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The Koutoubia Mosque (Arabic: كتبية [kutubiyah]) is a religious building built in the twelfth century in Marrakech (Morocco) and representative of the art of Almohades.


History:


Koutoubia Mosque, the mosque or the book began in the Berber dynasty of the Almoravids in 1120, but was redesigned substantially since 1162 under the Almohad emir Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, and became one of the most Characteristic of this style. Its name comes from the fact that he was in the bazaar of merchants manuscripts.


Architecture:


The mosque of the booksellers arranged in a T This tradition has existed since the construction of the mosque of Kairouan in the ninth century, and is also in Spain. It is actually an Arabic hypostyle plan, ie with a large courtyard surrounded by a portico and a prayer room with columns. The aisles are perpendicular to the qibla wall, the center is wider and the space along the qibla wall also magnified, forming a T, hence the name. The mihrab niche is treated as a very deep, and the minaret, 69 m in height, is square in the Muslim tradition of the West.
Decoration:


The Almohad dynasty, who joined the Maliki rite, is sponsoring a more austere architecture, which reflects a certain asceticism. The Koutoubia Mosque is no exception: its simplicity, it is clear on its own. The arches can be used or passed polylobés but remain naked.


The minaret is newer (completed in 1196), and most decorated: there is an important work of interlaced arches (sebka). It is topped by three golden balls of copper, which symbolizes the earthly world, the celestial world and the world of spirits. He, among others, a model for the Giralda in Seville.


The landscape outside of the minaret is different in the four sides of the paint coating epigraphical and floral, the intertwined network of relief when intercalated paintings, pottery strip steak white on blue, often interlocking arches. It is built of sandstone quarried slate of Gueliz. Beautifully proportions: 12.80 to 69, the flashlight with height (77 m from the tip of the arrow), with an exterior wall of 2.50 m. In the center of the tower housing outside a core of six overlapping chambers. Around it, a gently sloping ramp leads to the walk. The platform is surrounded by a road protected by a fence of jagged explosion. The lantern, the top 16 m, appears as a second minaret standing at first. It is topped by a metal rod to which the four gold balls of diminishing size, larger than 6 m in diameter. They are made of gilded copper plates riveted together.


Furniture:


The mosque houses a magnificent Libreros minbar dating from 1137, another mosque in Cordova. Like most people in the West, is mobile (on wheels), composed of different types of wood, but not ivory. The bill decoration, very end, Ajour, lasted seven years. Small-arms stuck each other marking the emmarchements and taste for polychromy is remarkable.

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