Giralda

Begun in 1184, the minaret of the Great Mosque of Sevilla wasn't completed until 1198—the death of its first owner delayed its completion. It adjoined the eastern wall of the Mosque, of which it is the main relic, together with part of the courtyard. After the reconquest of Sevilla in 1248, it served as a bell-tower and was partially destroyed in an earthquake in 1355. After the construction of the cathedral in the fifteenth century, it served as a bell-tower and the upper section was completed in the sixteenth century by the architect Hernan Ruiz II, who was also responsible for the cathedral built within the Great Mosque of Córdoba. A sculpture on top of the tower turned to show the direction of the wind, giving the tower its name ‘Giralda’, which means weathercock in Spanish.

The monument's square design follows the tradition of the Spanish and Maghrebian minarets: the minaret of the Great Mosque of Kairouan (ninth century), the minaret built by Abd al-Rahmān III in the Great Mosque of Córdoba (951), and that of the mosque in the fortified city of Qal’a at Bani Hammad (Algeria, 1007–1008) all have the same design. This one may have originally been inspired by the minarets of the Great Mosque of Damascus (Syria, 705–715), rather than the towers of Syrian churches, as R. Hillenbrand suggests. However, the Giralda's internal layout is different from preceding minarets. Inside, a large rectilinear-section ramp surrounds the central area made up seven superposed vaulted storeys. This arrangement, which was common in Almohad minarets, was used in the Kutubīyah Mosque (Marrakech, 1147) and the Hassān Tower in Rabat (1196).

The minaret was crowned with a partially conserved quadrangular lantern-turret, which, according to L. Golvin, measured more than fifteen meters. On the topmost point of the cupola, which was decorated with tiles, stood a jâmūr—an iron rod supporting four gold-plated copper balls, which was the work of a Sicilian artist[1]. This probably increased the height of the building to more than eighty meters—the Almohads had a taste for monumentality.

The Giralda's decorative elements reduced the volume of the construction, whose simple shape corresponded to the dynasty's liking for simplicity. None of its sides are identical, but they are all designed in the same way. The base, which is decorated with only a few arches, is very simple. Above are three vertical sections; the central section comprises four levels of twinned apertures resting on small columns. On either side, on two levels, there is interlacing on small columns. In the upper section there are a series of polylobed arches, topped with crenellated merlons.

The arches are either of the semicircular, horseshoe, or polylobed variety, employing a vocabulary frequently used in Spain: in the Great Mosque of Córdoba and, much later, in the Alhambra fortress in Granada, and in Mudejar architecture. Crenellated merlons had been used in the East since Antiquity: they can be seen in Assyrian and Achaemenid constructions. They can also be seen in Islamic constructions from the Umayyad period, such as the Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi castle (Syria).

A symbol of the city of Sevilla, the Giralda also served as an architectural model in later periods: copies were built in the United States, one of which was constructed between 1893 and 1927 in Madison Square Garden in New York, and another was built in Kansas City. The minaret of the Mosque of Hasan II, inaugurated in 1993 in Casablanca, was also inspired by the Giralda.