Palace of Zīri in Achir

This palace has a remarkably symmetrical rectangular plan. It is enclosed by a vast wall reinforced by thick square pillars at its corners; several breaks jut out from the face of wall, sorts of square bastions spread out regularly and symmetrically with respect to the north-south axis. A protruding doorway completes this defence system. This avant-corps set in the centre of the southern façade gives access to a vestibule whose far end is blocked off by a wall pierced with side openings. This type of chicane entrance was common in antiquity; it protected the inhabitants and preserved their privacy. The chicane entrance gives out onto a vast central courtyard with a gallery supported by a beautiful colonnade.

From the courtyard there is access to the east and west wings. Each wing has two secondary courtyards around which are arranged four similar apartments consisting of a beautiful room with a recess that creates a break protruding from the outer wall, three narrower rooms, latrines, and a stairwell that in all likelihood led to an upper storey. All the courtyards are paved. This organisation into separate units, called bayt, was already known in the first Umayyad and Abbasid palaces, which also feature walls studded with towers, chicane entrances, axes of symmetry and throne rooms at the far end of the courtyards.

The northern section of this palace was no doubt used for a similar purpose. A wall jutting out into the courtyard and pierced with three openings opens into a cross-shaped hall. This hall lies in line with the entrance opposite and creates a sizeable projection on the outer wall.  

The layout of the Palace of Zīri is reminiscent of the Mshatta Palace in Jordan, which also has a grand hall in the shape of a cross, albeit with semi-cylindrical recessing, and the same internal and external arrangement. This layout was already well known in North Africa: in Sedrata in southern Algerian, the refuge of the Kharijite dissidents deported by the Fatimids in the tenth century, and in the Fatimid palace of ’al-Qaim de Mahdiyya (present-day Tunisia, tenth century). Similar variations are to be found in Palermo, in Ziza and Cuba, the palaces of the twelfth-century Norman kings. This plan appears in Madinat al-Zahra, near Cordoba (tenth century) in the house of Ja‘far.

Very little remains of the palace’s decoration: a few shafts of columns, some podiums, some curious capitals and some carved ornaments. A goodly number of carved blocks composed a frieze of interlaced arches that rested on a bed of cut blocks carved with vertical string-courses that continued the interlacing patterns. Similar decorations are known to have existed in tenth-century Spain.

The Palace of Zīri could be considered a prototype; in any case it is the heir to Eastern traditions that it adapted and mastered perfectly.