606 THE METHODS OF ARCH^OLOGICAL RESEARCH. 



iiigs of the later caliphs. Embroidery, j)ottery, and glass and metal 

 working, including- damascenert and bronze casting, all passed from 

 Byzantine craftsmen to those of Arabia, and the chief development they 

 received was in response to the injunctions of the Prophet ag'ainst the 

 making of graven images and of painted representations, which com- 

 pelled those employed by the Arabs to devote their energies to devel- 

 oi)ing conventional ornamentation and so-called arabesque work. Their 

 contact with the Chinese and the Hindoos enabled them in pottery, and 

 probably also in bronze work, etc., to supplement the lessons they learned 

 nearer home with fresh lessons from the farthest East. Then came a 

 curious phase. As is often the case in the modest life of our homes, the 

 daughter, having outgrown her mother's teaching, returned some of the 

 lessons, and in turn became the fruitful mother of new ideas and of new 

 inspiration. From Egypt and from Syria art workmen found their way 

 to Venice and Pisa and other Italian towns, and started men along new 

 roads by presenting them with new models. The glass, the brass work, 

 and the pottery of Venice, when Venice headed the renaissance of the 

 industrial arts, were all the (;hildreu of eastern workmen imported by 

 the rich llepublic. Another wave of INTohammedan art influence passed 

 through north Africa into southern Spain and its islands. There the 

 lustered wares known as majolican had, if not their origin, their great 

 development, and thence they were transplanted to Italy. The hue 

 tiles which the Moors made were widely imitated, as their azulejos by 

 the Spaniards; and thence also largely came the astrolabes, the clocks, 

 and other inventions which Arab science had produced. 



One feature in the x)anorama we have hastily traced is obvious, 

 namely, that it has been the nations and the x^eoples with great mer- 

 cantile enterprise who have not only been rich enough to patronize but 

 who have also been in contact with fresh ideas whicli have given art 

 its new departure. The Flemings at Bruges and the Hanse traders all 

 over the Baltic accumulated and developed ideas which they i)icked up 

 at Novgorod and in the far-oft" districts of Perm, etc. On the other 

 hand, the Venetians and the Genoese had their factories all over the 

 Black Sea and among the isles of Greece. They shook hands there 

 with the caravan traders from China and from the far countries of 

 Siberia, and had to supply each other in return with objects suitable 

 to their taste and needs. The Mongols were masters of the greater 

 parts of the Asiatic world. Their ruthless conquests drove the artif- 

 icers of Persia into India and into Egypt, and in either country a 

 great rejuvenescence of the arts took i)lace at the same time in the 

 same style, and it is a most curious piece of history, as well as interest- 

 ing in art, to compare the tombs of the caliph at Cairo with those of 

 the Pathan sultans at Delhi. Then the Mongols themselves became 

 civilized and settled, and their artificers crowded back and brought 

 new ideas with them, and atTebriz and Sullania erected buildings and 

 decorated them in a manner previously unattained. Not only so, but 



