Maghrebian art produced its most sublime works in the 14th and 15th centuries. When the Christians forced the Arabs out of Spain, the Andalusian civilisation sought refuge in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, where its literary and artistic traditions were not completely wiped out by violent events. Following the reclamation of Spain by Christians, the Mudejar style, an Islamic-influenced artistic tradition used by the Christians, persisted for a long time.
The anarchy that split Algeria for a long time had a negative impact on the conservation of the nation’s buildings. In Morocco, however, owing to a fairly stable and sustainable government, these traditions were partly preserved. Finally, notwithstanding the unique regime that replaced the overthrown Hafsid dynasty, Tunisia saw the burgeoning of an Islamic art in the 16th and 17th centuries, a style which, while lacking in absolute purity from a traditional perspective, nevertheless produced beautiful works and attractive monuments.
In the Maghreb, as in Syro-Egyptian architecture, the principal monument is the mosque; initially made of lateral naves, like the mosques in Amrou and Tulun, Maghreb mosques in Tlemcen and Mansurah were afterwards constructed in an original style. Early mosques in Algeria, Tunisia, Spain and Morocco have parallel naves like those of Amrou, Ibn Tulun and EL-Hakem in Cairo. They are rather “typical,” considering that they are designed to respond to specific needs. Muslims usually pray facing the mihrab, which 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
