Art of Islam. Gaston Migeon
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is oriented in the direction of Mecca. They stand or kneel in parallel lines along the mihrab wall. Consequently, the mihrab wall must be very long and the mosque’s naves must run parallel to it. However, when there is not enough space along the length of the mosque, it is expanded laterally, as one can notice in the mosques of Córdoba, Tunis and Sfax. It was during this period that the square form, which became traditional in Maghrebian minarets, appeared. During the first period, until about the 10th century, ancient materials were frequently used: Greco-Roman, Byzantine or even Punic columns, bases, and capitals are found in Tunisian mosques and in the Great Mosque of Córdoba. A distinction, however, must be made between the plans of Maghreb and Egyptian mosques. The central nave, which is visibly larger in Aghlabite mosques in Tunisia (where it so clearly stands out) and can be seen in Córdoba and Fez (in the Qarawiyin Mosque), did not exist previous to the 10th century either in Egypt or Syria.
Later, although the ephemeral empire of the Hammadits erected at the Kalaa of the Beni Hammads and in Bejaïa monuments – which historians acclaimed as marvellous – it is especially in Morocco and Spain that architecture developed at a tremendous rate and to an extraordinary degree. The layout of mosques there has not changed. In Tunisia, where the Hafsids encouraged and protected the arts, Andalusian artists decorated the capital and its surroundings. It was not until the 16th century, when the protectorate of the Grand Master appointed Turkish governors to the regencies of Algiers and Tunis, that some of them constructed mosques according to the Hanefit example. The resulting structures had octagonal minarets, like the mosques of Hamouda Pacha and of Sidi ben Ziad in Tunis, or domes, like the Sidi Mahrez mosque in the same city. Almost all the great mosques in the Maghreb were built on huge cisterns where rain water was collected from the terraces.
Unlike the madrasas in Cairo, the collegial, cruciform mosques are virtually absent from the Maghreb. Here, the Maliki rite had always been promoted to the exclusion of the three others; the Hanafi could be found only among Turkish families, which were few in Tunisia and Algeria. The school, or madrasa, was thus reduced to a little mosque comprising a lecture room and rooms for students. If this kind of madrasa is attached to a sacred tomb, it is called a zaouia, and may undergo relatively large expansions. An example is the Kankah of Cairo. By extension, the madrasas where the members of the same religious fraternal society meet are also called zaouia. After all, these buildings with their portico courtyards are simply a kind of expanded home that opens onto the mosque, with the tomb of the founder and lecture rooms on the ground floor, and student rooms on the first floor. The mosques of these little monasteries were also constructed following a parallel nave plan. Although relatively rare, it was only from the 16th century, when the Beys declared themselves vassals of Turkish sultans, that some of these little mosques adopted the multiple dome design.
From the early centuries following the Hijra, the palaces of the sovereigns were certainly very lavishly designed. In this regard, we can only refer to the descriptions of historians, since to this day we know little about those of Madinah al-Zahra near Córdoba, those around Kairouan, those in Béjaïa and Kala. However, the mosques of the 13th century and later are known from extant monuments, perhaps the most famous of which is that of the kings of Granada in Alhambra, which is particularly remarkable in general design, lavishness and beauty. In my opinion, it is only in India that Muslim sovereigns managed to outshine the splendour of Andalusian palaces, especially in the extravagance of the materials used. In his history of the Berbers, Ibn Khaldun presents a description of detached pavilions with raised domes, kiosks, aqueducts, fountains, basins forming large reflecting pools (a Sassanian tradition which was introduced to the West via Mesopotamia), pavilions of marble columns whose walls were coated in marble or faience mosaic. The arabesque-styled and sculpted ceiling perfected this awe-inspiring ornamentation.
Moroccan historians also left us many descriptions of palace complexes. An example is the El-Bedi palace built in Marrakech by El Mansour el-Dzehebi, where onyx, precious marble, gold, silver, faience, gold-plated ceilings, cut out and painted stucco and beautiful tapestries were used to give the building unparalleled splendour. Gardens decorated with fountains, basins, pools and silver statues flanked this masterpiece of Islamic architecture. The luxury of the feasts at the palace reflected that of the architecture, and meals were served in gold-plated dinnerware from Malaga (Hispano-Arab faience) or Valencia, in dinnerware from Turkey (faience from Kütahya), and in gold- and silver-plated cups. The sultans took this luxury even to their camps: during his travels, according to the author of Nozhet el-Hadi, El Mansur Dzehebi carried a pavilion made of boards that were nailed and bound to each other through rings, clamps and stunningly silver-coated metal plates. Surrounding this pavilion and forming a kind of wall stood a partition of linen cloth with drawings that evoked a garden or an ornamented façade; within its confines were domes painted in red, black, green and white, whose lustre passed for the flowers in a parterre; the pavilion’s inside walls were decorated with magnificent sculptures and superb hanging draperies.
Courtyard of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, 836.
Kairouan.
Courtyard of the Great Mosque of Sousse, 1850.
Sousse.
Mulay Isma’il Mausoleum, 18th century.
Meknes, Morocco.
Palaces
In the cities of Kairouan and Córdoba, the magnificence of the sovereigns called for palaces as luxurious as those of Asian caliphs. We know them only from descriptions by Muslim historians. A prominent example is the one that Abd-ar-Rahman had constructed near Córdoba in 926 in honour of his favourite concubine al-Zahra. He called it Madinah al-Zahra (the City of Flowers). This magnificent residence could accommodate the caliph’s court and a guard of 12,000 horsemen. It had a fountain decorated with a golden swan in the caliph’s pavilion. He set up a statue of al-Zahra, his concubine, over the palace’s entrance.
The political change resulting from the battle of Zalaca which brought Spain under the Almoravids – Berbers from the south of Morocco – marked the end of Middle-Eastern supremacy in the area. The policy of the new Berber monarchs involved identifying and propagating small Arab states across the Maghreb that were then considered inoffensive. This change evidently had an impact on the arts, since it was from this period that the Maghrebian style became more defined and distinct from other Muslim styles. Even in independent regions such as Tlemcen, the most beautiful monuments were erected during this period.
A style unique to the Maghreb thus emerged from the independent centres of North Africa. In 1018, the Great Mosque of Algiers had horseshoe-shaped arcades, which were already slightly ogival. With the palace of the grand vizier in Fez in mind, we could compare the modern arch, barely shrunken at the base, with antiquated arches, whose overhang is so distinctive.
The Hassan Tower in Rabat (1199)
The Hassan Tower in Rabat is simple. It was unfortunately denied its crown, which was supposed to be a series of blind arcades surmounted by a row of serrated melons on top of which arose a small dome-carrying lantern on a platform, a regular feature in Maghrebian minarets. The small marble columns that supported the three arcades of advanced beam filling have disappeared. An examination of the casing of the large blind window of the second floor and the three serrated arcades below reveals that these forms are enhanced by a kind of border which, unlike the relief moulding in 14th-century Cairo monuments, is an area bounded by a deep line of engraving. Many interlaced arches, in a row or two, border the archivolt. The arches’ tympanums are decorated with symmetrical rinceaus based on a model that became conventional.
The Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech
In 1069, while the Hammadid leader, en-Nasser, was erecting monuments in Béjaïa, the Almoravids were founding Marrakech, whose fortifications still have a Byzantine aspect. The Koutoubia tower is one of the most attractive in Morocco. Its severe aspect gives it the appearance of a Roman work of art. Like the one in Rabat, it is made of stone. Characteristically similar to the two others, its bays do not match each other horizontally because they follow the rising movement of the interior ramp of the staircase. This edifice