Qal’at Bani Hammad (fortified residential city)

Excavated since the nineteenth century, the site of the Qal‘a suffers today from the archaeological methods employed by the first researchers. Certain data are missing and the incomplete state of the vestiges makes these structures difficult to understand and interpret at times.

This fortress (Qal‘a) in ruins, the first capital of the Hammadids, was built in a context of political and economic buttressing of the dynasty. This residential city took three years to build. According to the sources, its cultural, scientific and commercial influence was widespread, attracting famous personalities of the period, such as the Jewish scholar ‘Abd al-Rahīm ibn Isaac ibn al-Majlūn al-Fāsī and the poet and scholar Abū al-Fadl ibn al-Nahwī. Over the course of the twelfth century the city’s power began to wane as it was overshadowed by Bougie; plundered and destroyed several times, in particular by the Almohads, it vanished from the sources after the end of the century.

The architecture and objects produced at the Qal‘a testify to different influences, which should perhaps be tied in with the diversity of the site’s population[1]. Several important edifices have been uncovered in the site, such as a large mosque, several palaces including that of Manār, a cistern and a number of utilitarian and ornamental objects, as well as metallic lustre ceramics. It is an excellent example of a fortress-city getting the most out of its topography: surrounded by mountains with inaccessible slopes, the steep site was bounded by a wide stone wall with three main gates. Only one is relatively well preserved; it has a rectangular porch and is flanked by a building which was no doubt used as a guard house. The city was developed on the four lower parts of the site. Each of these four quarters had its own palace, the palaces of Manār, Lac (Bahr), Salut and Étoile. Spread out on the highest part was the heart of the city, where the Palais du Lac, the Great Mosque and the baths were located. The southern part of the hillside, a flat, sprawling area, must have been reserved for the souks. The very small amount of materials reused[2] on the site can be explained by this steep geographic situation.

Researchers working at the Qal‘a[3] studied the origin of the architectural forms they discovered. Several elements were found to be related to Iran: Tudor arches, domes resting on squinches in the shape of half groin vaults and the vast semicircular flat niches in the palace and dungeon of Manār. Certain elements such as the arrangement of the palace entrances (avant-corps decorated with semicircular niches separated from the pillars) may have their origin in the porch of the Mosque of Mahdiya in Ifriqiya and that of the Mosque of al-Hakīm in Cairo (tenth century). A pronounced Egyptian influence shows in the architecture of the Qal‘a through decorative elements such as vegetal ornaments. Semi-cylindrical niches were common at the time of the Fatimids, the Zirids and the Normans in Sicily, as were the flat niches known to exist in the palace of Ukhaydir (Iraq), in Kairouan, in Mahdiya and in Sfax (Tunisia). Connections with southern Spain show up in the composite capitals and in the terraced layout of the city, which does not fail to bring to mind the city of Madinat al-Zahra.

Although many researchers have seen influences of the Muslim East in the decoration found in the city, Hammadid art has its own characteristics which it passed down to Sicily and Spain. Three centuries before the Alhambra was built in Grenada, squinches with half groin vaults, carved stucco, and blue and white glazed ceramic facings were already being produced and used in the Qal‘a.

[2] The reused materials are pink marble columns placed in the Great Mosque, which originally came from a Roman town in the Hodna area.

[3] General de Beylié , George Marçais, Lucien Golvin and Rashid Bourouiba were among the researchers on the site.