IV
Moroccan architecture, then, is easily divided into four groups: the
fortress, the mosque, the collegiate building and the private house.
The kernel of the mosque is always the _mihrab_, or niche facing toward
the Kasbah of Mecca, where the _imam_[A] stands to say the prayer. This
arrangement, which enabled as many as possible of the faithful to kneel
facing the _mihrab_, results in a ground-plan necessarily consisting of
long aisles parallel with the wall of the _mihrab_, to which more and
more aisles are added as the number of worshippers grows. Where there
was not space to increase these lateral aisles they were lengthened at
each end. This typical plan is modified in the Moroccan mosques by a
wider transverse space, corresponding with the nave of a Christian
church, and extending across the mosque from the praying niche to the
principal door. To the right of the _mihrab_ is the _minbar_, the carved
pulpit (usually of cedar-wood incrusted with mother-of-pearl and ebony)
from which the Koran is read. In some Algerian and Egyptian mosques (and
at Cordova, for instance) the _mihrab_ is enclosed in a sort of screen
called the _maksoura_; but in Morocco this modification of the simpler
plan was apparently not adopted.
[Footnote A: The "deacon" or elder of the Moslem religion, which has no
order of priests.]
[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_
Fez--the praying-chapel in the Medersa el Attarine]
The interior construction of the mosque was no doubt usually affected by
the nearness of Roman or Byzantine ruins. M. Saladin points out that
there seem to be few instances of the use of columns made by native
builders; but it does not therefore follow that all the columns used in
the early mosques were taken from Roman temples or Christian basilicas.
The Arab invaders brought their architects and engineers with them; and
it is very possible that some of the earlier mosques were built by
prisoners or fortune-hunters from Greece or Italy or Spain.
At any rate, the column on which the arcades of the vaulting rests in
the earlier mosques, as at Tunis and Kairouan, and the mosque El
Kairouiyin at Fez, gives way later to the use of piers, foursquare, or
with flanking engaged pilasters as at Algiers and Tlemcen. The exterior
of the mosques, as a rule, is almost entirely hidden by a mushroom
growth of buildings, lanes and covered bazaars, but where the outer
walls have remained disengaged they show, as at Kairouan and Cordova,
great masses of windowless masonry pierced at intervals with majestic
gateways.
Beyond the mosque, and opening into it by many wide doors of beaten
bronze or carved cedar-wood, lies the Court of the Ablutions. The
openings in the façade were multiplied in order that, on great days, the
faithful who were not able to enter the mosque might hear the prayers
and catch a glimpse of the _mihrab_.
In a corner of the courts stands the minaret. It is the structure on
which Moslem art has played the greatest number of variations, cutting
off its angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan, and
endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives by which the
ground-plan of one story passes into that of the next. These problems of
transition, always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia,
Mesopotamia and Egypt to many different compositions and ways of
treatment, but in Morocco the minaret, till modern times, remained
steadfastly square, and proved that no other plan is so beautiful as
this simplest one of all.
Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the school-rooms, libraries
and other dependencies, which grew as the Mahometan religion prospered
and Arab culture developed.
The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque: it was the academy
where the Moslem schoolman prepared his theology and the other branches
of strange learning which, to the present day, make up the curriculum of
the Mahometan university. The medersa is an adaptation of the private
house to religious and educational ends; or, if one prefers another
analogy, it is a _fondak_ built above a miniature mosque. The
ground-plan is always the same: in the centre an arcaded court with a
fountain, on one side the long narrow praying-chapel with the _mihrab_,
on the other a classroom with the same ground-plan, and on the next
story a series of cell-like rooms for the students, opening on carved
cedar-wood balconies. This cloistered plan, where all the effect is
reserved for the interior façades about the court, lends itself to a
delicacy of detail that would be inappropriate on a street-front; and
the medersas of Fez are endlessly varied in their fanciful but never
exuberant decoration.
M. Tranchant de Lunel has pointed out (in "France-Maroc") with what a
sure sense of suitability the Merinid architects adapted this decoration
to the uses of the buildings. On the lower floor, under the cloister, is
a revêtement of marble (often alabaster) or of the almost indestructible
ceramic mosaic.[A] On the floor above, massive cedar-wood corbels ending
in monsters of almost Gothic inspiration support the fretted balconies;
and above rise stucco interfacings, placed too high up to be injured
by man, and guarded from the weather by projecting eaves.
[Footnote A: These Moroccan mosaics are called _zellijes_.]
[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_
Salé--interior court of the Medersa]
The private house, whether merchant's dwelling or chieftain's palace, is
laid out on the same lines, with the addition of the reserved quarters
for women; and what remains in Spain and Sicily of Moorish secular
architecture shows that, in the Merinid period, the play of ornament
must have been--as was natural--even greater than in the medersas.
The Arab chroniclers paint pictures of Merinid palaces, such as the
House of the Favourite at Cordova, which the soberer modern imagination
refused to accept until the medersas of Fez were revealed, and the old
decorative tradition was shown in the eighteenth century Moroccan
palaces. The descriptions given of the palaces of Fez and of Marrakech
in the preceding articles, which make it unnecessary, in so slight a
note as this, to go again into the detail of their planning and
decoration, will serve to show how gracefully the art of the mosque and
the medersa was lightened and domesticated to suit these cool chambers
and flower-filled courts.
With regard to the immense fortifications that are the most picturesque
and noticeable architectural features of Morocco, the first thing to
strike the traveller is the difficulty of discerning any difference in
the probable date of their construction until certain structural
peculiarities are examined, or the ornamental details of the great
gateways are noted. Thus the Almohad portions of the walls of Fez and
Rabat are built of stone, while later parts are of rubble; and the touch
of European influence in certain gateways of Meknez and Fez at once
situate them in the seventeenth century. But the mediaeval outline of
these great piles of masonry, and certain technicalities in their plan,
such as the disposition of the towers, alternating in the inner and
outer walls, continued unchanged throughout the different dynasties,
and this immutability of the Moroccan military architecture enables the
imagination to picture, not only what was the aspect of the fortified
cities which the Greeks built in Palestine and Syria, and the
Crusaders brought back to Europe, but even that of the far-off
Assyrio-Chaldaean strongholds to which the whole fortified architecture
of the Middle Ages in Europe seems to lead back.
[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_
Marrakech--the gate of the Portugues
