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Mariam Rosser-Owen
Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 2RL, UK
e-mail: m.rosserowen@vam.ac.uk
Abstract
Traditionally, art historians have viewed the art of medieval Morocco through the lens
of Islamic Iberia, which is regarded as the culturally superior center and model for the
region. However, more recent studies are beginning to show that, rather than Moroccan
patrons and artisans passively absorbing an Andalusi model, the rulers of the Almoravid
and Almohad regimes were adopting aspects of this model in very deliberate ways.
These studies suggest that Andalusi works of art were part of a conscious appropriation
of styles as well as material in a very physical sense, which were imbued by the Moroccan
dynasties with a significance relating to the legitimacy of their rule. This paper focuses
on the way in which Andalusi architectural and other, mainly marble, material was
deployed in Moroccan architecture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Rather than
reusing locally available material, this monumental (and extremely heavy) material was
gathered in al-Andalus, at the ruined monuments of the Andalusi Umayyad caliphs, and
transported over great distances to the imperial capitals at Fez and Marrakesh. Here this
Umayyad spolia was deployed in key locations in the mosques and palaces constructed
as the architectural manifestations of the Almoravids’ and Almohads’ new political
power. Most frequently, this spolia consisted of marble capitals in the distinctive, dynas-
tic style developed by the Andalusi caliphs for their palace at Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ. But
together with other Andalusi imports, such as the magnificent minbars made in
Córdoba for the Qarawiyyīn mosque and Almoravid mosque at Marrakesh, these physi-
cal symbols of al-Andalus in Morocco conveyed a clear message that the Almoravids
and, later, the Almohads had taken up the mantle of rule in the Islamic West.
Keywords
Introduction
“It is not in Morocco that the clue to Moroccan art is to be sought.”1 So stated
Edith Wharton (1862-1937), the American novelist and Francophile, who trav-
elled in Morocco for a month in 1917, under the protection of General Hubert
Lyautey (1854-1934), the first Resident-General of the French Protectorate
(1912-1956). Three years later she published her impressions of the country in
the gloriously supercilious In Morocco.2 Though not an art historian, she met
and conversed with many of the specialists employed by the French
Protectorate to rescue and restore the ruinous gems of Moroccan architecture,3
and was therefore reporting a prevailing view that all Morocco’s cultural
achievements were solely the result of external influences. While Wharton is
particularly succinct, this view still holds sway: art historians until today have
viewed the art of the medieval Maghrib through the lens of al-Andalus, which
is seen as the imperial center and thereby cultural model for the region. Studies
of the Almoravids and Almohads—the Berber dynasties which united al-
Andalus and North Africa from the mid-eleventh to mid-thirteenth centu-
ries—have tended to focus on their impact within the Iberian Peninsula itself;
or, if they have considered North Africa, it has been with an implicit (and occa-
sionally explicit) presumption of the simple exportation from al-Andalus of
artistic styles, even artisans. A recent article on the possible Almoravid sources
for the Cappella Palatina ceiling in Palermo, for example, describes muqarnaṣ
(architectural decoration based on stacked geometric prisms) as the “latest
Hispano-Moresque fashion;”4 but there is no evidence that the use of muqarnaṣ
in al-Andalus pre-dated its appearance in the vaults of the Qarawiyyīn mosque
1 The quote in the title is borrowed from Patrice Cressier and Magdalena Cantero Sosa,
“Diffusion et remploi des chapiteaux omeyyades après la chute du califat de Cordoue.
Politique architecturale et architecture politique,” in 6e Colloque d’Afrique du Nord.
Productions et exportations africaines: actualités archéologiques. L’Afrique du Nord antique et
médiévale, ed. Pol Trousset (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1995), 159-175.
2 Edith Wharton, In Morocco (New York, NY, 1920; reissued London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks,
2004), 199.
3 Discussing the Marinid madrasas, she wrote, “These exquisite . . . buildings . . . have all fallen
into a state of sordid disrepair. The Moroccan Arab . . . has, like all Orientals, an invincible
repugnance to repairing and restoring, and one after another the frail exposed Arab struc-
tures . . . are crumbling into ruin. Happily the French Government has at last been asked to
intervene, and all over Morocco the Medersas are being repaired with skill and discretion.”
Wharton, In Morocco, 33.
4 David Knipp, “Almoravid Sources for the Wooden Ceiling in the Nave of the Cappella Palatina
in Palermo,” in Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo: Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen, ed. Thomas
Dittelbach (Künzelsau: Swiridorff Verlag, 2011), 571-578 at 573.
5 “The art of Muslim Spain was imported in its entirety for the most important works.” See
Henri Terrasse, La Mosquée al-Qaraouiyin à Fés: avec une étude de Gaston Deverdun sur les
inscriptions historiques de la mosquée (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1968), 19.
6 “There, Andalusi art achieved the heights of ornamental art”: Henri Terrasse, “La Mosquée
d’Al-Qarawiyin à Fès et l’Art des Almoravides,” Ars Orientalis 2 (1957), 135-147; p. 145.
7 Robert Hillenbrand, “Introduction,” in Islamic Architecture in North Africa, ed. Derek Hill and
Lucien Golvin (London: Faber and Faber, 1976), 70.
8 In addition to the specific references given in the following footnotes, an important recent
work on all aspects of Almohad history and culture is Patrice Cressier, Maribel Fierro and
Luis Molina eds., Los almohades: problemas y perspectivas, 2 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas, 2005). The proceedings of the University of Cambridge project
“Political Legitimacy in the Islamic West” are eagerly anticipated: Amira K. Bennison, ed., The
Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming spring 2014).
9 See, for example, Maribel Fierro, “Las genealogías de ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, primer califa almo-
hade,” Al-Qantara 24 (2003), 77-108.
10 Amira K. Bennison, “The Almohads and the Qurʿān of ʿUthmān: the Legacy of the
Umayyads of Córdoba in the Twelfth Century Maghrib,” Al-Masaq 19, no. 2 (2007), 131-154;
Pascal Buresi, “Une Relique Almohade: l’utilisation du Coran de la Grande Mosquée de
Cordoue (attribué à ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān [644‒656]),” in Lieux de cultes: aires votives, tem-
ples, églises, mosquées. IXe colloque international sur l’histoire et l’archéologie de l’Afrique du
Nord antique et médiévale, Tripoli, 19‒25 février 2005 (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008), 273-280;
Travis Zadeh, “From Drops of Blood: Charisma and Political Legitimacy in the translatio
of the ʿUthmānic Codex of al-Andalus,” Journal of Arabic Literature 39 (2008), 321-346.
11 Évariste Lévi-Provençal, “Le titre souverain des Almoravides et sa légitimation par le cali-
fat Abasside,” Arabica 2 (1955), 265-280.
12 María Jesús Viguera Molins, “Ceremonias y símbolos soberanos en al-Andalus. Notas
sobre la época almohade,” in Casas y Palacios de al-Andalus. Siglos XII y XIII, ed. Julio
Navarro Palazón (Granada: El Legado Andalusí, 1995), 105-115.
13 Amira K. Bennison, “Power and the City in the Islamic West from the Umayyads to the
Almohads,” in Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World: The Urban Impact of Religion, State
and Society, eds. Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne (London: Routledge, 2007),
65-95.
14 Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and
Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 233-52; p. 233.
A useful introductory piece by the same author is Dale Kinney, “Spolia in Medieval Art
and Architecture,” in Oxford Art Online, available online at http://wwww.oxfordartonline.
com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T2089402 (accessed 7 June 2012).
However, transporting this material was not something done lightly. Córdoba
and Marrakesh are some 800 km apart (Figure 1), and judging from the his-
torical sources, it could take the Almohad caliph up to three months to travel
between the two cities.18 The Almohad court was itinerant, dividing its time
between the capitals of its empire, and these texts describe the caliph travel-
ling in state with all the ceremonial paraphernalia of court and army, often
making long stops en route, at both coasts, and at the Andalusi capital, Seville.19
From Córdoba, the cargo would probably have been shipped by river along the
Guadalquivir, via Seville, to the coast, across the Straits of Gibraltar and along
the Moroccan coastline to one of the country’s Atlantic ports, possibly Salé.20
Here, the cargo would have to proceed overland by pack animal, through the
mountainous terrain of the Middle Atlas, to Marrakesh, located 150 km east of
nation, the profound decadence, loss even, of the technique of carving stone and mar-
ble continued”). Leopoldo Torres Balbás, Arte Almohade. Arte Nazarí. Arte Mudéjar. Ars
Hispaniae IV (Madrid: Editorial Plus Ultra, 1949), 51-2. These statements are made in the
context of the development of a new type of engaged column and capital formed from
plaster, which is an innovation in Almoravid architecture of the early twelfth century,
though the technique was fully developed under the Almohads, who used more than 400
of them in the Kutubiyya mosque in Marrakesh (Torres Balbás, Arte Almohade, 51‒52).
Nevertheless, the Almohads did carve fresh capitals from stone, marble and alabaster, as
we know from a few key examples (mainly from contexts within the Iberian Peninsula,
admittedly), such as the Patio de Banderas at the Alcázar in Seville, probably dating from
the 1190s, and the Castillejo de Monteagudo in Murcia, the stronghold of Ibn Mardanīsh
who held out against the Almohad invasion of al-Andalus until 1172; see Rafael Cómez
Ramos, “Capiteles hispanomusulmanes de los siglos XII y XIII en Sevilla,” in El último siglo
de la Sevilla islámica 1147‒1248, ed. Magdalena Valor Piechotta (Seville: Universidad de
Sevilla; Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 1996), 307-319.
18 On the itinerancy of the Almohad court, see Maribel Fierro, “Algunas reflexiones sobre
el poder itinerante almohade,” e-Spania: Revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques
médiévales et modernes (online journal), 8 (December 2009), available online at http://
e-spania.revues.org/18653 (accessed 15 September 2013).
19 Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Historia política del imperio almohade, originally published
Tetuan, 1956; facsimile edition with preliminary study by Emilio Molina López and
Vicente Carlos Navarro Oltra, 2 vols. (Granada: University of Granada, 2000), 249-50,
describes the journey of Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (r. 1163-1184) from Marrakesh to Córdoba in
1171, which took a total of three months and five days.
20 The most common itinerary for crossing the Straits of Gibraltar seems to have been
departing from Alcázar Seguir/Qaṣr al-Maṣmuda (present-day Ksar el-Seghir) on the
North African side and landing at Tarifa on the Andalusi side (see, for example, Huici
Miranda, Historia política del imperio almohade, 345). However, it was also possible to sail
along the Atlantic coast: after Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s official proclamation as caliph in Seville
in 1184, “thirty galleys brought him back to Rabat” (Huici Miranda, Historia política del
imperio almohade, 314-316).
Figure 1 Map of Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula © Copyright 2004, UNA designers,
Amsterdam. All rights reserved. Taken from: V. Boele, Morocco: 5000 Years of
Culture (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers). © Copyright 2005 by Vincent Boele. This
figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be
accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.
the Atlantic coast. Bearing in mind that each one of these capitals would have
weighed about 50 kg,21 and each column perhaps three or four times as much,
it would have taken nothing short of a ruler’s fiat to mobilize this activity on
21 The two tenth-century Andalusi capitals on display in the V&A’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic
Art weigh 42 kg (A.55-1925, available online at http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O86588/
so large a scale as it was practiced. That the Almoravids and Almohad rulers
troubled to bring heavy architectural material all the way from al-Andalus, and
install it in key locations in their mosques and palaces, indicates that these
objects expressed more than a mere desire to adopt an Andalusi style.
The physical appropriation and meaningful reuse of architectural spo-
lia should be considered in the light of the complex gifting and re-gifting of
objects with important pedigrees, such as frequently encountered among
the contents of the Fāṭimid Treasury listed in the Book of Gifts and Rarities.22
Examples also exist from al-Andalus. In the ninth century, the Umayyad amir
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II (r. 822-852) acquired a famous royal necklace known as “the
serpent,” which was said to have belonged to Zubayda, mother of the ʿAbbasid
caliph al-Amīn (r. 809-813), apparently lost during the civil war with his brother
al-Maʾmūn (r. 813-833).23 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān gave this necklace to his concubine,
al-Shifāʾ, and it must have remained in the Andalusi royal collection for hun-
dreds of years, since somehow it came into the hands of Isabella, the Catholic
Queen, who is known to have worn it.24 Another example which uniquely
commemorates its genealogy of illustrious royal owners in an inscription is
the “Eleanor Vase,” a Sasanian rock crystal flask from the St Denis Treasury and
now in the Louvre.25 The jewelled mounts added by Abbot Suger bear a cryptic
verse inscription which can be unravelled as a genealogy of gifts, tracing all
the way back to al-Andalus: ʿImād al-Dawla, Taifa ruler of Zaragoza (r. 1110-30)
gave the vase to William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, presumably when the two men
fought together at the Battle of Cutanda in 1120, as allies against the Almoravid
takeover. William was the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine who inherited
the vase and presented it to her husband, Louis VII of France, as a wedding gift
when they married in 1137; Louis gave it to Suger in the 1140s, who donated it
“to the Saints.” It entered his treasury at St Denis where it remained until the
18th century. It is unknown how the Sasanian vase made its way to al-Andalus
in the first place, but like the necklace of al-Shifāʾ, it probably had an earlier
pedigree of royal associations, which is what made it such an appropriate gift
Until very recently, the study of spolia has concentrated almost exclusively on
the reuse of Roman architectural material, mainly decorative elements carved
from marble or porphyry, in the late antique or early medieval architecture of
Christian Europe.26 Surprisingly, very little critical work has been done on the
use of spolia in Islamic art, though this was widespread from its very begin-
nings, starting with such important Umayyad monuments as the Dome of the
Rock or the Great Mosque of Damascus.27 In earlier discourses on Islamic art,
such reuse was seen as a triumphalist symbol of Islam’s conquest of formerly
Christian territories. It can also be understood as a practical need for building
materials, to meet the grand scale of construction of identifiably Islamic mon-
26 This is not intended to be a comprehensive bibliography on spolia, but some key stud-
ies include: Beat Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus
Ideology,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), 103-109; Jaś Elsner, “From the Culture of Spolia
to the Culture of Relics: the Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms,”
Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000), 149-184; Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past,
Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden:
Brill, 2009); Maria Fabricius Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation. Prolegomena to
an Understanding of Spolia in Early Christian Rome (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider,
2003); Dale Kinney, “Rape or Restitution of the Past? Interpreting Spolia,” in The Art of
Interpreting, ed. S. C. Scott (Papers in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University,
IX) (University Park, PA, 1995), 53-67; Bryan Ward-Perkins, “Re-using the Architectural
Legacy of the Past, entre idéologie et pragmatisme,” in The Idea and the Ideal of the Town
between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gian Pietro Brogiolo and Bryan
Ward-Perkins (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 225-244.
27 See Finbarr Barry Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an
Umayyad Visual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Margaret Graves, “Spolia and Islamic
buildings,” Oxford Art Online, available online at http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/
subscriber/article/grove/art/T2082281 (accessed 7 June 2012). There is increasing inter-
est among art historians in the use of pre-Islamic spolia in Egypt, especially under the
Mamlūks, though there have so far been few published studies dedicated to this. One
exception is Marianne Barrucand, “Les chapiteaux de remploi de la mosquée al-Azhar
et l’émergence d’un type de chapiteau médiévale en Egypte,” Annales Islamologiques 36
(2002), 37-75.
28 Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 43.
29 Finbarr Barry Flood, “Appropriation as Inscription: Making History in the First Friday
Mosque of Delhi,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from
Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (Farnham: Ashgate,
2011), 121-147. Flood has also written on spolia in an early Islamic context, see Finbarr Barry
Flood, “The Medieval Trophy as an Art Historical Trope: Coptic and Byzantine ‘Altars’
in Islamic Contexts,” Muqarnas 18 (2001), 41-72; idem, “Image Against Nature: Spolia as
Apotropaia in Byzantium and the Dar al-Islam,” The Medieval History Journal 9 (2006),
143-166.
30 Flood, “The Medieval Trophy,” 41.
31 Georges Marçais, L’Architecture Musulmane d’Occident: Tunisie, Algérie, Maroc, Espagne et
Sicile (Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1954), 8.
Figure 2 The prayer hall at the Great Mosque of Kairouan ( founded 724, remodeled after 862)
(author’s photo). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this
journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/
journals/15700674.
Figure 3 Late antique capital with a lion’s head reused at the northwest entrance to the Great
Mosque of Córdoba (built 785-7 AD) (author’s photo). This figure is published in
colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://
booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.
the first Andalusi caliph, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. from 912, as caliph 929-961),
freshly carved marble capitals imitated the reused late antique units.35
Both these examples of spoliation in the two most important early Islamic
foundations in the Islamic West involved the appropriation of material from
another culture (Roman or early Christian sites), either out of a practical need
for building materials, or to make a visual statement about the supremacy of
the new regime, or both. However, the deployment of Andalusi spolia by the
Almoravids and Almohads cannot really be said to appropriate materials from
an alien culture, nor to be triumphalist in nature. As I will argue, both these
Berber regimes paid homage to their Umayyad forebears, and their use of this
architectural material was inspired by a desire to associate themselves both
physically and visually with the rulers of the western caliphate.
The impetus for the Almoravid and Almohad use of Andalusi spolia is
perhaps more closely related to the “self-spoliating” of the Great Mosque
of Córdoba by the caliph al-Ḥakam II (r. 961-976), when he extended the
mosque to the south in the 960s.36 Rather than destroy the mosque’s court-
yard and minaret, which had only recently been completed by his predeces-
sor, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III,37 he chose to move the qibla wall that had been built
between 836 and 848 by his ancestor ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II (r. 818-852).38 However,
al-Ḥakam carefully preserved the decorative elements of the old mihrab and
had them moved to the new. These included the four columns that “supported
the entrance arch,” including such elegantly carved marble capitals that they
were once thought to be Roman.39 Preserving and transporting these columns
and capitals to the new mihrab was an act of respect and continuity, symbolic
of al-Ḥakam’s Umayyad lineage and consequently his right to build in the
dynastic monument. I believe it also holds the key to understanding the prac-
tice of the Almoravids and Almohads in later centuries.
It was not until the Andalusi state was organized on a truly imperial scale
under the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III that the infrastructure and artisanal
skill existed to quarry and carve fresh marble on a massive scale. This newly
cut stone furnished the official buildings of the palace-city, Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ,
constructed three kilometers outside Córdoba.40 Nevertheless, it is notewor-
thy that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān also obtained marble columns from far afield, includ-
ing Ifrīqiya and Byzantium. Some of this marble seems to have been desired
for its particular aesthetic qualities, since Ibn Ḥayyān specifically relates that
the white marble was sourced from Almería, the variegated from Málaga, and
the rose and green from Sfax and Carthage. Later and therefore less reliable
sources, such as Ibn ʿIdhārī and al-Maqqarī, talk of columns being sent as a
gift from the Byzantine Emperor, and number the total imported columns in
the thousands.41 Some of this marble may have been freshly quarried in these
locales, or extracted as spolia; but if the latter, this has not been identified
among the marbles recovered through excavation at Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ over
the last hundred years. An intriguing group of reused Roman objects that has
been recovered, however, include statues and various late antique sarcoph-
agi, reused as fountain basins in the centre of courtyards in the palace zone.
Susana Calvo Capilla has linked this phenomenon with deliberate attempts
by the first two caliphs to encourage a palatial culture of studying the ancient
sciences.42 By casting themselves as the sponsors of philosophical knowl-
edge and the transmission of classical texts into Arabic, the Andalusi caliphs
adopted a role that the ʿAbbasids had first promoted, and thereby laid claim to
be legitimate caliphs, in opposition to the Fatimids and their contemporaries
in Iraq. The reuse of Roman art and architecture—perhaps including marble
columns sourced from around the Mediterranean—physically manifested this
40 See Antonio Vallejo Triano, La Ciudad califal de Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ: arqueología de su exca-
vación (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2010).
41 Ecker, The Córdoban Caliphal Experiment, 77-81.
42 Susana Calvo Capilla, “Madīnat al-Zahra’ y la observación del tiempo: el renacer de
la Antigüedad Clásica en la Córdoba del siglo X,” Anales de Historia del Arte 22 (2012),
Núm. Especial (II): V Jornadas Complutenses de Arte Medieval 711: El Arte entre la Hégira
y el Califato Omeya de al-Andalus, 131-160. An English version is forthcoming: “Reuse of
Classical Antiquity in the Palace of Madinat al-Zahra’ and its Role in the Construction of
Caliphal Legitimacy,” Muqarnas 31 (2014).
43 Muḥammad ibn ʿIdhārī, Al-Bayān al-mughrib, tome troisième. Histoire de l’Espagne musul-
mane au XIe siècle. Texte arabe publié pour la première fois d’après un manuscrit de Fès, ed.
É variste Lévi-Provençal (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1930), 61; Muḥammad ibn ʿIdhārī, La Caída
del califato de Córdoba y los Reyes de Taifas (al-Bayān al-Mugrib), translated and anno-
tated by Felipe Maíllo Salgado (Salamanca: Estudios Árabes e Islámicos, Universidad de
Salamanca, 1993), 64.
44 Jesús Zanón, Topografía de Córdoba almohade a través de las fuentes árabes (Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1989), 22, para. 1.4.4.
45 Muḥammad al-Idrīsī, Opus Geographicum, fasc. 5, eds. E. Cerulli et al (Napoli: Istituto
Universitario Orientale di Napoli; Roma: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente,
1975), 579-580; Zanón, Topografía, 78.
Figure 4 Capital in the distinctive Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ style, in the Upper Basilical Building,
Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ (author’s photo). This figure is published in colour in the online
edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.
brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.
to Tarragona.46 However, this wider dispersal and the reasons for its reuse are
not the focus of this essay, which is more interested in the less well-explored
case study of medieval Morocco.
Turning then to the North African context, the northwestern region of
Africa had been the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitania, and was thus
abundantly supplied with pre-Islamic monuments from which building mate-
rials could be sourced. The most famous Roman site is Volubilis, close to Fez,
which had been the administrative capital of the Roman province until the
third century AD, though it flourished in the first century when it grew to be a
massive city covering an area of forty hectares.47 Its temples, fora and houses
were built from local limestone. But Moroccan mosque architecture did not
develop along the same lines as other early mosques in the Islamic West,
which employed reused late antique columns and capitals arranged in a hypo-
style format. Instead, Moroccan mosques employed brick piers rather than
marble columns, more in the manner of the mosques at Samarra or, closer
to the region, the mosque of Ibn Ṭūlūn in Cairo.48 From what can be ascer-
tained through archaeology of the first phase of the Qarawiyyīn mosque in Fez
(founded 857), this also employed piers.49 The use of piers has been attributed
to influence from the Islamic East,50 though I believe this relies too heavily on
an outmoded center/periphery model rather than attempting to explain North
African architectural traditions on their own terms. It may owe more to the fact
that brick was a traditional local building material.51
The first Berber dynasty to engage in the symbolic reuse of Andalusi spolia was
the Almoravids, a confederation of Sanhaja tribes that ruled the western
Maghrib and al-Andalus from 1056 to 1147.52 The phenomenon can be specifi-
cally associated with ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf (r. 1106-1143), son of the conqueror Yūsuf ibn
Tāshfīn (r. 1061-1106) and the first to rule over an established Almoravid state.
The modern historiography depicts ʿAlī as more refined than his warrior father,
and more susceptible to artistic influence from al-Andalus: one article describes
him as “Andalusi in heart and spirit.”53 He is said to have been the son of an
Iberian Christian concubine, which was not a norm among the Berbers but
reflected Umayyad practice (all three caliphs of Córdoba had been born of
Christian concubines).54 This was another of the ways in which the Almoravids
followed the Umayyad model of rule when they conquered the Iberian
Peninsula, as a way of establishing their legitimacy to rule the Islamic West.
Their deliberate policy of “Andalusianizing” themselves extended to other
aspects of the material culture that was created at this time, such as an appar-
ently antiquarian taste for Umayyad motifs on the textiles woven under
Almoravid patronage. For example, some motifs employed on silks produced
at Almería in the mid-twelfth century—such as the affronted peacocks on the
cope associated with Robert of Anjou, now in the church of St Sernin in
Toulouse—are so close to the carvings of Umayyad ivories from 200 years
before, that it is tempting to believe that luxury objects from the caliphal
period were owned and prized by the Almoravids, who used them as
models.55
To celebrate the power and extent of Almoravid rule, ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf founded
monuments from Marrakesh to Tlemcen in Algeria, where the Great Mosque
52 The tribes comprising this Sanhaja federation were the Lamtuna, Masufa and Lamta. On
the history of the Almoravids, see for example, María Jesús Viguera Molins, ed. El retro-
ceso territorial de al-Andalus: Almorávides y Almohades: siglos XI al XIII. Historia de España
Menéndez Pidal 8 (2), ed. María Jesús Viguera Molins (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1997);
Viguera Molins, “Al-Andalus and the Maghrib, from the 5th/11th Century to the Fall of the
Almoravids,” in The Western Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Maribel
Fierro, New Cambridge History of Islam 2 (2010), 21-47.
53 Gaston Deverdun and Charles Allain, “Le minaret almoravide de la mosquée Ben Youssef
à Marrakech,” Hespéris-Tamuda 1 (1961), 129-133; p. 129.
54 D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty: Race, Genealogy and Acculturation in
al-Andalus,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004), 65‒92.
55 This suggestion is discussed in Rosser-Owen, Islamic Arts from Spain, 36‒7, and deserves
further investigation.
Figure 5 Qubbat al-Baʿdiyyīn, Marrakesh, circa 1125, exterior view (author’s photo). This figure
is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.
Figure 6 Andalusi capital found during excavations at Qubbat al-Baʿdiyyīn (after Meunié,
Terrasse and Deverdun, Nouvelles Recherches, ph. 90).
Figure 7 Qubbat al-Baʿdiyyīn, Marrakesh, circa 1125, interior view of the plaster-decorated
vault (author’s photo). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this
journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/
journals/15700674.
name on their coinage and pronouncing it during the Friday khutba. In 1092,
Yūsuf ibn Tāshfīn was formally recognized by the ʿAbbasid caliph as the true
ruler of the Maghrib, and received the title amīr al-muslimīn.62 However, it is
important to understand this acknowledgement of ʿAbbasid suzerainty in the
context of the Almoravids’ bitter opposition to the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimids, who were
their North African neighbours and rivals; furthermore, by this date, there was
no alternative for the Sunni Muslim ruler, since the institution of the western
caliphate had been abolished in 1031.
An important aspect of the Qubbat al-Baʿdiyyīn’s decoration which Tabbaa
does not mention is its interior vault, constructed on the basis of intersecting
ribs whose interstices are filled with floral ornament in deeply carved plas-
ter (Figure 7). This element owes more to Córdoba than Baghdad, as Christian
Ewert observed: “casi todos los elementos estructurales y decorativos se deri-
van de la herencia califal cordobesa. La cúpula de nervios refleja un esquema
Figure 8 Plan of the Qarawiyyīn Mosque, Fez, showing the position of spoliated capitals
(numbers) (after Cressier & Cantero Sosa, “Diffusion et remploi,” fig. 2, reproduced
with kind permission).
cordobés puro.”63 The leaf motifs which comprise this floral decoration clearly
derive from the Umayyad and Taifa art of al-Andalus. They are also very close
stylistically to another important Almoravid construction of this period:
between 1134 and 1143, ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf’s artisans remodeled the mihrab zone of
the Qarawiyyīn mosque in Fez. Founded in the mid-ninth century, this was
(and is) the most venerated religious building in Morocco, and was honoured
as such by the patronage of all successive ruling dynasties, including the
Andalusi Umayyads. Echoing the work undertaken by al-Ḥakam II at Córdoba,
ʿAlī ordered the destruction of the old qibla wall, extending the mosque to the
south and creating a new mihrab zone (Figure 8).64 This allowed him to indel-
ibly stamp an Almoravid identity on to this important monument. Following
the Córdoba model, the wider central nave was heightened, and several domes
63 “Almost all the structural and decorative elements were derived from the inheritance of
caliphal Córdoba. The ribbed dome reflects a purely Córdoban scheme”: Christian Ewert,
“Precedentes de la arquitectura nazarí: la arquitectura de al-Andalus y su exportación al
Norte de África hasta el siglo XII,” in Arte islámico en Granada: Propuesta para un Museo
de la Alhambra (Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra, 1995), 55-61 at 60.
64 Terrasse, La Mosquée al-Qaraouiyin à Fés.
were inserted, decorated with muqarnaṣ and elaborate floral designs carved
from plaster. Here the combination is more developed than at the Qubbat
al-Baʿdiyyīn of some twenty years earlier, but even a brief comparison with
the dome in front of the mihrab at Córdoba shows that both Almoravid domes
followed the Córdoban model. The new mihrab at Qarawiyyīn did so too, in
taking the form of a chamber-like room with ancillary spaces including stor-
age space for a minbar on wheels, and surrounded on three sides by bands
of Kufic inscriptions (whose content has, unfortunately, not been recorded to
date). Most significant for the present discussion is the deployment of four
Andalusi capitals on columns supporting the mihrab arch (Figure 9). The two
on the right side of the mihrab are of the Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ type, while the two
on the left may be ninth-century: perhaps accidentally, this evokes the ninth-
century capitals reused by al-Ḥakam II in the Córdoba mihrab. This combina-
tion of structural and decorative elements indicates a deliberate remodeling of
the mosque on the Córdoba model, down to the use of columns and capitals
in the mihrab, though in this case they have not been brought from another
location within the mosque, but from an Andalusi building many hundreds of
kilometres away.
These are not the only Andalusi capitals reused at the Qarawiyyīn Mosque:
eight more, together with columns also brought from al-Andalus, are used in
key places in the Jāmīʿ al-Janāʾiz, the oratory in which prayers were said over
the dead as they were prepared for burial. Such structures were not common in
the medieval Islamic West, and it is possible that this was an Almoravid inno-
vation; certainly, the Qarawiyyīn example is the oldest extant such mosque in
Morocco.65 Andalusi capitals are used in three doorways that communicate
with the qibla zone of the Qarawiyyīn mosque (Figures 8 and 10); they are also
seen in the oratory’s small qubbah, a domed space open on three sides and
supported by columns crowned with Andalusi capitals. The Jāmīʿ al-Janāʾiz was
another of ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf’s additions to the Qarawiyyīn. Its decoration is so care-
fully executed and luxurious, employing so many Andalusi columns and capi-
tals, which were otherwise reserved for the mihrab itself, that the decoration
alone prompted Henri Terrasse to suggest that the Almoravids considered the
prayer for the dead to be the most important of the pious acts enjoined upon
all Muslims, after the five daily prayers.66 The Almoravid way of praying for
Figure 9 Andalusi capitals used at the entrance to the mihrab at the Qarawiyyīn Mosque, Fez.
(A) Capitals at left-hand side of mihrab, (B) capitals at right-hand side of mihrab
(author’s photos). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this
journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/
journals/15700674.
Figure 10 Doorway supported by Andalusi columns and capitals, connecting the Mosque of the
Dead with the qibla wall, Qarawiyyīn Mosque (after Terrasse, La Mosquée
al-Qaraouiyin à Fés, pl. 10).
67 Leon Halevi has discussed how in Islamic law, saying a prayer over someone before
placing them in the grave signifies their inclusion within the religious community, as
the persons conducting the funeral prayer in effect intercede with God on behalf of the
deceased, to seek divine forgiveness when the deceased is judged in the grave. See Leon
Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 2006), 186, 226-7.
68 On which see Christian Ewert and Jens-Peter Wisshak, “Forschungen zu almohadischen
Moschee: III, Die Qasba-Moschee in Marrakesch,” Madrider Mitteilungen 28 (1987), 179-211.
69 Tabbaa, Transformation of Islamic Art, 118.
70 Lévi-Provençal, “Le titre souverain des Almoravides.”
Figure 11 Andalusi capital found during excavations of the Dār al-Ḥajar, the Almoravid palace
in Marrakesh (after Meunié, Terrasse and Deverdun, Recherches Archéologiques,
pl. 52).
The Almoravids’ deliberate association with the Umayyads and with Córdoba
as their dynastic capital may have been enhanced by the employment of
Andalusi craftsmen on ʿAlī’s architectural projects; however, the evidence for
this is largely circumstantial, based on style and the fact that some craftsmen’s
signatures in the Qarawiyyīn domes appear to be Andalusi names.71 However,
one group of objects that indisputably involved Andalusi craftsmen were the
two wooden minbars that ʿAlī commissioned for the key monuments he
founded or aggrandized in Morocco’s political and spiritual capitals: the con-
gregational mosque of Marrakesh, and the Qarawiyyīn mosque at Fez. The
more famous of the two is that now known as the “Kutubiyya minbar,” whose
inscription records that it was made in Córdoba and begun in the year 1137.72
It must have been installed in ʿAlī’s mosque before 1147, when Marrakesh fell to
the Almohads and the mosque shut up and abandoned.73 As the Ḥulal al-
Mawshiya informs us, the Almohad general, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (r. 1130-1163), moved
the “monumental minbar, that was made in al-Andalus, of extreme perfection,”
to the regime’s newly-founded congregational mosque, the Kutubiyya.74 After
the mosque itself, the minbar is the most important physical symbol of the
presence of Islam, since the leader of the local community stands there to pro-
claim his allegiance to God, the Prophet and his caliph, to preach to the assem-
bled congregation every Friday, and to make political proclamations. As such,
the seizure of ʿAlī’s minbar in this way made it a genuine spoil of war, and
symbol of Almohad victory over the Almoravids. Significantly, though, the text
privileges the fact that it was made in al-Andalus over anything else.
The less well-known minbar still in situ in the Qarawiyyīn mosque must
have been made as a pair to the “Kutubiyya minbar,” since they were con-
structed at the same time and there are close stylistic comparisons between
the two.75 An inscription on the Qarawiyyīn minbar tells us it was completed
in Shaʿbān 538/February 1144. It would therefore have been installed in the
mosque soon after the Almoravids completed remodeling the mihrab zone
in 1143. Contemporary historians compared both minbars to that commis-
sioned for the Great Mosque of Córdoba by the caliph al-Ḥakam II in 965.76
This indicates that contemporary viewers associated these impressive items
of furniture with Umayyad al-Andalus, and that their deployment achieved a
conceptual and visual association of the Almoravids with their Umayyad fore-
bears. In the fourteenth-century, the Algerian preacher and statesman, Shams
al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Marzūq (1310/12-1379), even mentioned that “a number
of fragments from the Córdoba minbar have appeared [in the Maghrib],” a tan-
talizing suggestion that parts of that famous object had actually been brought
to Morocco by the Almoravids or Almohads.77
72 Jonathan M. Bloom ed., The Minbar from the Kutubiyya Mosque (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1998), 3.
73 Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Colección de crónicas árabes de la reconquista, vol. I. Al-Hulal
al-mawshiyya: Crónica árabe de las dinastías almoravide, almohade y benimerín (traduc-
ción española) (Tetuan: Editora Marroquí, 1951), 171.
74 Huici Miranda, Al-Hulal al-Mawshiyya, 171.
75 Terrasse, “La Mosquée d’Al-Qarawiyin à Fès,” figs. 21-22.
76 Stefano Carboni, “The Historical and Artistic Significance of the Minbar from the
Kutubiyya Mosque,” in Bloom, The Minbar, 50.
77 Bloom, The Minbar, 4, n. 10. Nevertheless, Ambrosio de Morales (1513‒1591) stated that the
minbar survived in the Córdoba Mosque until the late sixteenth century: “There was [in
the cathedral] . . . a carriage on four wheels, made of wood, exquisitely ornamented, and
Figure 12 Marble basin made for the ʿĀmirid regent of al-Andalus, ‘Abd al-Malik ibn
al-Manṣūr, datable 1004-1007, now in the Musée Dar Si Sa‘id, Marrakesh (photo
courtesy of Sharon Talmor Sall). This figure is published in colour in the online
edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.
brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.
It is likely that at the same time as the minbars were transported, another piece
of Andalusi spolia was moved to Morocco (Figure 12). This was a large marble
basin, weighing an estimated 1200 kg,78 which belongs to a group of basins that
were made for the ʿĀmirid dynasty, the regents who ruled al-Andalus at the
provided with seven steps. It was destroyed a few years ago—I do not know why—and
this was the fate of such a monument of antiquity.” Its wooden carcass was seen in 1615
by Martín de Roa: “Only the empty structure remains while most of the rest is lost due
to shameful negligence.” Perhaps the minbar—650 years old by then—had already been
partially fragmented at an earlier date, so that Ibn Marzūq’s anecdote may be true. See
Carboni, “The Historical and Artistic Significance,” 50, citing Félix Hernández Jiménez, “El
almimbar móvil del siglo X de la Mezquita de Córdoba,” Al-Andalus 24 (1959), 381-399; pp.
387-388.
78 Marble weighs 2500 kg per m3. My thanks to Charlotte Hubbard of the Victoria and Albert
Museum’s Sculpture Conservation studio for supplying this formula. The basin’s pub-
lished dimensions are 1.55 m (L) × 84 cm (W) × 71 cm (H): see Jean Gallotti, “Sur un cuve de
marbre datant du Khalifat de Cordoue (991-1008 J.C.),” Hespéris 3 (1923), 363-391; Mariam
Rosser-Owen, “Poems in Stone: the Iconography of ‘Amirid Poetry and its ‘Petrification’ on
‘Amirid Art,” in Revisiting Al-Andalus: Perspectives on the Material Culture of Islamic Iberia
and Beyond, ed. Glaire D. Anderson and Mariam Rosser-Owen (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 83-98.
turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries.79 The basin’s inscription contains the
information that it was made for the second regent of the dynasty, ʿAbd al-
Malik, and it can be dated by his titulature to 1004-1007. The basins probably
furnished courtyards or gardens at the ʿĀmirid palace-city, al-Madīnat
al-Zāhira, outside Córdoba. However, this basin was found in Marrakesh. It was
discovered in 1923, serving as the trough of a fountain and half-built into a wall
of the ablutions hall of the Ibn Yūsuf madrasa.80 Only the floral side was visi-
ble, and on excavation the eagles on the proper left side and the decoration of
the original front of the basin were found to have been mutilated. The Ibn
Yūsuf madrasa was established in the fourteenth century by the Marinids (the
rulers of Morocco from 1217 to 1465), though it was built in its present state in
1564. So how did this basin, made in Córdoba in the early eleventh century,
turn up in Marrakesh five hundred years later? Although considerably younger,
the Ibn Yūsuf madrasa was founded adjacent to the mosque built by ʿAlī ibn
Yūsuf in the 1120s. It seems likely, therefore, that ʿAlī brought the basin from the
ruined palaces of Córdoba, in a shipment with the minbars and the marble
columns and capitals that he used to adorn his mosques and palaces. Given its
proximity to his mosque, perhaps he even used the basin in his ablutions com-
plex, along with the Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ style capital that was found during exca-
vations there. As Gallotti noted, the original figural decoration on two of the
basin’s sides was deliberately erased, presumably to render it acceptable for use
in a religious space. Hundreds of years later, long after ʿAlī’s mosque had fallen
into neglect and ruin, the basin was spoliated again, by the Marinids or Saadians,
perhaps this time because of its perceived association with ʿAlī himself.
Like the Almoravids before them, the Almohads used association with the
Andalusi Umayyads and their model of rule to assert their legitimacy as the
true rulers of the Islamic West.81 After the Almohad conquest of Marrakesh in
1147, their leader ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (r. 1130-1163) immediately began a “reform of
the mosques,” demolishing the Almoravid mosques which he considered to
be incorrectly oriented towards Mecca—as well as symbolic of their deviant
practice of Islam—and building new ones.82 Some sources state that ʿAbd
al-Muʾmin also demolished the Almoravid palace, the Dār al-Ḥajar, and built
the Kutubiyya mosque on top of it,83 though other authors state that he and his
successor Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (r. 1163-1184) took the Dār al-Ḥajar as their royal
residence. Certainly it was located next to the Kutubiyya mosque, for it could
be connected to it via a covered passageway, or sābāṭ,84 as had—again—been
the model at Córdoba: a sābāṭ was built to link the Great Mosque with the
Umayyad palace by the amir ʿAbd Allāh (r. 888-912).
At the Kutubiyya mosque, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin continued the practice of using
Andalusi columns and capitals in the mihrab (Figure 13). It is possible that
he took these from destroyed Almoravid buildings, though as we shall see
the Almohads also had a taste for Umayyad cultural heritage. Moreover, the
Almohads adopted a new arrangement for the capitals, of two on each inte-
rior side of the mihrab (as before), with an additional capital flanking either
side at the front (Figure 14), so that a total of six columns and capitals were
used to decorate each mihrab. This arrangement was also used at the Qasbah
mosque in Marrakesh, built between 1185 and 1188 under the caliphate of Abū
Yūsuf Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr (r. 1184-1199).85 These extra columns and capitals have
no structural function, and it seems to be an innovation purely in order to use
more spoliated elements. At the Qasbah mosque, Andalusi column bases are
also used in the mihrab; these are not known from other Almoravid or Almohad
examples, where the columns simply contact with the floor, and may therefore
have been brought from al-Andalus specifically for the purpose.86
The Almohads were great builders, especially during the period 1150-1200
when they were establishing their rule. Ideology motivated their building
activity, as a means of promoting the supremacy of their new regime. The
Almohads used large amounts of stone in their constructions, so as to build
for perpetuity; this is still dramatically clear in the city gates they constructed
at Marrakesh and Rabat, which survive to this day. The historian al-Marrakūshī
(b. 1185) said of the caliph al-Manṣūr that “he was always concerned with
Figure 13 Andalusi capitals in the mihrab zone of the Kutubiyya Mosque, Marrakesh (after
Basset and Terrasse, Sanctuaires et forteresses almohades, pl. xxvif ).
construction, and during his whole life did not refrain from restoring a pal-
ace or founding a city.”87 Other anecdotes suggest that he was something of
an antiquarian: while campaigning against the Normans in Ifrīqiya in 1187, he
visited the mosque of Kairouan, and lamented the poor condition in which he
found it. He wrote to his governors in al-Andalus, and “ordered them to send
urgently carpets and ornamentation to redecorate it as new.”88 It is also known
that ʿAbd al-Muʾmin himself had great respect for the old Umayyad capital,
and ordered in 1162 that the capital of al-Andalus be moved back to Córdoba.
His two sons, then governors of al-Andalus, installed themselves there and
ordered the restoration of the city’s palaces and official buildings, including
the Great Mosque, under the supervision of the architect Aḥmad ibn Baso,
who later worked on the Almohad mosque in Seville.89 Nevertheless, when
87 Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Colección de crónicas árabes de la reconquista, vol. IV: Kitab
al-mu‘jib fi talkhīs akhbar al-Maghrib (Lo admirable en el resumen de las noticias del
magrib) [al-Marrakushi] (Tetuan: Editora Marroquí, 1955), 243.
88 Huici Miranda, Historia política del imperio almohade, 334-335.
89 Heather Ecker, “The Great Mosque of Córdoba in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,”
Muqarnas 20 (2003), 113-141 at 117.
Figure 14 Arrangement of Andalusi spolia in the mihrab zone at the Qasbah mosque,
Marrakesh (after Basset and Terrasse, Sanctuaires et forteresses almohades,
fig. 108).
ʿAbd al-Muʾmin died only a few months later, his successor Yūsuf moved the
Andalusi capital to Seville.
The most famous extant Almohad monuments are their minarets (Figure 15).
Their square tower form was consciously adopted in homage to the pair of
Umayyad minarets constructed by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III in the 950s, at the Great
Mosque of Córdoba and the Qarawiyyīn Mosque in Fez; in both cases, these
were markers of Umayyad supremacy in the western Maghrib.90 Almohad
minarets are extremely tall and splendid and as such were potent symbols of
the victory of the new regime. The Kutubiyya minaret was the earliest, com-
pleted by ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s death in 1163, when work on the mosque ceased.91
As well as its form, its decoration—including its crown of golden orbs, to which
I shall return—alludes to Córdoba, though the Kutubiyya minaret was about
twice the height of the Umayyad towers. Likewise, ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf’s mosque at
Marrakesh was graced with a minaret that has been estimated to have stood
about 40 m high, though it does not survive above the level of its foundations,
and may have been deliberately dismantled at some point in history.92 At 77 m
high, the Kutubiyya minaret would have towered above ʿAlī’s minaret, and may
have been built so tall specifically to outdo the Almoravid tower. As we will see,
Almohad minarets were understood in their own day as victory towers, and
they were chosen as “sites of spolia,” where large numbers of Andalusi capitals
were employed to further enhance their symbolic power.
The Kutubiyya minaret set the model for all later Almohad minarets, which
led some Arab historians to confuse the chronology and attribute them all
to the reign of the third Almohad caliph, al-Manṣūr. The historian, Ibn Abī
Zarʿ (d.1340/41), writing from the perspective of 150 years later, under the
Marinids, says in his Rawḍ al-Qirṭās, “Before travelling to al-Andalus to begin
the expedition of Alarcos, [al-Manṣūr] ordered the construction of the Qasbah
of Marrakesh and the mosque adjacent to it with its minaret, the minaret of
the Kutubiyya mosque, the city of Ribat al-Fath, in the land of Salé, and the
mosque of Hassan . . .”.93 Such texts set the foundation of the city of Rabat
and the key Moroccan minarets firmly within the context of al-Manṣūr’s
crushing victory over the Castilian king Alfonso VIII (r. 1158-1214) at Alarcos
in 1195: though the chronology is inaccurate when compared to other more
Figure 15 The Giralda, completed 1198, originally the minaret of the Almohad mosque in Seville
(author’s photo). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this
journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/
journals/15700674.
Figure 16 Andalusi capital in the south façade of the Hassan Mosque, Rabat, 1191-1199 (after
Caillé, La mosquée de Hassan, pl. 48a).
It seems that soon after receiving the bay‘a in Seville in 1184, al-Manṣūr ordered
work to proceed on the minaret, though it stalled again shortly afterwards, to
recommence in 1188/9.
In 1190, al-Manṣūr returned to al-Andalus, and during his stay he visited
Córdoba.97 Most significantly, we learn from Ibn ʿIdhārī (d. circa 1295) that he
also visited the site of the Umayyad palace-city, Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ, already a
crumbling ruin, “with the intention of meditating on the monuments of past
97 Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Colección de crónicas árabes de la reconquista, vol. II. Al-Bayan
al-mugrib fi ijtisar ajbar muluk al-andalus wa al-magrib por Ibn ʿIdari al-Marrakushi: Los
Almohades, tomo I (traducción Española) (Tetuan: Editora Marroquí, 1953), 158-159.
[al-Manṣūr] ordered the removal of the statue (which stood) above its
gate, and it so happened that a hurricane started to blow at dusk of that
same day, causing some damage to the campaign tent . . . The ignorant
people of Córdoba spread the rumour that this [wind] was due to the
statue from al-Zaḥrāʾ, since it was a talisman against breakages.
It is likely that the statue mentioned in this passage was itself a reused Roman
sculpture of Venus, like that which is known to have stood above the entrance
gate to the bridge across the Guadalquivir at Córdoba, where it would have had
a similar apotropaic function.99 Following the hitherto accepted discourse of
the Almohads’ puritanism and iconoclasm, it may be possible that al-Manṣūr
found such a figural, not to mention semi-nude female, statue offensive to his
strict religious observance. Alternatively, we might speculate that al-Manṣūr
could have ordered the statue to be taken down because he wanted it as a sou-
venir of his visit to Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ. And if he ordered the statue to be
removed, how many columns and capitals might he and his entourage also
have come away with?
Immediately after this visit to al-Zaḥrāʾ, al-Manṣūr returned to Seville, where
his minaret was still being constructed, though it was not actually completed
for another eight years. According to Torres Balbás, ninety-two Umayyad mar-
ble capitals were reused in the Giralda’s façade.100 The minaret’s internal ramp
is lit by windows on all four sides, which are flanked by blind arches, all of whose
decoration springs from Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ-style capitals on top of reused mar-
ble columns, also brought from Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ or Umayyad monuments in
or around Seville. At the same period—the 1190s—the Almohads were remod-
eling the palace adjacent to the mosque, of which only scant remains survive
today in their original appearance, mainly the so-called Patio del Yeso, named
after the openwork plaster decoration above the arches.101 These arches are
again supported on Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ-type columns and capitals. There are
clear stylistic connections between the Alcázar and the Giralda, especially in
the lace-like designs seen above the columns in both, a pattern known as sebka.
These stylistic similarities paired with reused Umayyad columns and capitals
at both sites suggests a coherent artistic program in the official structures built
at Seville under al-Manṣūr’s patronage, and which significantly occurred soon
after his nostalgic visit to the site of Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ itself.
Al-Manṣūr remained at Seville for nearly three years after his victory
at Alarcos, and only left for Marrakesh a few weeks after the minaret was
completed—it is tempting to think that he deliberately waited in Seville until
it was finished.102 In March 1198, he and various Almohad dignitaries attended
the ceremonial crowning of the Giralda with a great pole of iron on which
were mounted enormous golden orbs, in the style of the minarets at the
Córdoba and Kutubiyya mosques. This was clearly an event of some signifi-
cance, as Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt (fl. circa 1194) dedicates a detailed description to
the raising of these orbs, including details of the dignitaries who attended the
ceremony.103 These golden globes, glinting in the sunshine, at the summit of
this enormous minaret would have rendered it visible for miles around, illumi-
nating the Almohad capital like a beacon. Indeed, Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt says that
the minaret “soared into the air and towered in the sky and could be seen by
the naked eye a day’s journey from Seville.”104 It was also al-Manṣūr’s ultimate
victory monument, not only memorializing his crushing defeat of the Christians
at Alarcos—which he also commemorated by taking a throne name meaning
“the Victorious”—but also symbolizing the supremacy of the Almohads in the
Islamic West. The extent of their victory was emphasized both by the scale of
his construction and the quantity of spolia brought from Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ.
This made a visual connection with the golden age of the Umayyad caliphate,
but also signified that it was past glory, and that the Almohads were its inheri-
tors. As statements of power, the appropriation of Umayyad spolia had a
101 For a recent study of some of the Almohad spaces in the Alcázar in Seville, which are
increasingly being revealed through ongoing excavations, see Ignacio González Cavero,
“La Sala de la Justicia en el Alcázar de Sevilla. Un ámbito protocolario islámico y su trans-
formación bajo dominio cristiano,” Goya: Revista de Arte 337 (Oct.-Dec. 2011), 279-293.
102 Huici Miranda, Historia política del imperio almohade, 379.
103 Ibn Sāḥib al-Ṣalat, Tārīkh al-mann, 484.
104 Ibn Sāḥib al-Ṣalat, Tārīkh al-mann, 480.
resounding impact on later dynasties: under the Marinids, al-Manṣūr was still
considered “the most illustrious of all the Almohad kings.”105
Conclusion
Both the Almoravid and Almohad rulers deployed Andalusi spolia in key loca-
tions in their religious and secular architecture, in order to visualize the “con-
tinuity of [their] caliphate with that of the Umayyads,”106 and thereby to
legitimize their rule over both al-Andalus and the Maghrib. As Berbers rather
than Arabs, this was part of a deliberate strategy that also included elements
such as the titulature adopted by Yūsuf ibn Tāshfīn or the kinship ties to Iberian
Christian women, which created an immediate connection between the
Almoravid rulers and the Andalusi Umayyad caliphs. Under ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf,
Andalusi architectural spolia were collected from the ruined caliphal monu-
ments of Córdoba and Seville, and brought to Fez and Marrakesh where they
were placed in symbolic and visible locations in the imperial monuments that
he founded between the 1120s and 1140s. The congregational mosque at Fez, the
Qarawiyyīn, was remodeled in evocation of the extension added to the Great
Mosque of Córdoba by the Umayyad caliph, al-Ḥakam II. Alongside the heavy
marble columns and capitals traveled at least one marble basin, which was
perhaps adapted by having the figurative elements of its decoration removed,
and was then installed in the ablutions complex of ʿAlī’s mosque at Marrakesh.
At the same time, ʿAlī commissioned works of luxury art from al-Andalus: silk
textiles were woven in Almería with his names and titles,107 and two lavishly
decorated wooden minbars were carved in Córdoba for the congregational
mosques of his two imperial capitals. The minbars were understood in their
own day and in subsequent periods to pay homage to the famous minbar that
al-Ḥakam II had commissioned for the Great Mosque of Córdoba. Physically
and stylistically connected to Córdoba and the Umayyads, these minbars, tex-
tiles and marble spolia were part of an Andalusianizing trend, by which the
Almoravids consciously appropriated elements of the Umayyads’ construction
of power, and used them as legitimating devices.
Following this precedent, the Almohads intensified the use of Andalusi spo-
lia in their mosque constructions, adopting it as another tool in their ideo-
105 Ambrosio Huici Miranda, El Cartás. Noticia de los reyes del Mogreb e historia de la ciudad
de Fez (Valencia, 1918), 297.
106 Cressier and Cantero Sosa, “Diffusion et remploi,” 174.
107 Cristina Partearroyo, “Tejidos andalusíes,” Artigrama 22 (2007), 371-419; 387-388, fig. 6.
logically motivated architecture. Some of this spolia may have been taken by
the Almohads as booty from Almoravid mosques which they destroyed, in
the same way as they transferred the minbar from ʿAlī’s mosque in Marrakesh
to the Kutubiyya mosque, making it an authentic “spoil” of war. But they
must also have been aware of the Córdoban origins of this material, due to
ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s great respect for the Umayyad capital, and the “collecting
tendency” of his successors, revealed through al-Manṣūr’s nostalgic visit to
Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ and the huge number of caliphal capitals which stud the
façade of his minaret in Seville. Again, the physical material parallels the
appropriation of Umayyad symbols and ceremonial (the Qurʾān of ʿUthmān),
and the construction of an Arab genealogy that associated ʿAbd al-Muʾmin
with the Prophet Muḥammad by claiming to descend from the tribe of Qays
ʿAylān.108 These messages of power clearly worked, as contemporary and later
writers continued to see Almohad minarets as victory towers, symbolic of their
military successes over the Christians in Spain, another facet of their claim to
be the legitimate inheritors of the Umayyad caliphate.
I have not attempted to make this paper an exhaustive study of all the exam-
ples of appropriation and reuse of Andalusi cultural heritage in which the
Almoravid and Almohad rulers engaged. Another example which could have
been included here are the bronze bells brought from churches in Christian
Iberia and converted into lamps to adorn key Moroccan mosques:109 more
work is needed on this phenomenon, as on many other aspects of the material
culture of the medieval Maghrib. Rather, my aim has been to use the intrigu-
ing phenomenon of Andalusi spolia in Moroccan architecture as a means to
explore an aspect of the way the Berber regimes looked to Umayyad Córdoba
to legitimize their rule in the Islamic West, complementing the work of other
scholars who have focused on the political and religious histories of these
regimes. This is offered as one case study within a broader framework in which
Islamic art historians are encouraged to develop a more critical approach to
the study of the art and architecture of medieval North Africa.
As a final note, it is interesting to point out that this phenomenon did not
stop with the Almohads: we have already noted how the ʿĀmirid marble basin
from ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf’s ablutions complex at Marrakesh was removed by the
108 Fierro, “Las genealogías de ʿAbd al-Muʾmin.” As Fierro points out, the Qaysi genealogy
included the Quraysh, the tribe to which the Prophet Muḥammad belonged, and accord-
ing to the political theory of the time, to be a legitimate caliph necessitated being a
Qurayshi.
109 On which see Jerrilynn D. Dodds, ed., Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (New York, NY:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), cat. nos. 55 and 58.
Marinids or the Saadians to the site of the Ibn Yūsuf madrasa. But another
intriguing example exists from the Marinid period (Figure 17): a funerary stele
commemorating the Marinid sultan Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (d. 1307) is carved on
a piece of marble whose other face preserves part of a Latin inscription dat-
ing from the third or fourth century AD, in the name of one Aulus Caecina
Tacitus, likely to have been the governor of Baetica—the fertile Roman
province in the south of Hispania, which the Muslims made their capital
(Figure 18).110 However, the narrow sides of the stele also bear traces of deco-
ration: though one side is badly damaged, the other shows that this slab was
clearly once part of an Umayyad fountain basin, stylistically related to the
group of basins made for the ʿĀmirid regents (Figure 19). A large block of mar-
ble carved with an official Roman inscription must have been reused in the
tenth century to create another fountain basin for palatial gardens in or near
Córdoba. This basin was later brought to Morocco, perhaps at the same time
as that from the Ibn Yūsuf madrasa—though, since the stele was installed in
the Chella, the Marinid necropolis outside Rabat, it is tempting to associate
this second basin with the Almohad al-Manṣūr’s aggrandizement of Rabat
and his symbolic visit to Madīnat al-Zaḥrāʾ. In the fourteenth century, a piece
of marble perhaps associated with al-Manṣūr—or still, conceivably, with his
Umayyad antecedents—was chosen to create a fittingly royal memorial for
one of the Marinid sultans.111
Acknowledgements
The research for this paper has been ongoing for several years, and I am grate-
ful to have had the opportunity to present it at different stages: at the confer-
ence “Intermediaries: Translating Cultures in the Medieval and Early Modern
Hispanic World,” King’s College, London, in March 2006, where I am very grate-
ful to the late and much lamented María Rosa Menocal for her comments and
all subsequent help; as lectures to the Royal Asiatic Society, London, in
December 2006, and the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies,
110 Vincent Boele, ed., Morocco: 5000 Years of Culture (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2005), 63.
111 Another example of “self-spoliating”—that is, by later Moroccan regimes of the luxuri-
ous architectural furnishings of an earlier Moroccan building—is explored in the arti-
cle by Nadia Erzini and Stephen Vernoit, “The Marble Spolia from the Badi‘ Palace in
Marrakesh,” in Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Craft and Text.
Essays Presented to James W. Allan, ed. Venetia Porter and Mariam Rosser-Owen (London:
IB Tauris, 2012), 317-334.
Figure 17 Funerary stele commemorating the Marinid sultan, Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (d. 1307),
Archaeological Museum in Rabat (author’s photo). This figure is published in colour
in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjourn-
als.brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.
Figure 18 Latin inscription in the name of Aulus Caecina Tacitus on the reverse side of the
Marinid stele (author’s photo). This figure is published in colour in the online edition
of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/
content/journals/15700674.
Figure 19 One of the narrow sides of the Marinid stele, showing remains of Umayyad carving
(photo courtesy of Glaire Anderson). This figure is published in colour in the online
edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.
brillonline.com/content/journals/15700674.