i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 559 



give character to the wall surfaces, nothing but uniform 

 flat spaces of rough stonework, with string courses of 

 wooden beams, in the fashion which goes back to the 

 days of Solomon s Temple. If the house is a fine one, 

 the wall is stuccoed and whitewashed, and, perhaps, some 

 colour is introduced in. the battlements, but that is all. 

 There are none of the admirable stone-cut mouldings of 

 the Egyptian Arabs, no trace of the faculty for effective 

 treatment of great wall spaces which appears, for example, 

 in the mosque of Sultan Hassan at Cairo. The upper 

 part of the house always looks unfinished, if not actually 

 ruinous, and the battlements seem to have run to seed. 

 In the better houses of Jeddah these defects are largely 

 balanced by the free use of tasteful woodwork, chiefly 

 executed in Java teak. The doors and oriel windows are 

 handsomely carved, and the latter are shaded with 

 canopies of fantastic fretwork. A handsome sitting- 

 room on the top floor often has a kiosk entirely of wood 

 work at one or even at both ends, and the large masses 

 of dark teak thus introduced give relief to the insipidity 

 of the flat white masonwork. But I have great doubts 

 whether this style is original to the Arabs. The extensive 

 use of foreign timber which is seen in all the coast towns 

 becomes limited up the country, and in Taif even the 

 better houses have smaller and less numerous oriels. 

 The ordinary window is a plain lattice set flat in the wall, 

 which has no picturesque effect. The public buildings 

 are even less interesting than the private houses. Taif 

 has one great mosque and many small ones. But even 

 the great mosque of Ibn Abbas, beside the gate of that 

 name, to the south of the city, is altogether commonplace. 

 The type of the Arabian mosque is a courtyard with 

 covered piazzas, to which are added a minaret and prob 

 ably a domed building covering the tomb of a saint. 

 This plan admits of excellent architectural effect, as is 

 seen in the oldest mosques of Cairo and the great mosque 

 of Damascus, which follow the same type. But in these 



