Moroccan architecture reflects a rich tapestry of cultural influences, blending Berber, Islamic, Moorish, and French styles. Each ruler and culture has left a lasting legacy, evident in the diverse architectural landscape from Marrakesh to Casablanca.
Zellij tiles in Fez, Morocco
The Berber Influence
Moroccan architecture dates back to the 2nd century with the Berber Kingdom. The Berbers, indigenous to North Africa, built traditional kasbahs and fortifications in the mountains and desert. Their architectural style is characterized by imposing buildings made from pisé, or red mud clay bricks dried in the sun.
If you want to witness this ancient Moroccan architecture, head to the Atlas Mountains. Here you’ll find old Berber villages and kasbahs made with red clay bricks that make a striking contrast to the blue sky. One of the most impressive is Ait Benhaddou in Ouarzazate. Built in the 1600s, this UNESCO-listed fortified village is made of clay buildings surrounded by defensive walls. You’ll see the classic small windows on the outer walls and tall towers punctuating the skyline. Once inside, you’ll find well-preserved homes with fascinating carvings in wood and clay.
The Islamic Impact
By the 7th century, the region was conquered by Muslim Arabs, and Islam has since had the most significant impact on Moroccan architecture. Traditional Moroccan tiles, or Zellij, were introduced, with spectacular geometric tiles lining the interiors and exteriors of buildings across Morocco. The classic colours are green, blue, brown, white, and black, and you’ll spot all kinds of intricate patterns like diamonds, stars, and triangles.
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Fountains are an integral part of Islamic Moroccan architecture, representing paradise. Islamic Moroccan architecture can be seen almost everywhere, from the dazzling domes and towers to the elaborate mosques, palaces, and plazas. Some famous examples include Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, one of the largest mosques in the world. The towering minaret soars 210 metres into the sky. In Marrakesh, don’t miss the spectacular El Bahia Palace, built in the late 1800s in stunning Alaoutie designs.
The Moorish Architecture
By the 8th century, the Moors, the Islamic Berber population, were greatly influencing Moroccan architecture. The Moors occupied parts of Spain and Morocco for centuries, so aspects of Spanish architecture became entwined with Islamic and African influences.
Some distinctive Moorish influences include the white stucco facades, red-tiled roofs, and elements from Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles. To get an understanding of Moorish Moroccan architecture, be sure to visit any lush riad. These are indoor courtyards filled with greenery and a central water feature. You can also visit Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakesh. Originating in the late 12th century, the striking mosque is built from red sandstone. The Grand Mosque in Chefchaouen is another great example of Moorish Moroccan architecture. It was built in the 15th century and has an octagonal minaret.
Zellij: An Art Form
Zellij (Arabic: زليج, romanized: zillīj), also spelled zillij or zellige, is a style of mosaic tilework made from individually hand-chiseled tile pieces. The pieces were typically of different colours and fitted together to form various patterns on the basis of tessellations, most notably elaborate Islamic geometric motifs such as radiating star patterns composed of various polygons. This form of Islamic art is one of the main characteristics of architecture in the western Islamic world. It is found in the architecture of Morocco, the architecture of Algeria, early Islamic sites in Tunisia, and in the historic monuments of al-Andalus (in the Iberian Peninsula).
The word zillīj (زليج) is derived from the verb zalaja (زَلَجَ) meaning "to slide," in reference to the smooth, glazed surface of the tiles. By the 11th century, the zellij technique had reached a sophisticated level in the western Islamic world, as attested in the elaborate pavements found at the Hammadid capital, Qal'at Bani Hammad, in Algeria. Modern excavations here have uncovered a series of interlocking tiles including cross-shaped lustre-painted tiles and eight-pointed star-shaped tiles of monochrome green or turquoise.
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Zellij in Moroccan architecture
During the subsequent Almohad period, prominent bands of ceramic decoration in green and white were features on the minarets of the Kutubiyya Mosque and the Kasbah Mosque of Marrakesh. Relatively simple in design, they may have reflected artistic influences from Sanhaja Berber culture. Jonathan Bloom cites the glazed tiles on the minaret of the Kutubiyya Mosque, dating from the mid-12th century, as the earliest reliably-dated example of zellij in Morocco. The individual tile pieces are large, allowing the pattern to be visible from afar.
Zellij tiling was most typically used to pave floors and to cover the lower walls inside buildings. Zellij was also used on the exterior of minarets and on some entrance portals. Geometric motifs predominated, with patterns of increasing complexity being formed during this period. Less frequently, vegetal or floral arabesque motifs were also created. On walls, zellij geometric dadoes were commonly topped by an epigraphic frieze.
By this period, more colours were employed such as yellow (using iron oxides or chrome yellow), blues, and a dark brown manganese colour. This style of tile mosaic, formed by assembling a large number of small hand-cut pieces to form a pattern, is evident in famous buildings of the period such as the Alhambra palaces of the Nasrids, the mosques of Tlemcen, and the Marinid madrasas of Fez, Meknes, and Salé. It is also found in some Christian Spanish palaces of the same period who employed Muslim or Mudéjar craftsmen, most notably the Alcazar of Seville, whose 14th-century sections are contemporary with the Alhambra and contain zellij tilework in the same style, although of slightly lesser sophistication.
Zellij remains in Chellah (14th century), in bright colours and floral motifs that may have been a hallmark of craftsmen from Tlemcen. Among the most exceptional surviving examples of Nasrid zellij art are the dadoes of the Mirador de Lindaraja and the Torre de la Cautiva in the Alhambra, both from the 14th century.
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In addition to zellij work further west, a somewhat distinctive style of zellij with brightly coloured pieces, often in floral patterns of palmettes and scrollwork, developed among the craftsmen of Tlemcen. The most important early example of this style was the decoration of the Tashfiniya Madrasa (no longer extant), founded by Abu Tashfin I (r. 1318-1337).
The epigraphic friezes in Marinid tilework, which typically topped the main mosaic dadoes, were made through a different technique known more widely as sgraffito (from the Italian word for "scratched"). In this technique, square panels were glazed in a black colour and the glaze was then chipped away around the desired motif, leaving the Arabic inscription and other decorative flourishes in black relief against a bare earth ground. Occasionally the earth background is covered with a white coating, and on some occasions a green glaze is used instead of black in order to leave a green motif in relief.
Perfectly Imperfect . Replicate the charm of Moroccan Zellige, with this simple 'how to tile' guide.
In the 16th century, most of North Africa came under Ottoman rule. In Algeria, the indigenous zellij style was mostly supplanted by small square tiles imported from Europe - especially from Italy, Spain, and Delft - and sometimes from Tunis. Some examples of more traditional mosaic tiles found in this late period may have continued to be produced in Tlemcen. In Tunisia, another style of tile decoration, Qallaline tiles, became common during the 18th century and was produced locally.
In Spain, where former Muslim-controlled territories had come under Christian rule, new techniques of tilemaking developed. As wealthy Spaniards favoured the Mudéjar style to decorate their residences, the demand for mosaic tilework in this style increased beyond what tilemakers could produce, requiring them to consider new methods. Towards the late 15th and early 16th centuries Seville became an important production center for a type of tile known as cuenca ("hollow") or arista ("ridge"). In this technique, motifs were formed by pressing a metal or wooden mould over the unbaked tile, leaving a motif delineated by thin ridges of clay that prevented the different colours in between from bleeding into each other during baking.
Under the Saadis, the complexity of geometric patterns was increased for the decoration of the most luxurious buildings, such as the Badi Palace (now ruined). Some of the zellij compositions in the Saadian Tombs are among the best examples of this type in situ. In this example, craftsmen employed finer (thinner) mosaic pieces and the thin, linear pieces that form the strapwork are coloured whereas the larger pieces that form the "background" are white.
Over the centuries since the Saadi period, the sgraffito technique previously used for Marinid epigraphic friezes came into more general usage in Morocco as a simpler and more economic alternative to mosaics. This type of tile was often employed on the spandrels of large gateways and portals. The motifs are often relatively simpler and less colourful than the traditional mosaic zellij style. In addition to black glaze, green or blue glaze was also used in later examples of this type to obtain motifs in these colours.
In later centuries, the interlacing strapwork that once separated the polygons in geometric mosaics was no longer standard and Moroccan craftsmen created rosette-style geometric compositions on an increasingly large scale. The culmination of this latter style is visible in the palaces built during the 19th and 20th centuries. New colours were also introduced into the palette during this period, including red, a bright yellow, and dark blue.
Zellij was employed on a wider array of architectural elements. The geometric rosette motifs were used to decorate fountains (or the ground around a fountain), the spandrels of arched doorways, or wall surfaces framed by arches of carved stucco. Simpler checkerboard-like motifs were used as backgrounds for the rosette compositions or to cover other large surfaces.
The Making of Zellij
Zellij tiles are first fabricated in glazed squares, typically 10 cm per side, then cut by hand with a small adze-like hammer into a variety of pre-established shapes (usually memorized by rote learning) necessary to form the overall pattern. Although the exact patterns vary from case to case, the underlying principles have been constant for centuries and Moroccan craftsmen are still adept at making them today. The small shapes (cut according to a precise radius gauge) of different colours are then assembled in a geometrical structure as in a puzzle to form the completed mosaic.
Uniquely in the city of Tétouan, zellij tiles are cut into the desired shapes before being baked. Once baked and cut, the tiles were laid face down on the ground and assembled together into the intended pattern. The back of the tile pieces were coated together with thin layers of plaster or whitewash.
Zellij Geometric Patterns
Geometric Patterns
In traditional zellij decoration, geometric patterns of varying complexity were the most prominent and widespread motif. Vegetal arabesque motifs were also used, though less frequently. Geometric patterns were created on the basis of tessellation: the method of covering a surface with the use of forms that can be repeated and fitted together without overlapping or leaving empty spaces between them. This example employs a fivefold geometric system with 10-pointed stars, while also adding visual diversity through colour.
In western Islamic art, under the Nasrid and Marinid dynasties, a great variety of geometric patterns were created for architectural decoration. Among the most common was a pattern employing six-pointed and twelve-pointed star compositions, with eight-pointed stars inserted between them. A popular trend was the use of patterns based on systems of fourfold symmetry. This family of patterns was widely used in other Muslim cultures further east, but in the Maghreb and al-Andalus artists excelled at their use and introduced several innovations.
One innovation was to make the repeating unit of the patterns larger, with broader compositions involving many different polygonal forms. Other innovations were the incorporation of more complex sixteen-pointed stars into some of these patterns and the insertion of further "arbitrary" design elements within the wider patterns. These innovations not only increased the complexity of the motifs but also increased their visual diversity.
The family of patterns involving fivefold symmetry, which was widely used and developed throughout the rest of the Islamic world, was less common in the Maghreb and al-Andalus. Some exceptional examples of this pattern from the Marinid period are found in the zellij tilework of the al-Attarine and Bou Inania madrasas in Fez, where greater visual diversity was once again achieved by using large repeating units.
In these examples and in others, additional visual diversity was also achieved through the use of colour. Other types of compositions were also employed, many of them much simpler. Some mosaics were simply composed of coloured squares. One variation of this is a "checkerboard"-like pattern made up of repeating squares/lozenges separated by white strips with eight-pointed stars at their intersections.
In the Alhambra of the Nasrids, some zellij motifs were composed of interlacing ribbons or tracery, sometimes as part of a narrow frieze wrapping around doorways or running above larger zellij dadoes. Another motif distinctive to the Alhambra is the so-called "Nasrid bird" (Spanish: pajarita nazarí), which is composed of a three-pointed star with curved arms that is repeated in a wheel-like motif. Yet another motif consists of one repeating curvilinear form resembling a double-headed axe, which is found in the Alhambra and is also common in the zellij of Tétouan in Morocco, where it is known in Arabic as the "four hammers" (arba'a matariq).
An encyclopedia could not contain the full array of complex, often individually varied patterns and the individually shaped, hand-cut tesserae, or furmah, found in zillij work. Star-based patterns are identified by their number of points-'itnashari for 12, 'ishrini for 20, arba' wa 'ishrini for 24 and so on, but they are not necessarily named with exactitude. The so-called khamsini, for 50 points, and mi'ini, for 100, actually consist of 48 and 96 points respectively, because geometry requires that the number of points of any star in this sequence be divisible by six.
Influence on Western Art
Islamic decoration and craftsmanship had a significant influence on Western art when Venetian merchants brought goods of many types back to Italy from the 14th century onwards. The tessellations of zellij tilework in the Alhambra of Granada were also an important source of inspiration for the work of 20th-century Dutch artist M. C. Escher. The tessellations in the mosaics are currently of interest in academic research in the mathematics of art.
Zellij Today
In Morocco, Fez is still a production center for zellīj tiles due in part to the Miocene grey clay found in the area. The clay from this region is primarily composed of kaolinite. In Fez and in other sites including Meknes, Safi, and Salé, the composition of clay used for ceramics is 27-56% clay minerals, of which 3-29% is calcite (around 16% for Fez). Quartz and muscovite are also present, at around 15-29% and 5-18%, respectively.
A study by Meriam El Ouahabi, L. From the other sites (Meknes, Fes, Salé and Safi), the clay mineral composition shows besides kaolinite the presence of illite, chlorite, smectite and traces of mixed layer illite/chlorite. Meknes clays belong to illitic clays, characterized by illite (54 - 61%), kaolinite (11 - 43%), smectite (8 - 12%) and chlorite (6 - 19%). Fes clays have a homogeneous composition with illite (40 - 48%). and kaolinite (18 - 28%) as the most abundant clay minerals. Chlorite (12 - 15%) and smectite (9 - 12%) are generally present as small quantities.
Zellīj making is considered an art in itself. The art is transmitted from generation to generation by ma'alems (master craftsmen). A long training is required to implant the required skills and training usually starts at childhood. In Fez, craftsmen begin training between the ages of 6 and 14 and the average apprenticeship lasts approximately ten years, with many more years required to achieve the status of ma'alem.
In 1993, the Moroccan government ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), abolishing the practice of employing children under 15 in work that is hazardous or impedes their education, but a 2019 study reports that the practice of training children has continued. Now young people learn zellīj making at one of the 58 artisan schools in Morocco. However, the interest in learning the craft is dropping.
The French Colonial Influence
When the French colonised South Morocco from 1912 to 1956, they introduced elements of French design to Moroccan architecture. One of the most distinctive changes was the windows. The French also introduced restrictive building standards. They decreed that buildings could not be higher than four stories and all building roofs should be level and flat. Balconies could not overlook neighbours and each planned area should have 20% of the land dedicated to outdoor gardens or courtyards.
As the French architects built new cities, they often constructed buildings that had European layouts but traditional Moroccan styles. The result was a Mauresque or Neo-Moorish style, and this can be found in cities like Rabat. Walk along the European-style boulevards and you may notice the grand administrative buildings. In some cities, like Casablanca, you’ll see many Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings.
Walk through any Moroccan city and you’ll find the unique blend of Berber, Islamic, Moorish, and French architecture.
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