Niche of Sedrata

This niche comes from the site of Sedrata. It consists of a rectangular frame encompassing a rounded cavity of which only the upper part, which culminates in a shell adorned with beaded ribs, has been preserved. Sculpted in semi-relief, the frame is decorated with a series of borders of geometric motifs: dentils, latticework and festoons. The spandrels are filled with three circular medallions, one of which has beads around the rim and a rosette at the centre, while the others circumscribe palmettes, which have foliated motifs extending out from the ends. The upper part has been restored. .

The technique used on these ornaments is called nukch-hadida in Arabic, meaning “sculpted with an iron blade” and was executed on plaster made from a local stone called tefizza. This plaster is a kind of tuff transformed into rendering and applied fresh on rammed-earth or rubble stone walls, then sculpted with an iron blade while still soft. This simple and inexpensive technique was used to produce panels; in Sedrata such panels covered mainly the upper parts of the walls, forming real wall carpets. Since this ornamentation was fragile, it was used mainly for the interior of buildings. The sculpture work contributed to creating a real play of light with the hollow parts, enlivening the walls with effects which may have been enhanced by pigments of which no trace remains.

Certain fragments of decoration from Sedrata are preserved in the Musée du Louvre[1]; although incomplete, they testify to the rich array of motifs used there. These included cusped arches, intersecting circles with palmettes at the heart, rosettes, and palmettes in heart-shaped frames.

The motifs from Sedrata are rich in borrowings from Greco-Roman antiquity and themes found in the Christian monuments of North Africa. The Musée national des Antiquités in Algiers houses a collection of sculptures from Christian basilicas carved with similar motifs – motifs that also appeared in basilicas in Numidia and Coptic monasteries in Egypt. Moreover, there are strong similarities with the decoration of Abbasid palaces in Samarra, the Great Mosque in Kairouan and the capitals of Monastir. These ornaments are perpetuated in wooden Berber decorations. Lastly, there is a surprising similarity between the compositions from Sedrata and certain motifs used in Muslim textiles, including bead-ringed or intersecting circles, palmettes with heart-shaped frames and rosettes.

Stucco is widely prevalent in the Islamic world. Starting with the Umayyads and continuing with the Abbasids, it appeared in Qasr al-Haïr al-Gharbi (Syria), Samarra (Iraq) and Cairo, in the Mosque of Ibn Tūlūn. The Fatimids also used carved or painted stucco on the muqarnas of the hammam in Fostat and the mihrāb of the mausoleum of Sayyida Ruqayya (1133), and stucco recurs in Sabra Mansuriya and the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. Many painted and carved fragments of it have been discovered at Qal‘at Bani Hammad. Stucco is also featured in the decorations of Almoravid and Almohad facades and was employed in al-Andalus for the screen walls of the Alhambra, still in use today.

[1] Musée du Louvre, Department of Islamic Art, MAO 346 à 350.