Page:Harry Charles Luke and Edward Keith-Roach - The Handbook of Palestine (1922).djvu/90

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ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART IN PALESTINE
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hostel (1282) in the Tariq Bab al-Nazir, used as a prison by the Turks and now as a khan for Moslems from the Sudan; the hostel of Ali al-Din (1267) near the Bab al-Hadid, and the Rabat al-Kurd (1290), situated opposite the splendid façade of the Arghunieh madrasa outside the Bab al-Hadid.

Just as ʾAbd al-Melek ibn Marwan in the seventh century both profited by the skill of the craftsmen he found in the country and employed materials from earlier buildings, so also did the Bahrite Mamelukes of Egypt, who ruled in Palestine from 1250 to 1390 A.D., not only benefit by the existence of the large body of practised craftsmen which the country clearly possessed while under Frank rule, but also used, when it proved convenient to do so, materials from Christian buildings for incorporation in their own works. Hence we find, in some of the Mameluke buildings, many stones that their own masons had neither quarried nor dressed, stones that they took from Frank structures. The bridge at Ludd (Lydda) built by the conqueror of S. Louis, the Mameluke Sultan Bibars (cf. Part I., § 6), bearing his emblem, the lion, appears to be largely constructed of materials worked by Christian masons or at least by masons trained in Frank methods. The Mamelukes much admired the Frank buildings. They themselves were great builders, and they were sometimes tempted to destroy a building they admired (but perhaps had no use for as it stood) in order to make use of the parts they liked best or could most conveniently adapt for their own purposes. After Bibars had captured and destroyed Jaffa, he sent the wood and the marble of the buildings to Cairo for the construction of his mosque there; Sultan Mohammed al-Nasr ibn Qalaʾun similarly treated a doorway of the Cathedral of Acre; and in the porch of the great Mosque of Sultan Hasan in Cairo are to be seen most interesting fragments of carved Gothic work, evidently looted from some Frank building in Palestine. The stones composing the arches of the porch to the.shrine of Abu Huraira at Yebna are of Frank origin. An inscription records the