Kerbstone of a well

This octagonal well kerb is covered with a green glaze. A flat moulding runs around the bottom, creating a thick base, which is not glazed, and around the top, turning outward at the rim. The body has a stamped decoration and is made up of eight vertical panels, each of which is divided into five horizontal registers separated by narrow mouldings. They are decorated with floral and geometric motifs that are very common in the decoration of Marinid monuments in Fez, Abd al-Wadid monuments in Tlemcen and Nasrid monuments in Grenada.

The lowest horizontal register contains series of cusped arcatures placed in twos and threes inside a rectangular frame edged by a band enclosing a tangle of eight-pointed stars. The second register is made up of three squares, each one filled with a four-petal rosette circumscribing small, simple palm leaves. This decoration resembles the one adorning one of the panels of the minbar in the Great Mosque of Algiers, as well as the geometric motif of crosses found on the stuccowork in Sedrata (Algeria), which is similar to certain geometric Coptic motifs. The third register is filled with a foliated scroll with wide palmettes springing from it. The fourth frames a frieze of heart-shaped palmettes that fit into each other, the tips of which roll up into whorls. The last register, which is almost entirely faded, is made of a simple band of eight-pointed stars.

A similar floral decoration can be seen on other well kerbs, some glazed and others not, found in Salé and Rabat (Morocco). The stamped decoration of these kerbstones can be compared to that of certain large earthenware jars whose shape is similar to the fourteenth-century vases known as Alhambra vases. 

Kerbstones were significant decorative elements in the centre of the courtyards of homes. Some also seem to have served in mosques for ritual ablutions, as was the case of well kerbs in Seville and Cordoba, which came from former mosques that had been converted into convents.

This ceramic production developed in Morocco and al-Andalus during the Almohad period in the twelfth century and belongs to a well-defined group of green-glazed ceramics decorated by stamping that also includes large earthenware jars found in southern Spain and northern Morocco, and in Qal‘at Bani Hammad, Bejaia, and Tlemcen.

The dating of these kerbstones is estimated on the basis of several twelfth-century pieces: a kerbstone from Ceuta (Musée de Tétouan, Morocco) bears an inscription on its upper register that dates it to 1190. Moreover it is known that similar kerbs existed in Tunisia during the period of the Banū Khurasān of Tunis. And Spain offers several specimens of decorated marble and ceramic kerbstones, including one in the Museum of Toledo that dates from 1032.