Mansouria, Tunisia
El-Mansuriya
المنصورية | |
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Ismail al-Mansur |
El-Mansuriya
Built between 946 and 972, el-Mansuriya was a walled city holding elaborate palaces surrounded by gardens, artificial pools and water channels. It was briefly the centre of a powerful state that encompassed most of
Background
The
The third Fatimid caliph in
Construction
El-Mansuriya was located less than 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south of the existing city of Kairouan.[10] It replaced el-Mahdia as the capital of the empire. El-Mansur moved to the new city in 948.
The city was circular, as was the original Baghdad, and the choice of layout may have been intended as a challenge to the Sunni Muslim Abbasid Caliphate based in Baghdad.[5] The walls were twelve cubits[b] wide, made of burned brick jointed with lime mortar. The space between the walls and the interior buildings was equal to the width of a highway.[14]
The city included a congregational mosque.[14] The caliph's palace was near the center of the city, which contained other palaces used for ceremonial, diplomatic and administrative purposes.[15] The main palace was called Sabra ("fortitude"). The palace grounds covered an area of 44 hectares (110 acres).[14] The historian Ibn Hammad described the palace buildings as high and splendid structures surrounded by gardens and waters. They demonstrated the wealth and power of the caliph.[16] The names give some hint of the nature of the palaces: the Camphor Audience Hall, the Chamber of the Diadem, the Fragrant Audience Hall and the Silver Chamber.[17]
El-Mansuriya was completed under
Occupation
The city was primarily a royal residence. It contained palaces, gardens, a menagerie with lions, barracks and the royal stables. El-Mansur moved 14,000
In its heyday, el-Mansuriya was the capital of a state that encompassed most of North Africa from Morocco to Libya, as well as Sicily, although it had to guard against attack from the
The Fatimid general, Jawhar, conquered Egypt in 969. He built a new palace city in Egypt, near Fustat, which he also called el-Mansuriya. When the imam arrived in 973, the name was changed to el-Qahra (Cairo). The new city was rectangular rather than round in plan.[24] Both cities had mosques named el-Azhar after the prophet Muhammad's daughter, Fatima el-Azhar, and both had gates named Bab el-Futuh and Bab Zuwaila.[6] Both cities had two palaces, for the caliph and for his heir, opposite each other.[24]
After the Fatimid caliphs moved to Egypt, el-Mansuriya remained the capital of the
Destruction
The city faced attacks from Arab nomads from the Banu Hilal tribe. In 1057 the Zirids abandoned it for el-Mahdia, and it was never occupied again.[8] Its building materials were later used by the inhabitants of Kairouan.[26] As of 2009 the site of the city was a wasteland, crossed by many ditches, surrounded by the homes of poor people. Anything that could be reused for construction or other purposes has been scavenged during the centuries since it was abandoned. Stones, bricks, glass and metal were all removed. Little survived except fragments of unusable stucco.[8]
Archaeology
Aerial surveys of the site have confirmed that there was a very large artificial enclosure, roughly circular in shape, within which are what is left of several circular and rectangular basins.[17] The basins may be identified with the artificial pools described by the court poet Ali ibn Muhammad el-Iyadi, which surrounded the palace.[27] The foundations have been revealed through archaeological excavations.[26] Traces of the great hall's columns are still visible.[19] Some parts of the canal can still be seen.[18]
A minor excavation was undertaken by Georges Marçais in the 1920s. Slimane Mostafa Zbiss conducted a more thorough excavation in the 1950s of the palace in the southeast quadrant of the city.[28] Further excavations by a Franco-Tunisian team were made around the southeast palace in the late 1970s, ending in 1982.[28] Few results have been published from these earlier excavations, and no records were made of the stratigraphic locations of the stucco fragments that were found.[28]
A more careful project was undertaken between 2003 and 2008, with more effort made to place the stucco fragments. There is evidence of multiple phases of occupation with different styles of decoration, including flower and leaf patterns, geometric patterns, animal and human figures and epigraphy. Some decorations resemble pre-Islamic Tunisian work, while others are common to other Islamic sites.
Notes
Citations
- ^ a b c Tracy 2000, p. 234.
- ISBN 978-90-04-09834-3.
- ISBN 978-0-521-33767-0.
- ^ a b Yeomans 2006, p. 43.
- ^ a b c The Art of the Fatimid Period.
- ^ a b c d Yeomans 2006, p. 44.
- ^ a b Kupferschmidt 1987, p. 435.
- ^ a b c d e Barrucand & Rammah 2009, p. 349.
- ^ Kupferschmidt 1987, p. 436.
- ^ a b Jayyusi et al. 2008, p. 128.
- ^ Halm 1996, p. 331.
- ^ Jayyusi et al. 2008, p. 129.
- ^ Deza & Deza 2012, p. 533.
- ^ a b c Ruggles 2011, p. 120.
- ^ Cortese & Calderini 2006, p. 71.
- ^ Tracy 2000, p. 235.
- ^ a b Grabar 1985, p. 28.
- ^ a b c Halm 1996, p. 345.
- ^ a b Halm 1996, p. 344.
- ^ Halm 1996, p. 361.
- ^ Halm 1996, p. 407.
- ^ Grabar 1985, p. 31.
- ^ Halm 1996, p. 408.
- ^ a b Safran 2000, p. 68.
- ^ Cortese & Calderini 2006, p. 92.
- ^ a b Daftary 1998, p. 75.
- ^ Grabar 1985, pp. 28–29.
- ^ a b c Barrucand & Rammah 2009, p. 350.
- ^ Barrucand & Rammah 2009, p. 351.
- ^ Barrucand & Rammah 2009, p. 352.
Sources
- Barrucand, Marianne; Rammah, Mourad (2009). "Sabra el-Mansuriyya and her neighbors during the first half of the eleventh century: Investigations into stucco decoration". Muqarnas. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-17589-1.
- Cortese, Delia; Calderini, Simonetta (2006). Women And the Fatimids in the World of Islam. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-1733-3.
- Daftary, Farhad (1998). A Short History of the Ismailis: Traditions of a Muslim Community. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-0904-8.
- Deza, Michel Marie; ISBN 978-3-6423-0958-8.
- Grabar, Oleg (1 June 1985). Muqarnas, Volume 3: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-07611-2.
- Halm, Heinz (1996). The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Vol. 26. Translated by Michael Bonner. Leiden: BRILL. ISBN 9004100563.
- Jayyusi, Salma Khadra; Holod, Renata; Petruccioli, Attilio; Raymond, André (2008). The City in the Islamic World. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-17168-8.
- Kupferschmidt, Uri M. (1987). The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam Under the British Mandate for Palestine. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-07929-8.
- Ruggles, D. Fairchild (2011). Islamic Art and Visual Culture: An Anthology of Sources. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-5401-7.
- Safran, Janina M. (2000). The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in El-Andalus. Harvard CMES. ISBN 978-0-932885-24-1.
- "The Art of the Fatimid Period (909–1171)". Metmuseum.org. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-521-65221-6.
- Yeomans, Richard (2006). The art and architecture of islamic cairo. Garnet & Ithaca Press. ISBN 978-1-85964-154-5.