Almoravid Qubba
old water fountain in Marrakesh
The Almoravid Qubba (Arabic: القبة المرابطية), also known as the Qubbat al-Ba'diyyin or Qubbat al-Barudiyyin, is a small monument in Marrakesh, Morocco. It was erected by the Almoravid dynasty in the early 12th century. It is notable for its extraordinary decoration and for being one of the only remnants of Almoravid architecture in Marrakesh.
History
The Almoravid Qubba is situated next to the Marrakech Museum and around 40 meters south of the Mosque of Ben Youssef. It is the only surviving example of Almoravid architecture in Marrakesh. Its inscription states it was built on Wednesday, 30th Rabi I by the Almoravid ruler Ali ibn Yusuf. But the year is missing, giving four options, the most plausible of which being either 1 August 1117 or, more likely, 6 May 1125. Scholars have generally accepted that it belonged to the nearby Ben Youssef Mosque, the main mosque of the city at the time, and that it was a pavilion used for ritual ablutions before prayer. The mosque itself, also originally built by Ali ibn Yusuf, has since been completely rebuilt in more recent centuries. This type of structure for providing water near a mosque was also known as a mida'a (Arabic: ميضأة; "ablutions facility") and is found in later mosques in Marrakesh.
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This entry incorporates text from “Almoravid Qubba” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.