Great Mosque of Monastir

This place of prayer breaks with the traditional principle of Islamic town planning whereby the Great Mosque is in the centre of the medina, for it is in an outlying location near the coast, close to the ribāt. The Great Mosque’s architecture is marked by soberness. Its outer façades are in ashlar and are decorated with niches, the gallery’s arches and small corner columns.

Like many Tunisian mosques, the Great Mosque underwent many extensions over the centuries. The prayer hall is the result of four different construction phases. In the ninth century it was just a small oratory covered with groin vaults resting on round horseshoe arches supported by cruciform pillars. Pillars of this kind, inspired by the architecture of ribāts, were often used in Sahelian architecture[1] and were to spread throughout the Maghreb from the Almohad era onward (1130-1269)[2].

In the eleventh century the hall was enlarged on the south-east side with the addition of three naves covered with groin vaults eased by pointed horseshoe arches placed on columns. The current mihrāb, which is decorated with typical Zirid motifs, dates back to that era. It has a semi-cylindrical niche surmounted by a ribbed half dome with a pointed horseshoe arch resting on columns topped by capitals as head arch. Flat niches are arrayed in the lower section, each crowned by a semicircular arch graced with a rosette or star. Surmounting the niches are squares laid point to point and decorated with geometric and floral motifs, based on a model that first appeared on the mihrāb of the Great Mosque of Kairouan and spread to Fatimid-era Cairo[3]. The decoration is similar to the one on the mihrāb of the Great Mosque of Mahdiyya. Over the squares is an epigraphic frieze in flowery Kufic script, the same kind of inscription that had already been carved on the mihrāb of the Great Mosque of Kairouan. This design reappeared on the mihrāb of the oratory of the Sayyida Mosque (Monastir, ninth century) and was to spread into Fatimid Egypt[4].

A mihrāb with no cupola in front of it is an exception in Medieval Ifriqiyan religious architecture. The absence of a cupola in this building means that it is faithful to the architecture of the oratories of Tunisian ribāts, the oldest example of which is the Monastir ribāt (796).

Extensions continued to be built during the Hafsid period, with the addition of a square-based minaret. Square bases, a legacy of Aghlabid architecture, were common at the time. Two naves were also added in the north-western part. The prayer hall reached its current boundary with the addition of a gallery in the course of the eighteenth century. The introduction of arcades in the walls along the outer façade was an innovation that points to Ottoman influence, an influence that was in force in Tunisia at the time and can also be observed in the Hamouda Bacha Mosque (Tunis, 1655) and the gallery of the façade of the Zitouna Mosque (Tunis).

[2] Great Mosque of Tlemcen (Morocco, 1136), Mosque of al-Qarawiyyīn in Fez (Morocco, 1135), Great Mosque of  Meknes (Morocco, 1199-1213).

[3] Mosques of al-Hākim (960) and al-Aqmar (1125).

[4] Mihrāb of the mausoleum of Sayyida Ruqayya, Cairo, (1133).