雙語+MP3|美國學生藝術(shù)史77 芝麻開門

  
還有……小劃船  
77 OPEN SESAME芝麻開門 
  
ALI BABA came to the cave of the forty thieves. The door in the rock was shut. “Open sesame,” said Ali Baba, and the door swung open.  
Ali Baba was a Mohammedan. So was Sinbad the Sailor, so were Prince Agib and all the rest of those fascinating people in the “Arabian Nights.”  
“Open sesame.” Let’s see if the magic words will open the door of this chapter to show the treasures of Mohammedan architecture.  
The Mohammedans believe in a book called the Koran which is for them what the Bible is for Christians. Now, the Koran forbade any Mohammedan to make a picture or a likeness of any living thing. So you can easily guess that a Mohammedan temple, or mosque as it is called, must be very different from a Gothic cathedral which is covered with hundreds of statues of men and animals and plants.  
Another difference you would probably notice at once if you were in Istanbul or any other Mohammedan city would be the number of domes. These domes are generally not round but oblong like half an egg or an onion and they often have points on the tops like the end of a fat turnip or beet. But all the mosques do not have domes, for a Mohammedan dome used to be the sign of a tomb and only where the building served as a tomb for some one, a dome was built.  
When you get close to a Mohammedan building you notice that the builders must have been good carvers of stone and marble, even if their religion didn’t allow them to carve statues of living things. Their carving is a pattern of straight lines and curves, squares and circles, diamond shapes and star shapes, zigzags, and crisscrosses. Some of the carving is so fine it forms a network that looks like stone lace.  
Inside the buildings the carving and decorations become even richer than outside. The designs are called arabesques because the first Mohammedans were Arabs and the Arabs built many mosques decorated in this way. Sometimes the arabesques are writings from the Koran The Arabian letters are graceful and make beautiful decorations.  
And inside these Mohammedan buildings we are apt to find still another form of decoration that other buildings do not have. The vaults under the domes (the ceilings of the rooms) often have a curious carved work that looks like hundreds of little stone icicles hanging down from the roof.  
In every Mohammedan village is at least one minaret or tower for the muezzin, a man who climbs up five times a day to call the people to prayer. Some of the mosques have a minaret at each corner.  
“Come to prayer, come to prayer. There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,” sings the muezzin, and then all good Mohammedans face toward the sacred city of Mecca and kneel in prayer. Mecca is the sacred city because Mohammed himself was born and lived there. Each Mohammedan mosque has a niche or hollow in the wall nearest Mecca. This niche takes the place of the altar in a church or temple.  
The early Mohammedans did not believe in simply asking other people to become Mohammedans. They brought people into their religion by saying to them, “Be a Mohammedan or we’ll kill you.” So the Mohammedan religion spread quickly from Arabia where it started, for the Arabs were great conquerors. Eastward it spread, farther and farther, through Persia and across India. Bagdad became the capital city of these eastern Mohammedans. Westward the Arabs pushed across Egypt, across northern Africa till they came to the Strait of Gibraltar. This did not stop them. They built boats and sailed across to Spain. Through Spain they spread until they got as far as France. All Europe would probably have become Mohammedan if the French had not stopped the Arabs in a battle fought at the town of Tours, in France.  
  
No.77-1 ARABESQUFS IN THE ALHAMBRA, GRANADA  
（格林納達阿爾漢布拉宮的阿拉伯圖案）  
But much of Spain did become Mohammedan. The Arabs in Spain were called Moors. The Moors set up a capital at Cordova for all the Western Mohammedans, just as Bagdad was the Eastern capital just as the Roman Empire had once had an Eastern and Western capital—Rome and Constantinople. For over seven hundred years the Moors ruled in Spain until they were finally driven out about the time of Columbus.  
In Cordova the Moors built a huge mosque which is still standing there. You remember how the Mohammedans turned the Christian church of St. Sophia in Constantinople into a mosque. Well, in Cordova just the opposite happened. For when the Moors were finally driven out of Spain the Christians turned the Mohammedan mosque into a church. And a church it still is.  
But by far the most famous Mohammedan building in Spain is the Alhambra. The Alhambra was built by the Moorish kings of Granada in Spain as a kind of fortress palace. The Alhambra is on a tall hill of rock with steep cliffs that helped keep back enemies. Inside the different buildings were guard rooms and halls, gardens and courts, all decorated with thousands of arabesques. The Court of Lions is one part of the Alhambra that you may have heard of. It looks something like a cloister, for round its four sides are arcades. In the middle is a big marble basin, held on the backs of twelve lions, which is used as a fountain.  
And now I’m sure you are going to ask an embarrassing question. It’s embarrassing because I can’t answer it.  
“How could the Moors have marble lions if they were not supposed to carve statues of living things?”  
  
No.77-2 THE COURT OF LIONS IN THE ALHAMBRA（阿爾漢布拉宮的獅子庭院）  
I don’t know. Maybe the lions were an exception that proved the rule. Maybe the lions were carved by Christians and captured and brought to the Alhambra by the Moors. Maybe … But who knows? On page 367 is a picture of them. Do you see any arabesques?  
Another noted building in Spain left by the Moors is called the Giralda Tower. Giralda meant weather-vane. The weather-vane is naturally on the very top of the tower. It is a figure of Faith that swings with the wind. The top three stories of the tower are Christian Renaissance architecture, because when the Christians finally drove the Moors out of Spain they used the Mohammedan buildings for their own needs and often added to them.  
Now I’m going to take you from Spain in the West to India in the East. In Agra, India, lived a Mohammedan ruler who erected a building in honor of his wife. You will be surprised to hear what kind of building it was. It was a tomb! And yet his wife was still alive when he built her tomb.  
  
No.77-3 THE GAJ MAHAL（泰姬陵）  
That seems strange to us, but it was the custom there. It was a sensible custom, at that, for the ruler and his wife used the tomb as a kind of pleasure house where visitors were received and parties were held. Then when the rulers died they were buried there.  
This tomb is called the Taj Mahal. As it was a tomb, it was crowned with a dome. Many travelers who have seen it have called it the most beautiful building in the world. They have even placed it ahead of the Parthenon. The Taj Mahal is built all of marble and shines in the sun like a beautiful white jewel. Around the building are gardens, trees, lawns, and fountains and right in front of it is a long rectangular pool of water that reflects the trees and the Taj Mahal too.  
And with the Taj Mahal we will end our story of Mohammedan buildings, saying as Ali Baba might say to close the chapter, “Shut sesame.”