The architecture of this country is of the Gothic character. The mosques are built somewhat like our churches: the body of the mosques are covered with green glazed tiles; the steeples are invariably an exact square, the sides being ten or twelve feet, not tapering as those of Coventry, but the top having the same dimensions as the base. At the top is erected a smaller square, with a flag-staff similar to a gallows, to which is suspended every day at noon, a white flag, the signal of preparation for prayers; but on Fridays, the Muhamedan Sabbath, a dark-blue one is substituted for the same purpose. Some of the mosques are paved with white and black chequered marble, some are tessellated pavements, consisting of white, blue, and green glazed tiles, about two inches square, a very pretty mode of paving, extremely clean, and has a very cool appearance; others are terrassed, which is lime 272 and small stones beaten down with wooden mallets. They excel in the art of making terras. The houses are all flat roofed, so as to resist the heaviest rains: the declivity of the terrasses is so imperceptible, that it is just sufficient to give the rains a tendency to the great conduit or pipe that leads to the mitfere underneath the house, which is underground, and has a terras bottom, impervious to the water. Here is collected water sufficient for the family or household during the year; the lime that washes into the mitfere from the terrassed roof, purifies the water, and preserves it from worms and other insects. They have no ornaments in their mosques; but the place where the Mufti or Fakeer reads prayers, is covered with mats or carpets; the rest of the floor is bare, and the respective individuals prostrate themselves on the bare floor, or on an antelope's or _Elhorreh_[180] skin, or the skin of a lion or tiger, prepared in a superior manner by the tanners at Marocco, the leather of which is made soft as silk, and white as snow.
[Footnote 180: For a description of this curious animal, see Jackson's Marocco, page 83, Chapter on Zoology.]
The bodies of the dead are never laid in the mosques or near them, but are invariably carried out of the town, to some coba[181] in 273 the vicinity. The bodies of the dead are washed, and covered with lawn, and placed on an oblong wooden machine, resembling a box without a cover, called a _kiffen;_ it has four legs about six inches long, to uphold it from the ground, and two horizontal projections at each end, to place on the shoulders of four men, generally the nearest relations of the deceased, who thus carry the body to the grave, chaunting with the whole company, amounting sometimes to some hundreds, _La Allah, ila Allah wa Muhamed Rassule Allah_, "There is no God but God, and Muhamed is the prophet of God." This repetition may appear extraordinary to the English reader; but let it be observed that the Muhamedans never use the pronoun for the name of the Omnipotent, but invariably the noun. The body is taken out of the bier, and laid in the ground, the face upwards, without any coffin or box, the legs towards Mecca, and then covered with earth, so that it might, at the resurrection, rise with its eyes towards (_El Kaaba_) Muhamed's mausoleum. No money is paid for the ground, nor is any expense paid for a monument: a stick or a stone stands erect at the head, and another 274 at the feet. If the deceased lived a moral, inoffensive, and exemplary life, the public, at its own expense, oftentimes erects (_kaba_) a cubical building with a dome at the top to the departed, and he is thence denominated (_fakeer_) a saint.