Note 47 — Chapter II · TELL AḤMAR TO BUSEIRAH Feb. 21—March 7

Just as the first mosque in Cairo, that of ’Amr, was built entirely on columns taken from earlier buildings, Muḳaddasî describes one of the Raḳḳah mosques as ; it would be satisfactory to imagine that he referred to the columned arcades of the mosque round the square minaret, but the phrase cannot reasonably be twisted into that or any other meaning. The square minaret is the ancient Syrian tower type; Thiersch has recently published an exhaustive study of it in his Pharos.