Koutoubia

The Koutoubia Mosque (Arabic: كتبية [kutubiyah]) is a religious building built in the twelfth century in Marrakech (Morocco) and representative of Almohad art.
History:
The Koutoubia Mosque, the mosque or the book began in the Berber dynasty of the Almoravids in 1120, but was redesigned substantially since 1162 under the Almohad emir Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, and became one of the most characteristic of this style. Its name comes from the fact that it was in the bazaar of merchants manuscripts.
Architecture:

The mosque of the booksellers arranged in a T This tradition has existed since the construction of the mosque of Kairouan in the ninth century, and is also found in Spain. It's actually an Arab plan hypostyle ie with a large courtyard surrounded by a portico and a colonnaded prayer hall. The aisles are perpendicular to the qibla wall, the center is wider and the space along the qibla wall also magnified, forming a T, hence the name. The mihrab is treated as a deep niche, and the minaret, 69 m in height, is square in the Muslim tradition of the West.
Decoration:
Almohad dynasty, who joined the Maliki rite, is sponsoring an austere architecture, which reflects a certain asceticism. The Koutoubia Mosque is no exception: its simplicity, is evident from his account. Arcs can be used or passed polylobés, but remain naked.
The minaret is later (ending in 1196), and most decorated: there is an important work of interlaced arches (sebka). It is topped by three golden balls of copper, which symbolizes the underworld, the heavenly world and the spirit world. He served, among others, a model for the Giralda in Seville.
The exterior landscape of the minaret is different on all four sides: the epigraphic coat paint and floral, the interlocking network of relief when interspersed paintings, pottery white strip steak on turquoise, sometimes interlocking arches. It is built of sandstone from the quarries of slate Gueliz. Beautifully proportions: 12.80 for 69 of the flashlight with height (77 m from the tip of the arrow), with an exterior wall of 2.50 m. In the middle of the block of flats out of a core of six rooms overlapping. All around, a gently sloping ramp leads to the walk. The platform is surrounded by a road protected by a fence of jagged explosion. The lantern, the top 16 m, appears as a second minaret standing at first. It is surmounted by a metal rod down four golden balls of decreased size, greater than 6 m in diameter. They are made of gilded copper plates riveted together.
Furniture:
The Booksellers' Mosque retains a magnificent minbar dating from 1137, in another mosque of Cordoba. Like most people in the West, is mobile (on wheels), composed of different types of wood, but not ivory. The bill for the decor, very end, Ajour, lasted seven years. Has small bows glued to each other that marks the emmarchements and taste for polychromy is remarkable.