great
Mosque’s south and north dome chambers from the late 1080’s.26 One of the Mayyāfāriqīn
mosque’s greatest departures from the Iranian mosques is its pitched roof, a feature that
would not be taken up by subsequent regional domed mosques. It is noteworthy that in
twelfth century Syria, the influence of Iran on a number of buildings started with their build-
ing materials – brick and stucco, instead of Syria’s typical stone.27 In the Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, how-
ever, there was a long tradition of building in both stone and brick, with stone being used for
the elevation and brick being relegated primarily to vaults and some arches. This pattern was
preserved at the mosque.
Architectural mouldings and frieze

In making comparisons between certain aspects of the mosque’s ornamentation and late
antique architectural sculpture, we will focus on the nearby Ṭūr ʿAbdīn region whenever
possible.28 We will also need to reference Syria and beyond. The Umayyad architecture of
Syria and further south has long been accepted as part of the late antique canon, and along
with selected churches from the Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, shows that classicizing styles persisted well
23 Galdieri 1984, 103 pl. 14.

24 Bell 1914, 159; Gabriel 1940, 1, 227; Herzfeld 1948, 132, 135.
25 Cathedral: Bell/Mundell Mango 1982, 58 fig. 40; Resafa: Brands 2002, 11, 95.
26 Creswell 1952, 2, 164; Korn 2009, 256; Korn 2011, 390. Strangely, the comparison was not made by
Albert Gabriel, who had studied both mosques.
27 R. Hillenbrand 1985.
28 Keser-Kayaalp 2009, 1, 160–175 and 2, pls. 142–187 is the most recent overview of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn architec-
tural sculpture; cf. pp. 160–165 and pls. 142–158 for mouldings.
into the eighth century.29 All three corpora have architectural sculpture that shares features
found throughout the Mediterranean, as well as having individual characteristics and internal
developments. In particular, the Ṭūr ʿAbdīn is noted for its attachment to classical forms,
shown partly in its lack of geometrical elements such as crenellation in mouldings, which
are relatively common in the Limestone Massif and Resafa.30 The mouldings and frieze types
discussed below often bear vegetal ornament, but the mosque’s examples do not.
The mosque’s exterior sculpture was confined almost exclusively to the north façade
(fig. 2), which is a departure from Limestone Massif patterns, where ornamentation, when
present, would be spread over all façades. The north façade’s blind arcade is its most promi-
nent feature, and contains three elements that will be discussed below (fig. 3). The arcade’s
polygonal colonnettes and their unusual bases are hard to link to late antiquity, however, and
we omit discussion of these elements. Similarly, the bundled colonnettes and capitals of the
north façade’s (fig. 6, now absent) niches are far removed from late antiquity, with the former
similar to numerous medieval Georgian examples.31
The cyma recta (S-curve) form is one of the basic building blocks of Graeco-Roman and
late antique architectural sculpture, and is an element in two of the other mouldings discussed
below. At the mosque, it forms a projecting moulding running across the middle of the entire
north façade, supporting the blind arcade above it (fig. 3). In late antique buildings, it often
forms a bold cornice on rooflines and gables (fig. 4), as it did at both Mayyāfāriqīn churches
surveyed by Bell.32 The cyma recta moulding was incorporated into the facades of numerous
Islamic buildings, starting in the Umayyad period and prominent in the twelfth century, both
in its traditional use as a cornice, and as a decorative element.33
Wide, complex mouldings that outline structural elements, usually on building exteri-
ors or archivolts, are one of the quintessential features of late antique architecture (fig. 8).
The moulding’s profile generally starts with broad flat and cyma recta bands followed by
other flat, angular, concave, and convex bands of varying widths; in spite of their apparent
29 Umayyad: Grabar 2008 and Rabbat 2008 are two recent forceful presentations; Ṭūr ʿAbdīn: Keser-Kay-
aalp, forthcoming.
30 Keser-Kayaalp 2009, 1, 160–161, 188.
31 Cf. Djobadze 1992, pl. 121 and passim; Janberidze/Tsitsishvili 1996, 152 and passim.
32 Cornice photos: Mayyāfāriqīn: cathedral: S_168; Church of the Virgin: S_177, 178, 197; Ṭūr ʿAbdīn:
Ambar/Mundell Mango 1982, 50–51, pls. 4–7; Ḥāḥ, N_023, S_005; Kefer Zeh, M_203, 207; Mʿarre,
M_125; Midyat, M_159, 161, 166, 177, 180 (showing its property as a levelling course); Ṣalaḥ (with
a band of dentils below), M_182, 184–188; profile and front: Preusser 1911, pl. 48 (included in Fig. 4,
lower). Resafa, enclosure walls and towers: Karnapp 1976, profiles: Fig. 9 and 145; restorations: Fig. 20,
144, 146, 165, 167, 218, 223, 227; Limestone Massif, photos only: Naccache 1992b, pls. 243–270.
33 Cornice: Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: MIT Dome 136411 and pers. comm. Ross Burns and Nasser
Rabbat; Ḥarrān Great Mosque: Creswell 1969, 1 pt. 2, 644–648, fig. 688; Allen 1986, 155 fig. 72, nos.
1, 3, 6 (profiles); MIT Dome 145259, 145261; Ᾱmid Great Mosque: Gabriel 1940, 1, 189, 190 and n.1.
Decorative moulding on façades: Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī: Gabriel 1927, 313 fig. 8 (profile), 314 fig. 9
(sketch of entrance); Artuqid and later Mardin: general discussion of moulding and comparative graphic:
Beyazit 2010, 1, 384–386 and pl. 487; Sittī Raḍawiyya Madrasa: idem, 83–93; cf. MIT Dome 145446,
taken before recent renovations altered the moulding somewhat; Great Mosque and minaret: idem, 94–
120; Dunaysīr: MIT Dome 145360. Moulding on minarets, marking successive storeys: Aleppo Great
Mosque: Herzfeld 1954, pls. 57 b–61; and esp. Monuments of Syria, Aleppo Great Mosque, DSC_0194;
Ayyubid minaret outside of Mayyāfāriqīn: MIT Dome 145564; dating: Gabriel 1940, 1, 344, inscr. 125,
ca. 596–607/1199–1205.
diversity, the profiles can be placed into a small number of broad groups.34 The individual
elements of the mouldings could have further carving, as a Mayyāfāriqīn example illustrates
(S_158). Continuous mouldings of this sort often wrapped around most or all of the build-
ing’s exterior or interior, rising over windows and doorframes.35 Wide complex mouldings
have a considerable presence in Islamic architecture, ornamenting doorframes and arches at
Umayyad and later buildings.36
The door and window frame mouldings of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque’s north façade have
a common profile pattern with the following major elements: large cyma recta, torus, smaller
cyma recta (fig. 5, upper right).37 It is shared with many late antique churches, including the
neighbouring cathedral, some churches in the Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, the Resafa churches, mosque, and
walls, and Qalʿat Simʿān.38 The monumental Mardin Gate at Ᾱmid has a similar profile, but
with the cymas replaced by cavettos.39 The profile is also found at Mshatta.40
The rectangular frames of the large niches (now absent) on either side of the central door
were narrower, with fewer elements, and had a double band of dentils on their innermost edge
(fig. 6, left).
34 Wide complex mouldings, profiles: Ṭūr ʿAbdīn and surrounding region: few have been drawn but cf.
Bell in Bell/Mundell Mango 1982, 49 fig. 35, 59 fig. 41, pl. 116, and Guyer in Herzfeld 1921, 141 fig.
15, reprod. in Creswell 1969, 1 pt. 2, 620 fig. 675; Limestone Massif: Naccache 1992, 1, 69–125, placed
into four broad groups; Reṣāfa: churches and mosque: Brands 2002, Beil. 7–23 (passim); walls: Karnapp
1976, 113, 145, 160, 166, 210, 224, 231. Photos: Ṭūr ʿAbdīn and surrounding region: Mayyāfāriqīn, ca-
thedral next to mosque, S_169–171, 174–176; Āmid, N_100,109; Dara R_114; Dayr Zaʿfarān Monastery,
R_163, 164; Ḥaḥ, N_017, 026; Heshterek, S_009; Midyat, M_167; Nusaybin, R_092; Ṣalaḥ, M_187,
191–193, R_193.
35 Wraparound continuous mouldings, exterior: Qalʿat Semʿān martyrion basilica façades: Strube 1993,
246–247, drawings: figs. 11 a–c, 12 a–c; photos, pls. 110, 111, 116; Reṣāfa, Basilica B (reconstructed):
Brands 2002, 111 fig. 14; interior (highly ornate): Dayr Zaʿfarān Monastery church, R_168–173, MIT
Dome 144973–144975; section, Preusser 1911, pl. 62; Ḥaḥ, section, Guyer 1933 fig. 4; Nusaybin baptis-
tery, section, Preusser 1911, pl. 49.
36 Umayyad doorframes: al-Aqṣā Mosque, central door: Creswell Ashmolean EA.CA.4999; profiles of cen-
tral doors: Hamilton 1949, 31 fig. 19; Resafa Great Mosque: Brands 2002, Beil. 11, c; pl. 31, b (spolia
omitted); Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī: Grabar et al. 1978 b, 34 pl. 91 (large enclosure); 96 fig. 16D (small
enclosure), also in Gabriel 1927, 314 fig. 9. Twelfth century and later doorframes: Māristān of Nūr al-
Dīn, Aleppo: Herzfeld Smithsonian FSA A.6 04.GN.3140 (in many reproductions of this photo, the outer
doorframe has been cropped); Āmid, Great Mosque arcades (rather simple in form): T_060–103, and
Dick Osseman’s extensive set of photos, passim; Masʿūdiyya Madrasa (with dentillation): Gabriel 1940,
pl. 73,1, and Dick Osseman, Diyarbakir Mesudiye Medresesi september 2014 3692.jpg; Dunaysīr Great
Mosque: Gabriel 1940, 2, pl. 27,1; 28, 1; MIT Dome 128666; 145359.
37 Gabriel 1940, 1, 225 fig. 172, adapted in Fig. 5, upper right.
38 Mayyāfāriqīn cathedral profiles: Guyer in Herzfeld 1921, 141 fig. 15 no. 2 and Bell/Mundell Mango
1982, 59, fig. 41; photos: S_169–171, 174–176. Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, profiles: Bell in Bell/Mundell Mango 1982:
Arnas: p. 49 fig. 35; Ḥaḥ: pl. 116; Guyer in Herzfeld 1921, 141 fig. 15: churches in or near Urfa: nos. 1,
5, 6 (lower cyma replaced by concave band); Ᾱmid, Church of the Virgin, no. 3. Resafa, profiles: Brands
2002, Beil. 11c, d (lower cyma replaced by cavetto), 12e, 13b, 16d, f (adapted in Fig. 5, lower right), g,
17a, b, 23b, c, 37b, 38a, c; photos, idem, pls. 1a, b, 36b, c, 45d, 63c, d, 74b, c. More examples from Re-
safa gates: Karnapp 1976, Abb. 145d, 160b, 166a, 210, 224. Churches at Qalʿat Simʿān and Dayr Simʿān,
profiles: Naccache 1992, 1, 109–111, figs. 115–118, “chambranles, groupe C, variante 4,” photos: 2, pls.
67–69, 72–81.
39 Gabriel 1940, 1, 146 fig. 118.
40 Guyer in Herzfeld 1921, 141 fig. 7.
Single or double bands of dentillation were a common feature of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn (cf. figs. 4
and 6, right), Resafa, and Limestone Massif mouldings.41 They can also be found in Islamic
monuments from Āmid, Mardin, and beyond, in conjunction with other mouldings.42
The dome chamber’s arcades are decorated on either edge with narrower and simpler con-
tinuous versions of the north façade door and window frame mouldings (fig. 7). They con-
tinue over the pier capitals (discussed below) and wrap around the windows on either side of
the south wall’s missing miḥrāb under the dome, in a manner comparable to the late antique
church examples cited above43 (fig. 8). The west squinch zone with its associated mouldings
is Artuqid. Here, the moulding is wide and also contains narrow dentillated and crenellated
bands (details: S_166, 167). The latter moulding is found in late antique Syria but not the Ṭūr
ʿAbdīn, and appears in later regional and Syrian Islamic buildings.44
Pier capitals are functional as well as decorative, being one way of supporting the wooden
centering used in arch construction. Pier capitals in the same style are found in the dome
arcade and aisle piers, as well as the pilasters supporting engaged arches on the north inte-
rior wall behind the main entrances (loose example, fig. 9, left). The top of the capital is a
cyma recta followed by several narrow, parallel bands which taper progressively in profile.
The pattern is almost identical to that found in the Ṭūr ʿAbdīn at the Church of Mor Yaʿqūb,
Ṣalaḥ (fig. 9, right); other late antique examples follow a comparable plan.45 The profile is
also found at the bases of the west squinches. At the Sittī Raḍawiyya Madrasa, Mardin, the
exterior and interior pilaster capitals (perhaps spolia) have a cyma recta followed by small
crenellated and dentillated bands.46 We know of no other twelfth century or later examples of
pier capitals in mosques.
The moulding consists of a roughly quarter-circle band (the classical “ovolo”) between
two smaller flat bands, each with a scored line, with the ensemble projecting outward at the
top (fig. 3). In the Limestone Massif, the ovolo is usually carved with an acanthus rinceau,
and is a common element of church doorframes, especially lintels.47 It is only at the late an-
tique monumental tombs of al-Bāra (fig. 10, left) and al-Dānā (south) where the ovolo with
rinceau runs the length of the façades, as on the mosque’s north façade.48 At the mosque, the
rinceau has been substituted harmoniously by an arabesque.49
Fishscale (or scale imbrication) is the name given in late antique and later architectures to
describe a design of overlapping semicircles. It is a common filler pattern in mosaic, fresco,
and stonework, including sarcophagi, panels (fig. 10, right), and ornate columns; most of
41 The numerous Ṭūr ʿAbdīn examples include the frame of the outdoor oratory at Dayr al-Ṣalīb: N_030
(detail in fig. 6, right), 032, and Ṣalaḥ, fig. 4 above, M_190, 192, R_197; Reṣāfa: Brands 2002, Beil. 7a,
20c, 21a; Limestone Massif: Naccache 1992, 1, 141–144, figs. 169–173.
42 Dentillation in Islamic monuments: Beyazit 2010, 1, 388–390; Boran 2001, pl. 60.
43 Cf. n. 35.
44 Crenellation: Limestone Massif: Naccache 1992, 1, 144–146; Reṣāfa: Brands 2002 (drawings): Beil. 6b,
c, 21b, 26b, c, 32–25; Islamic examples: Beyazit 2010, 1, 390–391 (“U-shaped meander”); cf. the Ayyu-
bid minaret outside Mayyāfāriqīn’s walls: MIT Dome 145567.
45 Pier capitals, Ṭūr ʿAbdīn: Ṣalaḥ, M_188, 189; Reṣāfa: Brands 2002, pl. 17a; Limestone Massif: Strube
1993, pls. 60a, 120b; Strube 2002, pls. 78d, 104e, 128a, 139b. Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī, large enclosure’s
mosque (considered to be spolia): Grabar et al. 1978a, 49; 1978 b, 37–42, figs. 96–107.
46 Beyazit 2010, 2, pls. 19, 21, 22, 24, 26a, 27a, 29, 33a.
47 Naccache 1992, 1, profile: 132, figs. 161–163; acanthus rinceau: 223–234, figs. 266–275; cf. also Strube
1993, pls. 47a–d, 83b, f, 85 a; Strube 2002, pls. 13a, d, e, and passim.
48 Vogüé 1868, 2: al-Bāra: pls. 75–76; al-Dānā (south): pl. 77. Photos: Ross Burns, Monuments of Syria.
49 Arabesque pattern: Schneider/Brüggemann 1989, no. 1300.
these categories are poorly represented in our region.50 At the mosque, fishscale fills the span-
drels of the north façade’s blind arcade (fig. 3), with the exception of the west side, where it
has been replaced by diamond-shaped cells. We know of no other examples where fishscale
was used in a façade frieze, as at the mosque.
Interpretations – The source of the classicizing styles: survival or revival of earlier forms?
There has been sporadic debate over at least the past seventy years regarding the presence
of classicizing styles in a number of Islamic monuments of the eastern Mediterranean and
northern Syria and the Jazira between the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, but apparently
not beyond.51 Did such forms survive over the centuries in active architectural traditions
whose exemplars no longer exist, or did new ruling elites consciously revive them for vari-
ous reasons? The recognition that late antique styles continued well into the eighth century,
in the church architecture of the Ṭūr ʿAbdīn as well as the Umayyad architecture of southern
Syria and beyond, means amongst other things that the chronological gap to be bridged be-
tween late antiquity and the late eleventh century is smaller than once thought. The paucity
of preserved tenth to eleventh century religious architecture in Syria and the Jazira, however,
even at Mayyāfāriqīn where we know it existed, means that we cannot guess its appearance,
and whether and how it incorporated classicizing styles. Consequently, the survival/revival
debate as applied to architecture has always involved arguments from silence. The debate
might have disappeared from view, were it not for the fact that classicizing and Byzantine
style figural representations on copper coinage and other forms of metalwork provide a dif-
ferent vantage point from which the non-figural architectural styles can be viewed.52 Ques-
tions of origins are always interesting, however, and we still find ourselves wondering about
the sources of the mosque’s classicizing styles, both in physical and intellectual terms.
It is possible and likely that for its architectural sculpture as well as parts of its struc-
ture, the Artuqid Mayyāfāriqīn mosque took a cue from churches in the immediate region
(including the cathedral just north of it) and beyond. Historical circumstances would have
permitted it: Timurtash had connections with Aleppo, inherited from his father, in his earlier
days, and thus had been in the heartland of late antique church architecture in Syria.53 His son
Alpī had particularly close connections with the Christian communities in his realm. Even
though prominent seizures of churches happened in the early 1170’s in Mardin, part of Alpī’s
50 Fishscale in mosaics: late antique churches: ubiquitous; Umayyad: Khirbet al-Mafjar, Hamilton 1959, pl.
82 n. 4; pl. 90 n. 4; Dome of the Rock, east porch on walls, Creswell 1969, 1, 296; pl. 2. Fresco: Thes-
saloniki: Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, BT 17A–B, etc., and Mavropoulou-Tsiomi 1983.
Sarcophagi: France: Christern-Briesenick 2003, pl. 7.4 and passim. Panels: Ephesos: Thiel 2005, figs. 10,
16, and pl. 9; unknown (Anatolia): Fıratlı et al. 1990, 156–157 and pl. 96: entry 309, (inhabited fishscale);
Aegean (reconstructed): Orlandos 1952, 425–534 (passim). Columns with regular or adorsed fishscale:
Ᾱmid Great Mosque, west façade, upper arcade: seventh and fourth columns from northwest corner; cf.
comparative graphic in Berchem/Strzygowski/Bell 1910, 158 fig. 78.
51 Allen 1986 is the most detailed treatment of this topic. Raby 2004 gives a brief history of the debate and
is one of the more recent contributions. In the northern Jazira, the monuments most frequently referenced
are the Ᾱmid Great Mosque courtyard facades and parts of the Ḥarrān Great Mosque, but Deniz Beyazit’s
work has shown that parts of Mardin’s Great Mosque and minaret and the Sittī Raḍawiyya/Khātūniyya
Madrasa as well as Ᾱmid’s Masʿūdiyya Madrasa should also be included.
52 Cf. Müller-Wiener 2008 and Heidemann 2013.
53 Ibn al-Azraq/C. Hillenbrand, 36, 50–51.
domain, they were not associated with him personally. Recording his death in 1176, the three
medieval Syrian Orthodox chronicles praised Alpī greatly for his concern for Christians and
patronage of monastic life in the region.54 Nevertheless, in light of the absence of remains of
early mosques in most of northern Syria and the Jazira and the existence of so many Umayy-
ad monuments in the south which incorporated late antique styles, it would be wrong to as-
sume that the monuments being referenced in twelfth century works were only pre-conquest
or otherwise non-Islamic; they could also have been early mosques or other Islamic works.
This possibility opens up another interpretative option for the classicizing styles, as noted by
Terry Allen (a proponent of the revivalist position), who wrote:
“The sequence of stylistic development in which the classical revival stands must be
traced within Islamic architecture [original italics] back through three centuries of fragile
material evidence linking the mid-fifth/eleventh century with the architecture of the Umayy-
ad age (41–132/661–750) and the pre-Islamic architecture of the region, both of which are
relatively well preserved.”55
An early Friday mosque such as the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque’s predecessor, located on the
city’s main thoroughfare next to its cathedral church and most likely bearing late antique
architectural sculpture similar to that found elsewhere in the city, the region, and beyond,
would have been seen as a completely organic, naturalized central element of the late antique
cityscape as it survived into the twelfth century. It is perhaps this aspect of the past that the
twelfth century builders were trying to capture as they rebuilt the mosque, blending contem-
porary forms with the late antique.
On the intellectual side, Ibn al-Azraq was clearly proud of Mayyāfāriqīn’s late antique
Christian past as he knew it from the translated Syriac vita of St. Marūthā. Presumably it was
he who added the detail that the city and its cathedral church were founded by Constantine
the Great and his mother Helena in person, a claim absent from all other versions of the ha-
giography and indeed other Syriac hagiographical texts in general, where the emperor is not
present at his distant foundations.56 He credited the relics that Marūthā had built into the city
walls for the fact that Mayyāfāriqīn had never been taken by force.57 He was also proud of the
city’s late antique Islamic past, and took pains to make sure that his readers understood ex-
actly who it was who founded the city’s first Friday mosque and the smaller mosques outside
its walls. Ibn al-Azraq stood in a tradition, at least a century old at this point, of Christian and
Muslim historians incorporating foundation narratives based in antiquity and descriptions of
early buildings as they wrote about cities.58 Such interests may have been more than the sole
occupation of scholars, and could have reflected also the interests of those responsible for
preserving, restoring and building in the cities.
One observation of the survival/revival debate is that the classicizing styles are more or
less confined to the twelfth century. Yet even in the early thirteenth century when architec-
tural styles were changing in the northern Jazira, there is still evidence of a concern for them,
although at this point they were probably completely naturalized into the Artuqid canon,
and not only associated with earlier canons. It is visible in the still-recognizable garlanded
54 Seizure of churches in Mardin, 1170’s: Michael the Syrian/Chabot 3, 340, 347–349, 352; praise of Alpī:
Michael the Syrian/Chabot 3, 368; Anon. Chron. 1234, 136; Bar Hebraeus Chron., 1, 307.
55 Allen 1986, 98.
56 Munt 2010, 173.
57 Idem, 171 n. 104.
58 Robinson 1996, 23–25; Munt 2010, 159–161.
Corinthian-style capitals of the Ayyubid miḥrāb at the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque (S_143), and
the mouldings of the minaret outside of the city and at the Dunaysīr mosque (mentioned
above). More evidence of a lingering appreciation for the late antique past, even as it was be-
ing destroyed, can be seen in a report of the thirteenth century Ayyubid historian Ibn Shaddād
on the city of Ᾱmid. After giving the location and a brief history of a grand pre-conquest
church near the garden al-Manāzī, he noted its fate: “The church was destroyed during the
days of al-Malik al-Ṣālīḥ Maḥmūd [Artuqid, r. 1201–1222]. With some of its stones they built
a qaysāriyya for textiles, and part of it remained as a testimony to its grandeur.”59 After the
twelfth century, architectural styles changed not only for mosques in the northern Jazira, but
also for churches. Admittedly, the post-late antique period of architecture in the region has
scarcely been studied. No one has attempted to date or even catalogue the medieval churches
or the medieval features built into earlier churches. One sees elements such as pointed and
trefoil arches, muqarnas, īwāns, and ablaq in lintels, and the absence of late antique ele-
ments. Similarly, a shift of styles took place in the Mosul region, although there one is not so
well informed about the region’s earlier church architecture.60
Is the medieval Jazira a landscape of its own, or a cultural interspace?

Writing as students of Middle Eastern church architecture, we have some good examples
of regions which were part of a larger architectural “landscape of its own” with numerous
sub-regions. Closest to Mayyāfāriqīn, the late antique Ṭūr ʿAbdīn and the Limestone Mas-
sif are both compact rural areas whose architectural features changed slightly over time and
within their own sub-regions, but were inevitably related to late antique styles throughout the
Mediterranean. Not even the wrenching Christian confessional differences that took shape in
these multilingual regions in the sixth century would give rise to new, emblematic architec-
tural forms. We would consider the late antique architecture of the Umayyad “desert castle”
zone to the south to belong to a “cultural interspace,” where earlier late antique architectural
elements underwent a new synthesis. The Ṭūr ʿAbdīn and Limestone Massif churches, for
example, do not allow one to predict the Mshatta façades, although the latter share features of
both regions. Classicizing elements, whether they were interpreted as belonging to classical,
late antique or later buildings (revival or survival), and whether they were viewed in a confes-
sional frame or not, similarly underwent a new synthesis in late eleventh and twelfth century
Islamic architecture, as is particularly visible in the Jazira. We can think of no examples
where the classicizing styles are found on their own; instead, they are joined by forms and
styles that are new and/or from outside the respective regions, such as the dome chamber on
squinches, arabesques, muqarnas, the semicircle and triangle moulding, and the shouldered
arch. To describe the twelfth century buildings as the products of a “cultural interspace” is to
start to address their hybridity.61 It has fallen to anthropologists to examine the term “hybrid”
and its cognates as they search for new conceptual tools and material for comparisons. The
introduction to a recent volume on the topic started with a working definition of “hybrid
material culture” as “the production of material objects incorporating elements of multiple
59 Ibn Shaddād/ ʻAbbāra 1956, 3 pt. 1, 258, f.66a–b, transl. Suleyman Dost; referenced briefly in Cahen
1934, 113.
60 Cf. Snelders 2010.
61 Cf. discussions in Müller-Wiener 2008, 148, 163 and Korn 2011, 402; in a similar vein, Beyazit described
the Artuqid architecture of Mardin as eclectic (Beyazit 2010, 491).
existing stylistic or technological traditions,” and summarized the many ideas which have
been implicated within the concept.62 The study of twelfth century and later Jaziran material
culture in general and architecture in particular could benefit from, and contribute to, the
cross-cultural and temporal study of hybrid material cultures.
We have only scratched the surface of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, a building whose his-
tory, structure, and architectural sculpture are highly complex. The original mosque was
founded in a late antique environment, next to a cathedral whose orientation and size visibly
influenced its own. Over time, it both expanded and was joined in the city by other major
Islamic monuments whose appearance is unknown. When the mosque collapsed in 1152 and
was subsequently rebuilt under two Artuqid rulers, it was in a mixture of styles that included
the late antique, the latest in Seljuk innovations, and smaller details which included Georgian
and other styles. By focusing on the description and comparison of its late antique mouldings
and frieze, we have shown that the rebuilt mosque incorporated late antique styles at a fine
level of detail, going far beyond large, emblematic elements such as columns, capitals, and
entablatures (some of which were present as well). For the most part, the mosque incorpo-
rated the styles in ways that were comparable to late antique uses. This demonstrates consid-
erable familiarity with late antique styles from across the northern Jazira and Syria, whether
they had been encountered in the context of late antique Christian, Umayyad, or later build-
ings. The range of possible connections for these elements is substantial, which is perhaps
why they were incorporated: they could cut across communal, temporal, and geographical
boundaries, and mix with new and totally unrelated features to create structures in what we
could call the twelfth century “international style.”
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Appendix: Key to photos of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque

Photos by Gertrude Bell from Album S are indicated by a three-digit number. They appear
in the website as S_NNN. The high-resolution scans available for purchase from the Archive
often reveal details that cannot be detected on the website images.
Façade Overviews
– north: 113, 126
– south: 099, 117
– east: 122 (interior visible in 159)
– west: n/a (interior visible in 152, 155)
North Façade Details

East side
– east end, remains of minaret: 123, MIT Dome 145525, 145529
– east blind arcade and corbels, door, windows, and small niches: 123–126, 129, 130, 139,
MIT Dome 145525–145530
– vertical masonry breaks visible in: 124, 125, 129, MIT Dome 145525
Central
– central blind arcade, doors, and large niches: 127, 128, 131–133, 140
– left/east large niche (point and cusp on archivolt): 127, 128, 132, 136, 137
– right/west large niche (chevron on archivolt): 131, 133, 138
West side
– west blind arcade and corbels, door, windows, and small niches: 134, 135, 140, MIT
Dome 145531–145537
– vertical masonry breaks visible in: 134, 140
Aisles
North aisle
– facing west: 152
– facing east: n/a
– engaged arches behind central doors: 152, 153
– rooflevel corbels: 126, 152
– inner sides of door and window frames: 148, 149, 153, 156, 157, 164 (bottom right); see
also 139 from exterior
– brick vaulting visible in: 156, 157 (northeast corner)
East aisles
– arcades: 154, 156, 157
– miḥrāb of the Ayyubid [Shihab al-Dīn] al-Muẓaffar Ghāzī, southeast corner: 141–143,
145
– miḥrāb with cable moulding (beside dome chamber): 144, 146, 154, 160, 161
West aisles
– arcades: 155, 164
– shallow miḥrāb, southwest wall (?): 147
– brick vaulting visible (under high magnification) in: 117 (in shadow), 162
Dome Chamber
Dome chamber exterior, including columns and capitals
– north: 140, 151 (?), 152
– north, consoles for timber structure: 126, 152, 153, MIT Dome 145544, Sinclair 1985,
fig. 7
– north, heavy consoles on east and west sides of chamber: 148, 149, 152
– east: 117, 159,
– west: 148, 149,
Dome chamber interior
– facing south, including remains of miḥrāb: 160–163
– facing east: 159
– northeast squinch: 156, 157, MIT Dome 145554–145556
– southeast squinch: 160/161, MIT Dome 145552, 145553
– facing west: 155, 167
– northwest squinch: 164, 166, MIT Dome 145549–145551
– southwest squinch: 162/163, MIT Dome 145546–145548
Dome chamber roof
– from north: 113, 125––129, 133,
– from south: 117
Miscellaneous
– loose pier capital: 150
144
Elif Keser-Kayaalp – Linda Wheatley-Irving
Fig. 1 Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, plan (after Bell 1914, pl. 92); no. 1, Ayyubid miḥrāb; no. 2, miḥrāb with cable moulding.
Fig. 2 Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, north façade: top, Bell photo S_126 (reproduced with kind permission of the
Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University); bottom, façade restoration drawing (after Gabriel/Sauvaget 1940,
145
1, 224 fig. 169).
Fig. 3 Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, east end of north façade, detail (reproduced

with kind permission of Lorenz Korn); no. 1, cyma recta moulding; no. 2,
ovolo moulding with arabesque; no. 3, fishscale frieze.
Fig. 4 Church, Monastery of Mor

Yaʿqub at Ṣalaḥ, Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, cyma
recta moulding with dentillation
on gable: top, photo (EKK); bot-
tom, front and profile drawing (after
Preusser 1911, pl. 48).
Fig. 5 Wide complex mouldings: left, Mayyāfāriqīn mosque doorframe, Bell photo S_127 (repro-
duced with kind permission of the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University); upper right, profile
of mosque doorframe moulding (after Gabriel/Sauvaget 1940, 1, 225 fig. 172); lower right, profile of
window moulding from Reṣāfa, Basilica B (after Brands 2002, Beil. 16f).
Fig. 6 Niche frames with dentillated mouldings: left, Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, detail of Bell photo
S_138; right, Dayr al–Ṣalīb, Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, detail of Bell photo N_030 (photos reproduced with kind
permission of the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University).
Fig. 7 Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, dome chamber interior (facing southwest), wide com-
plex wraparound mouldings and Artuqid squinch, Bell photo S_162 (reproduced with
kind permission of the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University).
Fig. 8 Qalʿat Simʿān martyrion basilica, north façade of north arm, wide complex wraparound
mouldings (reproduced with kind permission of Dick Osseman).
Fig. 9 Pier capitals: left, Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, loose capital, detail of Bell photo S_150 (repro-
duced with kind permission of the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University); right, capital from
narthex of church, Monastery of Mor Yaʿqub at Ṣalaḥ, Tur Abdin (EKK).
Fig. 10 Left, late antique tomb at al-Bāra, Limestone Massif, ovolo mould-
ing with rinceau (reproduced with kind permission of Ross Burns); right,
Church of St. John, Ephesus, fishscale on panel from atrium parapet (after
Thiel 2005, pl. 6, fig. 16).

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Central Periphery?

Art, Culture and History of the Medieval Jazira

Reichert Verlag 2017

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

© 2017 Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden

Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt.

Central Periphery? Art, Culture and History of the Jazira

Taxing, Trading and Ruling in the Early Islamic Jazira

Processes of Regionalisation in Late Antique and Early Islamic Bilād al-Shām

The Architecture of the Abbasid Residence at ar-Raqqa/ar-Rāfiqa –

Practitioners of the Mathematical and Medical Sciences and their Relationship

Late Antique Architectural Sculpture at the Mayyāfāriqīn Mosque

The Artuqid Residence at Āmid (Diyarbakır)

The Frontispiece Problem in the Early 13th-Century Kitāb al-Aghānī

Messianic Expectations Among Anatolian Turkmens –

Mosul: A Centre of Artistic Production During the Early Ilkhanid Period

The Berlin Dragon Door-Knocker in its Scientific and Historical Context

Elif Keser-Kayaalp – Linda Wheatley-Irving

The structure of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque

13 Heidemann 2002, 4–12; Mayyāfāriqīn’s exclusion is noted in 32–33.

Plan, walls, openings, and dome chamber

Ceilings and roofing: Remains and reconstruction

19 Gabriel 1940, 1, 344, inscr. 124.

The mosque’s place in regional architectural history:

Architectural mouldings and frieze

23 Galdieri 1984, 103 pl. 14.

Is the medieval Jazira a landscape of its own, or a cultural interspace?

62 Card 2013, 1–22.

Appendix: Key to photos of the Mayyāfāriqīn mosque

North Façade Details

Fig. 3 Mayyāfāriqīn mosque, east end of north façade, detail (reproduced

Fig. 4 Church, Monastery of Mor

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