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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1915
Further, Don Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo in his account of his embassy to. Timur, in 1404,47 states that Timûr, looked after the execution of his buildings personally, and was carried every day in a litter to the spot, and, if not satisfied, he sometimes caused to be torn down already finished buildings, and then caused them to be re-erected according to his instructions. The same thing has been related by Timûr's biographer Sharaf-ud-din 'Ali.
It is also stated in the Institutes of Timur (Ed. of 1787, p. 103), that "The workmen who were spared from the sack of Damascus, and brought to Tartary were ordered to build a palace at Samarkand, which they did with much intelligence." Here is an actual importation of craftsmen from Damascus, who might well have copied the dome of their own great mosque in working on the Gûr Amir and Bîbî Khânûm, even supposing Timûr had given no special directions on the subject, and they would have been led to execute it in brick too, as timber is very scarce in this region.
Lastly, one more point in favour of my theory We saw above that the interior diameter of the dome at Damascus was 43 ft. 6 in. Now, according to Schubert v. Soldern, the diameter of the dome of the Bîbî Khânûm, the first building erected by Timûr after his visit to Damascus, is 13.5 metres (44 ft. 3 in.), a difference practically negligible in domes of such a size.
I therefore think that I have shown, as nearly as such a thing can be shown, short of a direct contemporary historical statement to that effect, that the double slightly swelling Persian dome was first copied in brick by Timûr after his stay at Damascus from a wooden one of the same shape that he saw there, and was employed in his subsequent buildings, viz., the Bibî Khânûm and the Gûr Amir at Samarkand.
Ibn Jubair (1184) remarks, and his statement is repeated by Ibn Batutah (1326): "From whatever quarter you approach the city you see this dome, high above all else, as though suspended in the air "49; it was probably for the sake of its external effect that this form was devised, and came to be adopted elsewhere.
Before I leave the subject of the wooden dome at Damascus, I must add that I think it has not been without its influence elsewhere. I shall give two instances.
The famous mosque of Hasan at Cairo, built in 1356-62 now has an ordinary pointed dome erected in the 17th century. (Plate III, F). This replaced one which according to Pietro della Valle who visited Cairo about 1610, was bulbous. He says: "especially do I like the dome the shape of which I have never seen the like of before in that it commences vertically, then swells out, and then contracts to a point like the egg of a hen. "50 According to Saladin (p. 127 f.) Khalil Zahiri relates that Sultan Hasan brought together architects from all countries to design what he intended to be the greatest building in the world. Amongst other things he caused to be copied (on a modified scale) the great vaulted hall of Chosroes at Ctesiphon which accounts for the four great vaulted liwans on each side of the main court. When Saladin says that the influence of Damascus, is also apparent everywhere in the decoration, etc., it certainly seems to me that the admittedly eclectic Sultan must have gone there for his dome too.
47 Translated for the Hakluyt Society, 1852.
48 Die Baudenkmaler von Samarkand, p. 28.
49 G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, p. 244.
50 Saladin, op. cit. quoting Herz Bey, La Mosquée du Sultan Hasan au Caire.
