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IN MOROCCO
Beyond the mosque, and opening into it by many wide
doors of beaten bronze or carved cedar-wood, lies the Court of
the Ablutions. The openings in the façade were multiplied in
order that, on great days, the faithful who were not able to enter the mosque might hear the prayers and catch a glimpse of
the mihrab.
In a corner of the courts stands the minaret. It is the structure on which Moslem art has played the greatest number of
variations, cutting off its angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan, and endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives by which the ground-plan of one story passes into
that of the next. These problems of transition, always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt to
many different compositions and ways of treatment; but in
Morocco the minaret, till modern times, remained steadfastly
square, and proved that no other plan is so beautiful as this
simplest one of all.
Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the schoolrooms, libraries and other dependencies, which grew as the Mahometan religion prospered and Arab culture developed.
The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque: it was
the academy where the Moslem schoolman prepared his theology and the other branches of strange learning which, to
the present day, make up the curriculum of the Mahometan
university. The medersa is an adaptation of the private house to
religious and educational ends; or, if one prefers another analogy, it is a fondak built above a miniature mosque. The groundplan is always the same: in the centre an arcaded court with
a fountain, on one side the long narrow praying-chapel with
221
EDITH WHARTON
the mihrab, on the other a class-room with the same groundplan; and on the next story a series of cell-like rooms for the students, opening on carved cedar-wood balconies. This cloistered
plan, where all the effect is reserved for the interior façades
about the court, lends itself to a delicacy of detail that would be
inappropriate on a street-front; and the medersas of Fez are endlessly varied in their fanciful but never exuberant decoration.
M. Tranchant de Lunel has pointed out (in “France-Maroc”)
with what a sure sense of suitability the Merinid architects adapted this decoration to the uses of the buildings. On the lower fl oor,
under the cloister, is a revêtement of marble (often alabaster)
or of the almost indestructible ceramic mosaic.
above, massive cedar-wood corbels ending in monsters of almost
Gothic inspiration support the fretted balconies; and above rise
stucco interlacings, placed too high up to be injured by man, and
guarded from the weather by projecting eaves.
The private house, whether merchant’s dwelling or chieftain’s palace, is laid out on the same lines, with the addition of
the reserved quarters for women; and what remains in Spain
and Sicily of Moorish secular architecture shows that, in
the Merinid period, the play of ornament must have been – as
was natural – even greater than in the medersas.
The Arab chroniclers paint pictures of Merinid palaces,
such as the House of the Favourite at Cordova, which the soberer modern imagination refused to accept until the medersas of Fez were revealed, and the old decorative tradition was
shown in the eighteenth century Moroccan palaces. The de-
27
On the fl oor
27
These Moroccan mosaics are called zellijes.
222
IN MOROCCO
scriptions given of the palaces of Fez and of Marrakech in
the preceding articles, which make it unnecessary, in so slight
a note as this, to go again into the detail of their planning
and decoration, will serve to show how gracefully the art of
the mosque and the medersa was lightened and domesticated to suit these cool chambers and fl ower-fi lled courts.
With regard to the immense fortifi cations that are the most
picturesque and noticeable architectural features of Morocco,
the fi rst thing to strike the traveller is the diffi culty of discerning any difference in the probable date of their construction
until certain structural peculiarities are examined, or the ornamental details of the great gateways are noted. Thus the Almohad portions of the walls of Fez and Rabat are built of stone,
while later parts are of rubble; and the touch of European infl uence in certain gateways of Meknez and Fez at once situate
them in the seventeenth century. But the mediæval outline of
these great piles of masonry, and certain technicalities in
their plan, such as the disposition of the towers, alternating in
the inner and outer walls, continued unchanged throughout
the different dynasties; and this immutability of the Moroccan military architecture enables the imagination to picture,
not only what was the aspect of the fortifi ed cities which
the Greeks built in Palestine and Syria, and the Crusaders
brought back to Europe, but even that of the far-off AssyrioChaldæan strongholds to which the whole fortifi ed architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe seems to lead back.
Литературно-художественное издание
Edith Wharton
In Morocco
Выпускающий редактор: И. Краснова
Редактор: П. Воронин
Корректор: И. Шаболова
Компьютерная верстка: Т. Серёгина
Художественное оформление: М. Соколова
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