Mosque of Hammūda Pasha

The mosque of Hammūda Pasha stands in the medina of Tunis, near the Great Mosque of Zitouna. It was founded as part of an attempt by the Turks, the new masters of the country since 1574, to thwart the Malekite rite of prayer practiced by the local population by imposing their own Hanefite rite.

The monument, which was influenced by the mosque of Yūsuf Dey (Tunis, 1613–1614), reflects the various contributions that marked Tunisia a century after the Ottoman conquest. It remarkably documents the development of Tunisia’s new artistic personality, which comprised a hotchpotch of different currents but did not lack originality. The complex includes the mosque, a minaret and the founder’s tomb. A double flight of stairs emerges into the courtyard in line with the entrance to the prayer hall, which is framed by three porticos covered with pitched roofs[1].

Three doors with doorjambs decorated with finely sculpted marble lead into the prayer hall. The interior is divided into five bays and seven naves perpendicular to the qibla wall. The bay of the qibla wall and the median nave are widened, duplicating a plan developed in Aghlabid[2] Ifriqiya. The cupola resting on shell-shaped squinches that precedes the mihrāb is part of the same legacy. Forty-eight Carrara marble columns with neo-Ionic capitals and the tall bicoloured imposts resting on them support the thrust of horseshoe arches. The walls are covered with marble panelling up to the tympana and with stucco panelling above it. The curves of the arches are soberly decorated with a few black voussoir bricks. Certain elements such as the capitals seem to have an Italian influence. The use of polychrome marble covering is a tradition that dates back to the birth of Islam; it assumed great importance in the fourteenth century in Egypt and Italy and in the sixteenth century under the Ottomans.

An inscription giving the construction date runs along the base of the cupola. The niche opens out into the hall in a semicircular horseshoe arch with black and white voussoir bricks, resting on two small black stone columns with neo-Ionic capitals. The inside is adorned with arcatures in pink, white and grey marble facing. At the north-west corner stands a graceful minaret with a square base and octagonal shaft. It is crowned with a canopied balcony suggestive of Ottoman forms[3] and is capped by a lantern-turret with a pyramidal roof. This type of minaret, which harks back to Anatolia[4] and the Near East, became the distinctive feature of mosques built for the Ottomans in Tunisia. It was prevalent in several cities in the regency of Tunis, especially those that were home to an Ottoman minority and particularly a Turkish garrison[5].

The mausoleum of the founder is in the corner opposite the minaret. The addition of this monument to the oratory is a sign of Ottoman influence. It is a square structure surmounted by a pyramidal cupola covered with green glazed tiles. The centre of each façade is occupied by an arch flanked by panels of geometric white and black marble designs. Above the panels rise gemel openings, the black and white curves of their arches echoing the curve of the central arch. The pyramidal cupola, tile roofs and certain geometric and floral decorations, which were already used in Tunisian Hafsid mausoleums[6], reveal an Andalusian influence.

[2] Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, 836.

[3] Canopies are common in Ottoman architecture, especially in buildings used for funeral purposes (e.g., the tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent, Istanbul, 1558) and in civil buildings (Fountain of Ahmed III, Turkey, 1907, [reproduction of the fountain erected in 1729 in front of the exterior door to the Topkapi palace], wood, mother-of-pearl, ivory and polychrome marble, Istanbul, Yildiz Sarayi Müzesi, inv.364).

[4] The minarets of the Suleymaniye (Istanbul, Turkey, 1550-1557) and many other Ottoman minarets, although more slender, havme a form that is comparable to that of this minaret.

[5] Great Mosque of Bizerte (1060 H./1650 J.C.); Mosque of Slimane Hamza de Mahdiyya (eleventh-seventeenth centuries).

[6] Sidi Abid mausoleum (fourteenth et seventeenth centuries); Sidi Kacem al-Jellizi mausoleum (fifteenth century)