Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
r works as in a dazzling fairy tale, a greatheroic story from the Thousand and One Nights. The miracle of the Arabian mind is that it remaineditself everywhere and dominated everywhere without,of itself, creating anything. Anarchic, nomadic, anda unit, as little bounded by moral as by material fron-tiers, it could, through that very fact, adapt its geniusto that of the conquered peoples and at the same timepersuade the vanquished to allow themselves to beabsorbed in the unity of that genius. Coptic in Egypt,Berber in the Moghreb and in Spain, Persian in Persia,Indian in India, Islam allows the converted races—inEgypt, in the Moghreb, in Spain, in Persia, and inIndia—to express, according to their nature, the newenthusiasm which it knew so well how to communicateto them. Wherever it established itself, it remainedmaster of the peoples heart. When Abu-Bekr proclaimed the holy war after thedeath of Mohammed, the first conquerors of Syriaand Egypt installed their immobile dream in the
Text Appearing After Image:
Cairo (vu Century). Interior of the mosque of Amru. 234 MEDIAEVAL ART Byzantine or Coptic churches which they came uponin their path. The earlier consecration of the edificedid not matter much to them. They were at homeeverywhere. They covered the mosaics and the fres-coes with a coat of paint, hollowed out a mihrab in thewall facing toward Mecca, and lost themselves inecstasy, their eyes fixed on that spot. When, in Egyp-tian, Greek, or Roman ruins, they found ancientcolumns, they assembled them haphazard, often withthe capital downward, all mingling like trees in thesame living unity. On three sides of the inner court,where the fountain for ablutions brought to the dried-out soil the eternal freshness of the earth, their parallelrows of columns carried ogive arcades which supportedthe flat roofs common to the hot countries. The outerwalls remained as bare as ramparts. Egypt recognizedits dream in that of its conquerors. But enthusiasm creates action and incites to dis-covery. Three

Note About Images