The mosque in the Kasbah of Seville, founded by Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, the second caliph of the Almohad state, and his son Ya'qub al-Mansur completed the construction of the minaret, which was the tallest building in the world during the 12th century.

The second mosque built in Seville, Andalusia, since its foundation in the Islamic era, took about 10 years to build, and was a sign of urban beauty that reflects Islamic art in that era, and one of the mosques that formed the path of the religious architectural journey of the Almohads, and the third largest mosque in the Islamic West.

One of its characteristics is that the entrance to it was from 15 doors, and it has a main lobby decorated with orange trees, and the minaret (Giralda) as the Spaniards call it, whose architecture and creativity reveal its Islamic historical origins and Arab construction, and today it is one of the greatest monuments of the Almohads remaining in Seville.

Incorporation and Establishment

The construction of the second mosque in Seville dates back to the reign of the Almohad caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf ibn Abd al-Mumin (r. 1163-1184), who was a lover of arts and literature, and fond of architecture and construction.

The second caliph of the Almohad state ordered the construction of this new mosque at the major crossroads, at the entrance to the Kasbah of Seville, when the worshipers narrowed the first mosque known as the Ibn Adis Mosque, after 3 centuries of its construction during the reign of Abd al-Rahman al-Awsat.

They used to pray in the mosque of Ibn 'Udais and its cellars and in the shops of the markets connected to it, so that the takbeer was kept away from them by obligation.

Abu Yaqoub wanted to emulate the mosque of the next mosque of Cordoba, in capacity, height and decoration, and entrusted Ahmed bin Basa Al-Ishbili, the greatest architect of his time, to develop the designs of the mosque and lead the construction work in it, along with a group of builders from the people of Andalusia, Fez and Marrakesh.

The construction of the mosque began in Ramadan 1172, so the house inside the Kasbah was demolished, and the place was vacated to house this great landmark, and its vizier Muhammad bin Abdul Malik bin Zuhr was assigned to supervise the stages of its construction.

It was said that the foundations of the walls of the mosque were dug until water appeared from the ground, and then the foundations were laid in brick, lime, plaster and stone.

The construction continued for 3 years and 11 months, and the caliph followed the work himself, until the work was completed on its four sides and its arcades and domes were connected.

The construction of the roof was completed in 1176, and he ordered the use of the building, which was inaugurated on April 14, 1182, in a ceremony attended with his crown prince, all his sons, and the elders and notables of the city.

The role of the Ibn Adis Mosque as a mosque ended, when the first Friday sermon was delivered in the new Great Mosque, and it was spacious, with 17 cylinders in its sanctuary, and it had 5 domes standing on the qibla wall.

Mosque Architecture

The layout of the Great Mosque follows the style of the traditional mosque, which is the middle courtyard, and the four canopies surrounding it, including the qibla canopy, which occupies two-thirds of the building area, and consists of 17 tiles, while the two side canopies consist of only one slab.

Access was through 15 gates, 7 of which were on the eastern and western sides, the rest on the northern side, and the main door is known as the "Saffron Gate".

It consists of 17 porticoes perpendicular to the qibla wall, and the ceilings took pyramidal shapes to the right of the mihrab, and a niche was opened in the mosque wall (qibla wall), to place the pulpit made of wood, studded with stained sandals inlaid with ivory, gold foil and silver.

Then a cabin was erected that surrounded the mihrab and the pulpit for the caliph's prayer, and Bani Sabak connected the mosque and the palace; it was prepared for the caliph to walk in it as he left his palace to the mosque to attend prayers.

Historians mention that the mosque combined structural and artistic images, which appeared in the mosques of the Almohads in Marrakesh, and other images inspired by the Mosque of Cordoba, from which it took its external appearance, the greatness of its courtyard, as well as the style of its decorations and the system of its contracts, and in the number of its 11 tiles, which were directed perpendicular to the qibla wall, ranging between 48 and 50 meters.

It was 37 meters high in the middle, and was estimated to be approximately 150 meters in length and 110 meters in width.

The annals indicate that the mosque had a flash built by Ya'qub al-Mansur in 1199 and found in excavations in 1994 in front of and near Giralda, but it is not known what style its architecture was.

Minaret construction

The mosque was without a minaret when it was opened, so the Caliph Abu Yaqoub entrusted his governor Abu Dawood Jalloul bin Gildsan to build a hermitage, on the northern wall of the mosque, and that was when he arrived in Seville in his conquest to "Santarine" in 1184, but the construction was disrupted by their death.

In 1188, his successor, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub, nicknamed "Al-Mansur", ordered the new governor to supervise the completion of his father's project, and the construction of the mosque's minaret began in its early stages, the engineer Ahmad Ibn Bassa, with the stone called the ordinary tajoun transferred from the wall of Ibn Abbad's palace.

After his death, the Moroccan engineer Ali Al-Ghamari continued the work, modifying what was disrupted from the construction of the mosque in previous years from its four sides, or from the side of its pillars, walls and roofs, and it had new additions such as glass umbrellas, and tightening the roofing of its roofs with bricks from the outside.

The construction work lasted for years, and was disrupted if the caliph left Seville for Marrakesh, and then resumed when he came, and he stayed with the builders in person during the periods when he was rebuilding.

The minaret of the mosque was turned into a bell tower attached to the church (Shutterstock)

In 1195, the people of Seville welcomed the victorious army of Jacob al-Mansur in the Battle of Arc over the King of Castile, by raising a white and green banner over the mosque, (the cloth would in later centuries inspire Place Infante to make it the current banner of the autonomous region of Andalusia).

Al-Mansur had used the remaining five of the spoils of the battle to build the mosque in her memory, and built a minaret for him that took its final form after 3 years.

When he ordered to provide it with 4 golden apples, and the teacher Abu Al-Laith Al-Siqali supervised their manufacture, and raised them to the top of the lighthouse.

The apples were installed successively on top of each other with a prominent iron suffals at the top of the dome of the minaret, and then the membranes that covered them were removed during the preparation period, in a ceremony attended by the caliph, his crown prince al-Nasir and all his sons, the sheikhs and courtiers of the Almohads, and the judge and notables of the city, in 1197.

Lighthouse of Andalusia

The Almohad minaret was built of bricks, and its shape was a tower with a square base and a square core inside, and around it was a rising slope surmounted by cross domes. The central core contains 7 rooms with a square layout, 5 of which are roofed with hemispherical domes.

The minaret ends with a smaller tower, at the top of which is a huge column carrying 4 apples weighing 7,29 weights, and estimated Abdul Hadi Tazi, investigator of the book "Manna by the Imamate" by the son of the owner of the prayer, the weight of gold, which was painted by about <> and a half kilograms.

The minaret of al-Mansur is 96 meters high, surpassing that of the Cordoba Mosque, which until then was the highest minaret in Morocco and Andalusia.

One of its characteristics is that it is not ascended by a staircase, but by steep passages paved with bricks, in the middle third of which are 4 layers of side bluffs, and it has Arab windows and balconies, and its facades are decorated with exquisite Arabic and Moroccan carvings.

Its four layers are topped by a fifth layer, with high arcades and terraces, which is likely to have been the muezzins class, and then the last layer, and it was said that the muezzin used to climb to the top of the lighthouse, riding his horse to call for prayer.

Some historians described this landmark as "not modifying it in all the mosques of Andalusia, the accuracy of the work, and the strangeness of the workmanship", as it played an important role later in Moroccan and Andalusian architecture in terms of its planning and shape pattern, and the decorations and inscriptions it contained.

It played an important role in the field of astronomy, as it was used to observe the movement of the moon and stars, know the direction of the qibla, prayer times, observe crescents, and sunrise and sunset dates.

The remaining impact of the Almohads

After the fall of Seville to the Christians in 1248, the Great Almohad Mosque was transformed into a church, and the remains of Fernando III of Castile were preserved, and the tomb of Christopher Columbus was built in place of the mihrab square, while the mosque remained intact without significant changes in construction.

Then it was severely damaged by the earthquakes that struck the country, so its tribal side was demolished, and a cathedral was established on its site, and the foyer known as the "Orange Lobby" remained intact until its western side was destroyed.

Only several arches remain of the Almohad Mosque overlooking its courtyard from the north and east, including the door arch known as the "Bab al-Ghufran", the bronze-armored door shutters and its Kufic inscriptions.

The preserved decorations are limited to those carved from stucco in the internal arch of the main door, and to the arch overlooking the nave in the extension of this door.

In addition to the muqarnas dome in the eastern door, and the decorations of the entrance arches leading to the nave, with their textures with prominent bands, in which rectangles and squares are drawn on their heads.

The middle band of the decorations of this arch consists of smooth palm fronds devoid of stems, carved in two layers.

The minaret was retained on the origin of its main structure with its five layers, and turned into a bell tower attached to the church, and then there was a change in its upper third, after losing its golden apples, so the Spaniards erected a new floor at the top of which a statue rotated with the wind, called "Geraldo" or "Wind Rotary".

Since the early 18th century, the entire tower has been given the name "El Giralda", a name given to it by Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, and later spread in history books.

They said in the description of the mosque

The Andalusian historian Abd al-Malik ibn Sahib al-Salat described the Great Mosque of Seville in the book "Al-Manna bi al-Imamate" as "the boat of the Mosque of Cordoba in capacity, and not in Andalusia a mosque of its capacity, capacity and number of tiles."

Ahmad ibn al-Muqri al-Tilmisani said, in the breath of Tayyib from the moist branch of Andalusia, "It (Seville) has a lighthouse in its mosque built by Ya'qub al-Mansur, not in the countries of Islam the greatest building than it."

Spanish archaeologist Contreras said "Giralda looks like a complete edifice of the Arabian style, with the appearance of real decorative art, and unfortunately this beautiful tower has been crowned with a very foreign object, which does not allow us to imagine its old position, its golden apple, and its bright blue colors."

American historian Jonathan Lyons wrote in his book "House of Wisdom" "When Seville fell in 1248, the barbaric Castilian forces did not know that the minaret of the Great Mosque of the city was also the first astronomical observatory in Europe.