___. Mittelalterliche Langhauskuppelkirchen Und Verwandte Typen in Oberägypten, Pp
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______. Mittelalterliche Langhauskuppelkirchen und verwandte Typen in Oberägypten, pp. 112ff. Glückstadt, 1982. PETER GROSSMANN Maqsurah A maqsurah is a secondary side room off the sanctuary in some modern Coptic churches; it is frequently linked with the sanctuary by an opening like a window in the wall. Functionally it serves as a special prayer room for women and is therefore always adorned with a representation of the Virgin, in addition to numerous other icons. Furthermore, through the wall opening mentioned, the room can also be used for the receiving of communion. Genetically the maqsurah is probably derived from the governor's box of the same name beside the mihrab in the mosque. It was introduced there at the beginning of the Umayyad period, as a precaution against attacks upon the governor. There are early examples from Cairo in the al- Azhar mosque, built in A.D. 971 (Maqrizi, 1970, Vol. 1, p. 465), and in the Ibn Tulun mosque (Maqrizi, Vol. 1, p. 466). How far there are links with corresponding structures in Byzantine architecture is so far not clear. BIBLIOGRAPHY Diez, E. "Maqsura." In Enzyklopedia des Islam, Vol. 3, pp. 394-95. Leiden, 1936. PETER GROSSMANN Naos A naos is the sanctuary, or inner room, of an ancient Greek temple or the shrine in that room in an Egyptian temple. The term is also used to refer to the area of a church in which the laity assembles. It does not include the sanctuary or the narthex. The naos can take very different forms according to the type of building. In Egypt down to the tenth century, the nave and two side aisles of a basilica with a return aisle at the western end was by far the most common form. In addition, the naos also occurred as a nave without aisles, as in the original building of the old church in DAYR ABU HINNIS, Mallawi. In the small chapels of the seventh and eighth centuries that are occasionally found annexed to the monks' dwellings in the great laura of Kellia (see hermitages 14, 16, and 20 of Qusur Izeila in Kasser, 1983), the naos has the form of two domed rooms, one behind the other. The substantially later old church of Dayr Anba Antuniyus has the same form. In the great transept basilicas of al-Ashmunayn, Abu Mina, and HAWWARIYYAH, the naos includes the transept. In churches built on a central plan, tetraconchs (see below), and four-column churches, the naos, of course, has a central plan. However, in the Church of Sitt Maryam in Dayr al-Suryan, the naos consists only of a single vaulted bay in front of the khurus. A modern Arabic term for the naos is sahn al-kanisah ("construction of the church," evidently a parallel to sahn al-masjid, or "court of the mosque"; Burmester, 1967, p. 20). BIBLIOGRAPHY Burmester, O. H. E. The Egyptian or Coptic Church. Cairo, 1967. Kasser, R. Survey archéologique des Kellia Campagne 1981. Louvain, 1983. Monneret de Villard, U. "La basilica cristiana in Egitto." In Atti del IV congresso internationale di archeologia cristiana, pp. 315- 18. Rome, 1940. Orlandos, A. K. Basilik». Athens, 1952. PETER GROSSMANN Narthex A narthex is a vestibule of a church, corresponding to the pronaos (porch) of a classical temple. The Greek word means literally "a reedlike plant." In the sixth century, Procopius of Caesarea, evidently for the first time, described the antechamber of a church as a narthex because it was small (Procopius De aedificiis 1.4.7, 5.6.23). In the West the word "narthex" was not used in.