Ben Salah Mosque is a historical mosque located in Marrakech, Morocco. It was built between 1318-1321 AD during the reign of Marinid Sultan Abu Sa’id Uthman. Between 1669-1671, the Alaouite Sultan Al-Rashid Ben Ali Al-Charif built a school next to the mosque, it is surrounded by a two-story building with many rooms.
The mosque looks to have barely changed throughout the years despite countless restorations. A narrow but not particularly deep rectangular courtyard with arcades surrounding it and a tiny basin or fountain in the middle can be found inside. The main area of the prayer hall is located beyond the courtyard and is bounded by two rows of arches that create nine aisles. The general design is a “T” shape, with the aisle of arches leading to the mihrab (a niche that designates the direction of prayer) being broader than the aisles next to it.
A small curiosity uncommon in this style of mosque is the fact that the eastern and westernmost aisles to the sides of the prayer hall are cut off and do not reach all the way to the north (except for another Marinid mosque in Chellah).
With the exception of the mihrab in the centre of the qibla wall, the inside is sparsely decorated (indicating the direction of prayer). The direction of the qibla (and, by implication, the orientation of the entire mosque) is significantly different from that of the “modern” qibla; it faces south-southeast, whereas the current qibla in Morocco is virtually due east. This is true of many mosques from western North Africa of the time (towards Mecca). The minaret is situated on the mosque’s western side, and it has three entrances. The mosque’s northwest corner contains the tomb of Muhammad Ben Salah.
The mosque’s most prominent and elaborately ornamented feature is the minaret. It is derived from Almohad forms, which came to define Moroccan-Andalusian architecture, like the Marinid architectural style as a whole. It appears to be partly based on the Almohad minaret of the Kasbah Mosque in Marrakech. Its upper facades are decorated with a darj-wa-ktaf or sebka pattern, which resembles palmettes or fleur-de-lys shapes. The patterns on the north and south sides of the building differ slightly from those on the east and west sides. Large polylobed arch patterns dominate the lower façade. All of these designs, like the Kasbah Mosque, are sculpted in brick and set against a field of turquoise-green faience tiles.
There is no tile frieze towards the top of the tower (in contrast to the Almohad minarets, nevertheless). Three windows with horseshoe-shaped arches puncture each façade, and the placement of these windows matches the polylobed arch patterns around them. The minaret’s top, which includes its upper lantern, is framed by merlons that are common in Moroccan architecture.
The Chrabliyin Mosque in Fez, another Marinid structure from the same era, quickly copied this general arrangement of embellishment, making the Ben Salah minaret an example of the transition between Almohad models and later buildings that came to be considered characteristic in Morocco.
The madrasa, which the Alaouite sultan Moulay Rashid constructed, is situated to the east of and behind the mosque. A two-story gallery encircles the building’s central courtyard, which is encircled by a number of rooms.
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