the Mameluke guards. The entire epoch is divided into two periods, lasting respectively from 1250 to 1382, and from 1382 to 1517. During the former, the Sultans were of Turkoman, and during the latter of Circassian origin. If we except the long and comparatively peaceful reign of En-Nâsir, which embraced a period of forty-four years (c. 1297 to 1341), the entire epoch was one continuous series of intrigues and revolutions. A striking indication of the bizarre character of this extraordinary military usurpation is afforded by the name of the Sultan Kalâûn. This Sultan, the father of En-Nâsir, added to his name El-Mansûr Kalâûn the further designation of El-Elfî, thereby commemorating the fact that he had been purchased for a thousand (elf) pieces of gold. Yet Kalâûn was himself distinguished as a ruler by the sagacious and enlightened policy which led him to enter into commercial relations with the Emperor Rudolph and Alfonso of Aragon. The architecture of the period of the Turkoman Mamelukes is marked in general by the introduction of features which must be referred to foreign influences; nevertheless, we find that at its close Arabian architecture has definitely assumed the forms to which its special character and significance is due.

The mosques of this period include, first the composite building known as the Mûristân Kalâûn, of which the greater part is now in ruins. This, the largest edifice of the period, consisted of a great hospital, to which was annexed the tomb-mosque of its founder. The building was commenced by the Sultan Kalâûn in 1285, and subsequently completed by his son, En-Nâsir. Second, the mosque of En-Nâsir, erected in 1300, which adjoins the Mûristân. Third, the mosque of Kalâûn, which was erected by En-Nasir in 1317, within the walls of the citadel. And fourth, the monumental mosque of Sultan Hasân, which was raised between the years 1356 and 1359.

These buildings will afford illustrations of the two tendencies to which I have alluded-the use of foreign, often Gothic, forms, and the investment of the structure with an exterior which is definitely Arabian in character. Thus, to give a few of the more striking

examples in detail, we find the corridors of the Mûristân are covered with Gothic vaulting, and the east façade of this building, while it is stamped unmistakably by the special characteristics of

ARCHES IN THE SANCTUARY OF THE MOSQUE OF KALÂÛN.

its Arabian builders, yet recalls in the square tower of the minaret, and in the disposition and style of the windows, the façade of a Gothic church. Again, in the sanctuary of the mosque of Kalâûn, in the citadel, and in the colonnaded court of the same building,

we find alongside of the dome with its characteristic stalactite pendentives, and the no less characteristically Arabian ceilings, arcades of noble arches, which plainly reflect the spirit of Gothic. These arches and columns, I may remark, furnish the sole example

GOTHIC DOORWAY IN MOSQUE OF EN-NÂSIR.

of excellence in this class of work, which I was able to observe among the Arabian buildings of Cairo. In these cases Gothic forms have been assimilated by the Arabian architects before

1 For the explanation of this fact—the poverty of Arabian architecture in the column-see onwards, p. 134.