The Qasaba and Ramparts of Sousse

The ramparts, which are flanked by square or oblong towers, enclose the Medina. The stones are laid in horizontal courses with alternating joints and in some places they are laid according to opus africanum[1]. They enclose the Qasaba on the western side, are crowned with rounded crenellations, and incorporate several gates[2] with pointed Moorish arches resting on piers and contained in a rectangular frame lined with stones. A perimeter path runs along the upper area. The upper sections of the walls on the side of the Bab al-Bahr are remarkable because they feature two series of superposed vaulted arcades that open towards the town and extend for twenty or so metres.

The south-western corner contains the Qasaba[3], constructed by the Aghlabid prince Abu al-‘Abbas Mohamed, in AD 851. This monument has been greatly modified over the centuries. In the ninth century, it comprised a lookout tower (Burj Khalaf) with two storeys whose total height attained thirty metres. Its central cluster, which is reached by a stairway built into the wall’s thickness, comprises four superposed rooms covered with groined vaults and cradle vaults, one of which, the oratory, contains a mihrāb. At 77m above sea level, the Khalaf tower provides an excellent complement to the ribāt for controlling the land to the west and the coastal areas, as the view from its heights can attain a range of 13km. It was complemented, after extension work in the thirteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, by the addition of a trapezoidal-plan citadel that encloses three courtyards surrounded by several rooms. Its outer walls are flanked by rectangular towers that ensure their stability—as they help resist the force of the winds—and improve the Qasaba’s defences.

The Sousse ramparts are a prototype of medieval defensive Ifriqiyan and Maghrebian architecture, which seemed to be mainly inspired by Byzantine citadels (Ksar Lamsa and, in the Kairouan region, the Hydra citadel), which are characterized by the use of square and round towers. The Byzantine ramparts of Constantinople also comprised a series of superposed vaulted arcades similar to those that occupied a section of the ramparts, near the ‘Gate of the Sea’. Round towers were already used on the Sousse ribāt and in the Abbasid palaces of Mesopotamia (Ukhaydhir, AD 778).

The Sousse ramparts have certain similarities with those of Sfax, another Aghlabid citadel whose ramparts date from the same period. And the Qasaba’s lookout tower resembles the minaret of the Great Mosque of Kairouan (836), which influenced it greatly. It seems to have influenced the layout of the minaret of the Great Mosque of Sfax (tenth century). The internal layout of the lookout tower, which appeared for the first time in Islamic architecture, seems—according to research carried out by Mateo[4]—to have influenced the typology of Maghrebian Almohad minarets, like those of the Kutubiya Mosque (twelfth century, Marrakech) and the Hassan Mosque (twelfth century, Rabat). From the twelfth century, this influence seems to have spread in the kingdom of Aragon: the cathedral and tower of San Martin at Teruel, the Magdalena Church at Saragossa, and the tower of the Santa Maria de Mediavilla at Ateca.

[2] They were originally pierced with three gateways: Bab al-Bahr (Gate of the Sea), Bab al-Qibli (Eastern Gate), and Bab al-Gharbi (Western Gate). Three gates were then added in the nineteenth century: Bab Jadid (the New Gate, 1860), Bab al-Jebli (North Gate) and Bab al-Finga (Gate of the Guillotine).

[3] The Qasaba houses the Sousse Archaeological Museum.

[4] Mateo, A.S., 2001, pp. 221–223.

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