Decorative panel

Under the Almoravids, Moroccan woodworking was marked by Andalusian influences that were related to the taste of the second emir ‘Alī (reigned 1106–1142), who was attracted to the luxurious art of Muslim Spain. Designs from classical antiquity also constituted an important source of inspiration for artists who had rich local traditions.

This long panel is divided into five sections, in the middle of which geometric and vegetal decorations are arranged along a central symmetrical axis. The sections are enclosed in frames that are each linked by a knot of interlacing patterns. Their continuous edge borders and links five compartments between them, and some of them are framed with a larger strip. This panel contains several layers of carving, and these create the effect of a high relief, accentuated by deeply carved recesses. The same techniques of stucco and ivory sculpture were employed both in the Muslim West (Spain) and in the East (Fatimid Egypt).

The lower section, framed by a strip that is reminiscent of the decorations on the chenille of ninth to tenth century Coptic and Ifryqian book bindings, encloses a niche with a polylobed arch in whose centre two mixtilinear half-arches meet on a vegetal ground. Floral capitals and twisted columns support the arch springers. In the lower section, palm leaves and split fleurons form a composition that reflects the upper polylobed pattern. These fleuron patterns can be seen throughout the Muslim world, and this was particularly developed in the Iranian region.

The second section, like the fourth, contains a vegetal composition of palmettes and trilobed ribbed leaves, and this is very close to the art of ninth-century Egyptian woodworking—visible, for example, on a panel in the museum of Cairo[1]. Their stems form nearly closed intersecting circles, at tangents to the lower frame and the lateral framework, in which can be observed the Marinid aesthetic principles through the geometrization of the decorations. The influence of the eras of the caliphs and the Taifas Kingdoms, perpetuated by the minbar of the Great Mosque of Algiers and a framing panel of the mihrâb of the Great Mosque of Tlemcen, is also perceptible in these decorations.

In the central section, an octagon adorned with a pearled strip frames a geometric decoration based on the central eight-pointed star, whose extended corners create a lobed square. This composition was continued several centuries later in Nasrid Spain, as seen on textiles, like that held in the Metropolitan Museum of New York[2].

The wide pearled strip that makes up the octagon is reminiscent of the ancient Sassanid compositions transmitted by textiles to Islamic Iran and diffused in the East and in the West. Several textiles transmitted this heritage, like the Shroud of St Lazare d'Autun[3], and its reuse in the Christian context shows how these patterns were transmitted.

In the upper section, the sculptor brought together several elements that were already developed: the grooved knotwork combines squares and four-lobed curvilinear stars, and six-petal rosettes. The eight-pointed star is decorated with a simple calyx palm, framed by two symmetrical, veined palm leaves.

This decoration uses curves and ogee curves, with knotwork linking the stars to the frame, eight-pointed stars stamped with rosettes, in a continuation of the formulas elaborated by Muslim Spain.

[2] Silk, fourteenth century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Fletcher Fund, 1929, 29.22.

[3] Shroud of St Lazare of Autun, Almeria, start of the twelfth century, silk taffeta, Autun, the cathedral treasure. (the Andalusias p.136 and base).