Mausoleum and Mosque of Sayyidī (Sidi) ‘Uqba

This mosque belongs to a large complex built around the tomb of the governor of Ifriqiya, ‘Uqba ibn Nāfi‘ (d. 683). One of the oldest mosques in North Africa, it illustrates the style of the Medina region. Over time it became an influential centre of culture and worship that trained brilliant scholars in the Muslim world. Its plan takes its inspiration from the first mosque built in Medina.

Worshippers enter the prayer hall through three side entrances. The seven naves parallel to the qibla wall include seven bays. This transversal arrangement, which dates back to the Umayyad period, is not only the oldest layout but also the one best suited to Muslim prayer. Round horseshoe arches held in place by wooden tie beams rest on columns made of palm-tree trunks. This is the only example in Algeria of this system of support, which no doubt originates in Medina, but is also common in Central Asia and was used in some mosques in Anatolia in the thirteenth century. The ceilings are flat except in the part that borders the cupola, where they are vaulted. This detail indicates that the mosque was probably not built all at one time.

The mihrāb and the cupola that precedes it are made of stone and plaster and decorated in red and green paint in places. The niche opens in a horseshoe arch. Overhead is a half dome with thirty semicircular flutes, a feature taken from the conch motif commonly used in antiquity for adorning semicircular areas. In Islamic architecture this type of decoration was used earlier in a mihrāb, which may originally have come from the Great Mosque of Baghdad, created by the Caliph al-Mansūr in 762. Next to the mihrāb is the minbar with a carved wooden door decorated with foliated scrolls, rosettes and inscriptions.

The mausoleum houses the mortal remains of the venerated ‘Uqba ibn Nāfi‘; three hundred and fifty years after his burial major embellishments were carried out. These improvements included the beautiful carved door, a Fatimid work that strongly resembles the woodwork of the Great Mosque of Kairouan produced under the reign of al-Mu‘izz (r. 1016-1062). It is richly decorated with arabesques and ornaments that bring to mind embroiderers’ braids. Certain details, such as thick, elongated palmettes, were already utilised on the side door and mihrāb of the Great Mosque of Cordoba. A funerary inscription on marble adorns the lintel, which is decorated with scrollwork and rectangular panels; this double border is interrupted by a square panel that serves as a key and two trapezoidal panels filled with hanging triangular palm leaves, as in the cornices of ancient doors. The funerary chamber is square and surmounted by a cupola. It occupies the south-western corner of the mosque. Under the reign of al-Mu’izz ibn Bādīs, the mausoleum underwent embellishments modelled on the library donated by the Zirid prince to the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Engraved on the tomb is a Zirid inscription (the only one in Algeria) that bears similarities to the writing on steles in Kairouan around the year 1025.

The minaret, which stands in the south-west corner of the prayer hall, has a rectangular shaft made up of superimposed registers that culminates in merlons. It is decorated with niches, some blind, others pierced with openings, and intersecting semicircular arches.

Embedded on one of the porticos that encircle the mosque, near the main entrance, is a black stone reminiscent of the one in the Ka‘ba à in Mecca.