"Saracenical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called a modern structure; and of the houses, I do not think there exists one older than four centuries; it is not, therefore, in this place, that the traveller must look for interesting specimens of architecture or such beautiful remains of Saracenic structures as are still admired in Syria, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain. In this respect the ancient and far-famed Mekka is surpassed by the smallest provincial towns of Syria or Egypt. The same may be said with respect to Medina, and I suspect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... a cat. To the dashing young artists of the present day this may seem a trifle; to them, no doubt, a cat is a cat—or would be, if they could make it one. Of course, there are cats enough in London, and sometimes even a few to spare; but I wanted a cat of peculiar order, and of a Saracenic cast. I walked miles and miles; till at last I found him residing in a very old-fashioned house in the Polygon, at Somers Town. Here was a genuine paradise of cats, carefully ministered to and guarded by a ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... of Ibn-Tulun, seen upon a sad day, makes a powerful impression, and from the summit of its minaret you are summoned by the many minarets of Cairo to make the pilgrimage of the mosques, to pass from the "broken arches" of these Saracenic cloisters to the "Blue Mosque," the "Red Mosque," the mosques of Mohammed Ali, of Sultan Hassan, of Kait Bey, of El-Azhar, and so on to the Coptic church that is the silent centre of "old Cairo." It is said that ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... the name of Saracenic millet, as a thing which came from India, and was first brought into Italy in his own time. Herodotus speaks of its cultivation by the Babylonians. The Saracens used it in the fourteenth century for making bread, as do the Lucchese ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... generic name for ornamental tissues and costumes made with them. Spangles (those pretty little discs of gold, silver, or polished steel, used in certain embroidery for dainty glinting effects) were a Saracenic invention; and Arabic letters often took the place of letters in the Roman characters for use in inscriptions upon embroidered robes and Middle Age tapestries, their decorative value being so much greater. The book of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258-1268, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the Saracens," and unauthentic Works.—At the end of a late edition of Washington Irving's Life of Mahomet, those "who feel inclined to peruse further details of the life of Mahomet, or to pursue the course of Saracenic history," are referred to Ockley. Students should be aware of the character of the histories they peruse. And it appears, from a note in Hallam's Middle Ages (vol. ii. p. 168.), that Wakidi, from whom Ockley translated his work, was a "mere fabulist," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... enshrined, and the rose gardens of the Palazzo Rufolo might enchant Hafiz himself. The terrace on the very crest of the mountain commands one of the wonderful views of the world. The cloistered colonnades of this old Saracenic palace reveal views even to the plains of Paestum. There are rare mosaics and fragments of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... celebrated cities. They composed most of the provinces known to the ancients west of the Euphrates, and together formed an empire in comparison with which the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchies, and even the Grecian conquests, were vastly inferior. The Saracenic conquests in the Middle Ages were not to be compared with these, and the great empires of Charlemagne and Napoleon could be included in less than half the limits. What a proud position it was to be a Roman emperor, whose will was the law over the whole civilized world! Well may the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to them, with reference to minor variations in construction or differences in power, they may all be reduced to two classes, viz. great slings and great crossbows. And this is equally true of all the three great branches of mediaeval civilisation—European, Saracenic, and Chinese. To the first class belonged the Trebuchet and Mangonel; to the second, the Winch-Arblast (Arbalete ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Charlemagne, the school of Salerno thought so highly of Sage that they originated the dictum quoted above of Saracenic old pharmacy, but they wisely added a ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... accomplishments displaying considerable talent, such as painting, and taking impressions from the antique in electrotype. He was good enough to offer me some of his casts, with a few coins from his museum of antiquities; two engravings from which, illustrating the Punic and Saracenic periods of the history of Sardinia, will appear in future pages, together with one copied from a unique coin of the Roman age, preserved in the Royal Museum ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... was the future of western European civilization settled there, but that of North and South America as well. Had Saracenic civilization come to dominate Europe, the Koran might have been taught to- day in the theological schools of Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Valparaiso, and the Christian religion been the possession only of the Greek and Russian churches, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... canals shall connect it with Europe. The city of palaces and government offices, hotels and pavilions, mosques and colleges, kiosks and squares, bazars and markets, pleasure grounds and orchards, adorned with all the graceful charms which Saracenic architecture had borrowed from the Byzantines, lay couched upon the banks of the Dijlah-Hiddekel under a sky of marvellous purity and in a climate which makes mere life a "Kayf"—the luxury of tranquil enjoyment. It was surrounded by far extending suburbs, like Rusafah on the Eastern ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... founded and endowed the college adjoining. The interior of the church is in some parts gaudy, and there is a silver rail of some value. The ceiling is of cedar, richly carved, and reminds me of some of the old churches at Venice, which present a style half Gothic half Saracenic. Near the church a public garden has lately been formed, and some curious exotic trees ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... and there is no reason to suppose that Lord Bacon was acquainted with the works of the Friar. The Rev. Charles Forster, in his Mahometanism Unveiled, a work of some learning, but more extravagance, after speaking of Roger Bacon as "strictly and properly an experimentalist of the Saracenic school," goes indeed so far as to assert that he "was the undoubted, though unowned, original when his great namesake drew the materials of his famous experimental system." (Vol. II. pp. 312-317.) But the resemblances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... despotic yoke. But success enervated the victorious conquerors of the East, the empire of the Caliphs was broken up, and great changes took place even in those lands where the doctrines of the Koran prevailed. Mohammed perpetuated a religion, but not an empire. Different Saracenic chieftains revolted from the "Father of the Faithful," and established separate kingdoms, or viceroyalties, nearly independent of the acknowledged successors of Mohammed. The Saracenic empire was ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... vaulted, circular, and highly embossed roof, of purple, scarlet, and gold. In the very first style of Saracenic architecture. See the Hall of the Ambassadors in Alhambra, and many other chambers in that ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Saracens, Frederick, the first ruler of the modern type who sat upon a throne, had early accustomed himself to a thoroughly objective treatment of affairs. His acquaintance with the internal condition and administration of the Saracenic States was close and intimate; and the mortal struggle in which he was engaged with the Papacy compelled him, no less than his adversaries, to bring into the field all the resources at his command. Frederick's measures (especially after the year 1231) are aimed at the complete ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... no conqueror, they have brought no captive arts or literature home, they have undergone no conversion in mass, they have been taught by no commerce, by no international relationship; but they have in the course of centuries slowly soaked or trickled, if I may use the words, through the Saracenic populations with which they came in contact, and after being nationally lost to the world, as far as history goes, for long periods and through different countries, eventually they have come to the face of day with that degree of civilization which they at present possess, and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... more open to outside influences, and for this reason freer in its institutions. The rugged western division had come more completely under the yoke of feudalism, having close affinity in sympathy, and some relation in blood, with the Greek, Roman, Saracenic, and Teutonic race-elements in France and Spain. The communal administration of the eastern slope, however, prevailed eventually in the western as well, and the differences of origin, wealth, and occupation, though at times the occasion of intestine discord, were as nothing compared ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... together, as if to be manned by bowmen, while in not a few places there are the remains of matting between the courses. At the highest part we found another carefully cemented Sehrij, or underground cistern, with two sharp-topped arches divided by a tall column, Saracenic certainly and not Doric:[EN125] above it a circular aperture, arched round with the finest bricks, serves to lighten the superstructure. It communicates to the north with a Hammm, whose plan is easily traced by the double flues and earthenware ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... original of which is in Manchester. The device is like No. 4. of those of CLERICUS (No. 3. p. 44.); but two circles of inscription extend round the central device (the Grapes of Escol), in characters which are supposed to be Saracenic. The inner inscription is five times, the outer seven times, repeated in the round. I see by the Archaeological Journal, No. 23, for Sept. 1849 (pp.295-6.), that at the meeting of Archaeological Institute, on the 1st June last, Mr. Octavius Morgan, M.P., exhibited a ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... the Mohammedan conquest in India that architecture received a new impulse from the Saracenic influence. Then arose the mosques, minarets, and palaces which are a wonder for their magnificence, and in which are seen the influence of Greek art as well as that of India. There is an Oriental splendor in these palaces and mosques which has called out the admiration of critics, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... would pass up it; it all settled in the room itself; and the people excused themselves on the ground that it had never been tried before. Probably it was a novelty imported to the place by some of the people who had been employed by Europeans in Jerusalem; and yet I have always found that the old Saracenic houses of the Effendis in Jerusalem have all of them chimneys; and the word for chimney is well ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... not unprecedented in the history of the world. When it befell a great united empire, enervated by long years of unwarlike habits among its chief citizens, it entailed ruin, but ruin deferred through centuries, thanks to the provision made beforehand by a great general and statesman. The Saracenic and Turkish invasions, on the contrary, after generations of advance, were first checked, and then rolled back; for they fell upon peoples, disunited indeed by internal discords and strife, like the ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... blocks of stone with mouldings and sculpture wrought into the modern buildings. In the neighbourhood are seen the walls of an edifice apparently Roman, as also the ruins of two small towers which may with equal certainty be traced to the age of Saracenic domination. Souf can boast of nearly five hundred inhabitants, all rigid Mohammedans, and remarkable for ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... landed and where he was received with a salute of thirty-one guns, had been filled that morning by the elite of Burman society, fifteen hundred in number, and the address of welcome had drawn from the viceroy a fitting response. All Rangoon was a wonder of decoration. Arches with Saracenic domes built by the Moslems, pagodalike structures built by the Buddhists, Parsee towers, and Hindu temples, appeared at many street-crossings, and one long avenue was lined on either side with elevated rows ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... points out the remarkable analogy that marks the Hebrew race as descendants of Isaac and the Arab race as the descendants of Ishmael, from whom sprung the Saracenic people. These are the only two races that have gone on in their purity from their beginning. They intermarry only among themselves and have, alike, the same customs and habits as their fathers. The sculptured ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino |
