Mansourah Mosque () is a ruined historic mosque in the city of Mansourah, Algeria, dates back to the

Marinid dynasty The Marinid dynasty ( ) was a Berbers, Berber Muslim dynasty that controlled present-day Morocco from the mid-13th to the 15th century and intermittently controlled other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian P ...

. It consists of a part of the Mansourah Castle. The excavation has revealed regarding the design of the mosque that it was built by the

Sultan Sultan (; ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be use ...

Abu Yakub in 1303, and the decoration of the main gate was done by Abu al-Hassan in 1336. Inside the yard there are 13 doors which surrounded by the wall, and a

sahn A ''sahn'' (, '), is a courtyard in Islamic architecture, especially the formal courtyard of a mosque. Most traditional mosques have a large central ''sahn'', which is surrounded by a ''Riwaq (arcade), riwaq'' or arcade (architecture), arcade on ...

with a fountain in the middle. The sahn is surrounded by three corridors, of which employ similar tilework with the prayer hall. The prayer hall is connected directly to the sahn and contains tilework similar to the

qibla The qibla () is the direction towards the Kaaba in the Great Mosque of Mecca, Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer for the salah. In Islam, the Kaaba is believed to ...

wall, the design which can be observed as well on the 13th-century Baybars Mosque in

Samarra Samarra (, ') is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Saladin Governorate, north of Baghdad. The modern city of Samarra was founded in 836 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim as a new administrative capital and mi ...

.الشاهد الذي تحدى الزمن
. ''الشرق اليومي''. Retrieved January 7, 2018.مسجد المنصورة
. ''Saaih''. Retrieved January 7, 2018. The main entrance to the mosque leads to the iconic

minaret A minaret is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques. Minarets are generally used to project the Muslim call to prayer (''adhan'') from a muezzin, but they also served as landmarks and symbols of Islam's presence. They can h ...

as well, which is square-shaped, inspired by the minarets built by the previous dynasties in North Africa and Iberia, and reaches 38 meters.

Gallery

File:Mansourah 03.jpg, Close-up of the

File:Colonnes provenant de la mosquée de Mansourah.JPG, Mosque wall File:Muraille de mansourah,Tlemcen..jpg, Outer castle wall File:Visite de l'intérieur de la mosquée de Mansourah, Tlemcen.webm, Visit of the interior of the Mansourah Mosque

References

Mosques completed in the 1300s Mosques in Tlemcen Marinid architecture Buildings and structures completed in 1303 {{Algeria-mosque-stub

Gallery

See also

References