The Almoravids: Marrakesh and Saharan connections
The Almoravid chapter brings Marrakesh, the Sahara and al-Andalus into one frame. Follow a capital and a network of exchange, then pause over a minbar surviving political change to carry more than one reign’s history.
A photograph of a place surviving today, not a reconstruction of the period.
A capital and its connections
The Metropolitan Museum connects the Almoravids with Marrakesh and routes across the Sahara and al-Andalus. UNESCO places Marrakesh’s Almoravid beginnings in the eleventh century; the century is used here because sources differ over the precise founding year.
A capital is more than government buildings. Materials, hands and knowledge meet there. Seen within a network, the movement of a skill or object also belongs to political and economic history.
The Kutubiyya minbar is one example: made in the Almoravid period, it was retained by the Almohads. The accompanying photograph shows today’s Almohad minaret, not the earlier Almoravid mosque; linked craft sources discuss the minbar itself.
Follow the object into the Almohad chapter. Political boundaries may be clear at particular moments without matching the boundaries of arts and knowledge, which can continue and find use in a new setting.
Story sources: The Metropolitan Museum of Art · UNESCOStory sources
Sources reviewed:
- Art of the Almoravid and Almohad periodsThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Minbar from the Kutubiyya MosqueThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Medina of MarrakeshUNESCO
