Palace of Manâr

The palace known as the Palace of Manâr, built on a steep rocky outcrop in the eastern part of the city, is named after the dungeon dominating the surrounding areas[1]. According to an Arab chronicle, the dungeon was equipped with a mirror device that served to warn the inhabitants of danger. Old excavations and the incomplete condition of the vestiges sometimes make these structures difficult to understand.

The palace is an architectural complex comprising five buildings enclosed by a rampart. The central building is a rectangular structure; its door is an avant-corps covered by a dome decorated with painted muqarnas (an architectural element originating in the Iranian world that spread throughout the Muslim world); its facade is adorned with six blind niches. The building had an upper storey, as the existence of a staircase indicates. A bent passageway leads to a square courtyard paved with white tiles, ringed by a gallery decorated with bricks set on edge, from which different rooms open out. To the east of this building stood a richly decorated hall with marble-paved floors whose walls were covered with coloured marble panels surmounted by wall paintings. To the north is a building that comprised three construction units housing several rooms and paved courtyards. In the western section of the complex is a building laid out around a square marble-paved courtyard, at the centre of which is a stone basin decorated with figures of lions and geometric motifs. Around the courtyard runs a gallery with green and white ceramic tile flooring, leading off to different rooms. To the north is a room containing a niche flanked by two columns (a grand hall that may have been an īwān); to the south, a small oratory whose stucco decoration is partially preserved and includes epigraphic friezes that reproduce verse 36 of Sura XXIV of the Qur’an. This decoration, the presence of a niche and its position lead to the conclusion that this was a private oratory reserved for the Hammadid prince. It is the smallest oratory ever exhumed to date in Algeria and the only one annexed to a palace.

The fifth building in the complex is the one called the dungeon. Built on a square plan, it has avant-corps on three sides. Its sides are adorned with semicircular niches separated by rectangular attached piers with half-dome vaults graced with honeycomb motifs. This decoration can also been seen in Egypt (in the al-Aqmar Mosque in Cairo, 1125), in Ani, Turkey (tenth century) and in the Zubaydah mausoleum in Baghdad (1193). The building has two levels, an upper cruciform room and a lower room on the basement level covered with a cloistered vault and surrounded on all four sides by a ramp covered with barrel vaults. The dungeon no doubt played a defensive role; its architecture reveals a strong Eastern, especially Fatimid, influence. The same influence is to be found in twelfth-century Sicilian palaces, the Cuba Palace and the Ziza Palace in Palermo, which also have cruciform halls. This type of floor plan has its origin in the ancient East. It is seen from the Umayyad era onwards in certain edifices such as the Mshatta Palace in present-day Jordan.

Apart from the use of marble in the wall panels, tiles and columns, the palace features wall paintings, stuccos and ceramic floor and wall tiling in the form of eight-pointed stars and crosses. These luxurious materials and combinations thereof were already used by the Sassanids and Byzantines. The decoration of the Palace of Manâr offers a glimpse of the wealth and refinement developed amongst the Hammadids.