Great Mosque of Testour

The mosque is in the heart of the city at the intersection of the major arteries. It is an unusual synthesis of local Ifriqiyan traditions and Hispano-Moresque decorative and architectural techniques. The soberness of the structure points to the influence of Mudejar art.

The building plan is rectangular except for the projection created by the ablutions hall and the secondary courtyard, which were added in the eighteenth century. The prayer hall is wider than it is deep and has six doors opening into it. It is laid out in seven bays and nine naves perpendicular to the qibla wall, delimited by round horseshoe arches resting on columns topped with reused ancient capitals. It has a groin vault ceiling and is covered on the exterior with pitched roofs, probably inspired by Andalusian architecture[1]. This kind of roofing appears on many Moroccan monuments[2] and is also widespread in Algeria[3].

The central nave, which lies in line with the mihrāb, is enhanced by two cupolas on pendentives (as in Ottoman art) with shell-shaped squinches. One cupola precedes the mihrāb, the other is in the centre of the nave.

The plan of the prayer hall, with its two cupolas in line with the mihrāb, takes its inspiration from Ifriqiyan architecture of the Aghlabid period[4], except that unlike Andalusian and Ifriqiyan mosques, the T-shaped arrangement – an enlarged qibla wall bay and central nave – was not adopted.

The mihrāb is recessed in a rectangular room that forms a break in the outer façade. Its niche has high, delicately carved ribbing and is surmounted by a half dome framed by a pointed horseshoe arch resting on small corner columns. Vertical strips alternate with small roundels in a decoration carved around the arch, a reminder of ancient ovum and bead decoration. Above the arch is a richly decorated triangular pediment reminiscent of Antiquity, of which Tunisia abounds in vestiges, as well as of Ottoman mihrābs[5].

The prayer hall is preceded on the north-west side by a courtyard paved with ancient limestone slabs. It is bounded by four porticos with pitched roofs. A mihrāb is carved out in the wall. This allows worshipers praying in the courtyard know where the direction of the qibla is[6]. In the middle of the courtyard stands a marble sun dial signed by Ahmed al-Harrār and dated 1761.

The north-east corner of the courtyard is occupied by the minaret, which consists of two superimposed towers. The lower one is square and is built using a mixture of materials (brick wall ties and rubble stone filling) according to the procedure used in Toledo. The upper one is octagonal; it is crowned by a lantern-turret with a pyramidal wooden roof and is pierced with gemel windows and richly decorated with ceramic facing and a clock face. The minaret looks like clock towers in Aragon and the south of Spain[7].

A second courtyard, bounded by a single hypostyle gallery with a single-pitch roof, and an ablutions hall break up the regular rectangular shape of the mosque’s plan on the north-east side.

The decorative repertoire is inspired by Andalusian art. Geometric decoration predominates, with diamonds, hexagons, circles, stars and rectangles. The floral elements are by and large stylised motifs in the form of lanceolate flowers, rosettes, leaves radiating out from a central motif, palm leaves and fig branches. Added to these elements are mason’s marks. All these motifs decorate the cupolas, the lower niche of the mihrāb, and the stucco panels.

[2] Mosque of al-Qarawiyyîn (Fez, ninth–tenth c.); Bū 'Inania madrasa (Fez, 1351-1356), Kutubiyya Mosque (Marrakech, twelfth c.).

[3] Great Mosque (Tlemcen, 1136).

[4] Great Mosque of Kairouan (ninth c.), Great Mosque of Sousse (ninth c.).

[5] Mihrāb of the Suleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul, 1548–1559.

[6] This feature is also found in the Great Mosque of Sfax (Tunisia, ninth–tenth c) and in many mosques throughout the Muslim world.

[7] Sante Marie Majeure church in Ronda, crowned in the sixth c.