El Badi Palace
El Badi Palace | |
---|---|
قصر البديع | |
Location | Ksibat Nhass, Marrakesh, Morocco |
Coordinates | 31°37′06″N 7°59′09″W / 31.6183°N 7.9858°W |
Construction started | 1578 |
Completed | 1593 |
Demolished | ca. late 17th century |
El Badi Palace or Badi' Palace
The palace was neglected after al-Mansur's death in 1603 and eventually fell into ruin with the decline of the Saadian dynasty. Its valuable materials, particularly marble, were stripped away and reused in other buildings throughout Morocco. Today, it is a significant tourist attraction in Marrakesh and serves as an exhibition space. Notably, the Minbar of the Kutubiyya Mosque is displayed here.[5][6]
Name
The name el-Badi' (
History
Background
Prior to the reign of the
Construction
According to al-Ifrani, construction of the palace began in December 1578 (Shawwal 986 AH), only a few months after the Saadian victory at the Battle of the Three Kings and Ahmad's accession to power, and took fifteen years, finishing in 1593 (1002 AH).[4][7] French historian Gaston Deverdun, however, points out that the "Portuguese plan" of 1585 (an illustrated document providing important information on the layout of Marrakesh's kasbah at the time) shows us a fully-completed palace, while at the same time there also exist records of Ahmad al-Mansur purchasing marble for construction up until 1602, a year before his death.[4] This suggests that the major constructions of the palace may have been completed by the early 1580s but that al-Mansur continued to embellish the palace up until his death.[3][4][8]
The construction of the palace was a major enterprise. The sultan had workers and artisans brought from many regions, including Europe, to aid in the construction; so much so that a flourishing market established itself near the construction site to cater to the workers.[3] Al-Mansur was so involved in making sure that work continued efficiently that he even provided child care for his workers in order to ensure they were not distracted by other priorities.[3] Materials were also imported from multiple regions and foreign countries, including marble columns fabricated in Italy and lime and plaster from Timbuktu.[3]
Decline
After the fall of the Saadians and the rise of the
According to
Present day
The palace today is a well-known tourist attraction. The complex contains an exhibition space where the 12th-century Almoravid minbar that once stood in the Kutubiyya Mosque is on display, in addition to other exhibition spaces opened in 2018.[6] For a number of years the Marrakesh Folklore Festival has taken place within the palace.[9]
The palace was significantly damaged in the
The Saadian royal complex
The Saadian palaces formed a complex built inside the vast kasbah (citadel) on the south side of the city, originally laid out during the Almohad period under
The complex was entered via a "Grand
One curious feature inside the palace complex was a tall tower which is prominently depicted in descriptions of Marrakesh during the Saadian period but which was missing in the later
Architecture of El Badi
Layout
The El Badi Palace itself was a reception palace where Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur hosted and received guests. The floor plan of the palace is essentially rectangular, centered around a huge courtyard (measuring 135 by 110 metres) with a central pool (measuring 90.4 by 21.7 metres).[7][3]: 266 The courtyard also had four enormous sunken gardens, excavated and rediscovered in modern times, which were arranged symmetrically around the central pool, as well as four other water basins (measuring roughly 30 by 20 metres) along the west and east sides of the courtyard.[3] This arrangement was essentially that of a riad garden (a symmetrical interior garden in Moorish architecture) on a grand scale.[8][15]
Each side of this rectangular courtyard had a large pavilion with a grand and ornate cupola (qubba), around which were other cupolas and structures. The two largest pavilions faced each other at the eastern and western ends of the courtyard.[3] This arrangement of pavilions appears to be an evolution of the layout seen in the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, but on a grander scale.[3]: 268 [16]
The western pavilion of the courtyard was known in Arabic as al-Qubbat al-Khamsiniya (Arabic: القُبة الَخْمسينية, lit. 'Dome/Pavilion of the Fifty') named either after its surface area of some 50 cubits or the fact that it once featured 50 columns.[17][3] "Al-Quba al-Khamsiniya" is also the title of a poem by Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali, poet laureate of Sultan Ahmed al-Mansur's court.[18] It served as a reception hall or throne hall for the sultan. An alcove in the back wall of the chamber marks the spot where the sultan used to sit in attendance. Above this alcove was an Arabic inscription carved in black marble amidst the white marble covering the rest of the walls.[3] At the middle of the hall was a fountain flanked by two water basins covered in delicate zellij decoration and fed with water spurting from silver sculptures of animals such as leopards, lions and pythons.[3]: 268
The pavilion on the eastern side of the courtyard (no longer standing today) was known as the Qubbat az-Zujaj (
The pavilion on the courtyard's north side was known as the Qubbat al-Khadra (Arabic: القبة الخضراء, lit. 'Green Pavilion') and once had two stories with a number of rooms.[3] An annex on the west side of this pavilion, paved with zellij and accessible to visitors today, contained three residential quarters which may have been used as guest quarters for foreign ambassadors.[3]
The southern pavilion was known as the Qubbat al-Khayzuran (Arabic: قبة الخيزران, lit. 'Pavilion of the Heliotrope/Myrtle'; possibly also named after one of al-Mansur's favourite
-
The former reception hall and throne room inside the western pavilion, the Qubba al-Khamsiniya. In the foreground are the remains of a rectangular water basin covered inzellijmosaic tilework.
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The eastern pavilion (the Qubbat al-Zujaj), no longer standing today but showing remains of the underground water infrastructure
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An annex on the northwest side of the palace which contained residential quarters, possibly for foreign ambassadors
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An annex area on the south side of the palace, probably including the remains of a bathhouse (hammam)
Materials and decoration
The palace was a lavish display of the best craftsmanship of the Saadian period, constructed using some of the most expensive materials of the time, including gold and onyx, with colonnades made of Italian marble exchanged with Italian merchants for their equivalent weight in sugar.[17][3] Although the core structure of the palace's walls were made in rammed earth reinforced with a mixture of lime, the walls were covered with these expensive materials and elaborate decoration (though today they stand bare due to the palace's later ruin).[3]: 268
The floors were paved with marble and zellij (mosaic tilework), the ceilings and capitals of the columns were gilded, and the walls were covered in intricately-carved stucco with calligraphic inscriptions.[3] The fragments of zellij which have been uncovered in modern excavations in the palace show that the Saadian craftsmen had created geometric patterns of even greater complexity than those of previous periods, including examples of twenty-pointed stars.[3] The various gardens and pools featured fountains with jets of water, reminiscent of the role of water in the Andalusian architecture of the Alhambra (which appears to have had a noted influence on Saadian architecture generally) and requiring an underground hydraulic infrastructure of vaults and channels.[4][3]
See also
References
- ^ a b c "Badi' Palace". Archnet. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
- ^ Team, Almaany. "Translation and Meaning of بديع In English, English Arabic Dictionary of terms Page 1". www.almaany.com. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
- ^ ISBN 9782359061826.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Deverdun, Gaston (1959). Marrakech: Des origines à 1912. Rabat: Éditions Techniques Nord-Africaines.
- ^ a b Jacobs, Daniel; McVeigh, Shaun (2010). The Rough Guide to Morocco. Dorling Kindersley Ltd. p. 366.
- ^ a b "Badia Palace | Marrakesh, Morocco Attractions". Lonely Planet. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
- ^ a b c Marçais, Georges (1954). L'architecture musulmane d'Occident. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques. pp. 395–396.
- ^ ISBN 2747523888.
- ^ a b Searight, Susan (1999). Maverick Guide to Morocco. LA, USA: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 403.
- ^ a b Erzini, Nadia; Vernoit, Stephen (2012). "The Marble spolia from the Badi' Palace in Marrakesh". In Porter, Venetia; Rosser-Owen, Miriam (eds.). Metalwork and material culture in the islamic world. Art, craft and text. Essays presented to James W. Allan. I. B. Tauris. pp. 317–334.
- ^ Hamri, Salma (13 September 2023). "27 sites historiques ont été gravement endommagés par le séisme du 8 septembre selon un premier constat". Médias24 (in French). Retrieved 15 September 2023.
- ^ "Marrakech: réouverture au public de plusieurs monuments historiques affectés par le séisme du 8 septembre". Le 360 Français (in French). 10 October 2023. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
- ^ Habtemariam, Dawit (10 October 2023). "Morocco Tourist Sites Reopen One Month After Earthquake". Skift. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
- ^ Bloom, Jonathan (24 September 2020). "A 16th-Century Portuguese Plan of a Moroccan Palace". Yale University Press. Retrieved 31 October 2023.
- ^ Meunier, Jean (1957). "Le grand Riad du palais du Badi'". Hespéris. 44: 129–134. Archived from the original on 28 February 2021. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
- ^ Barrucand, Marianne (1989). "The Sadi Qasaba of Marrakech". Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre: 18–27.
- ^ a b Honnor, Julius (2012). Morocco Footprint Handbook (6 ed.). Footprint Travel Guides. p. 60.
- ^ "دعوة الحق - عبد العزيز الفشتالي شعره، لنجاة المريني". www.habous.gov.ma. Retrieved 30 May 2019.