devoted to the smiths and copper workers, for this is
the business centre.
In addition to the outside Thursday market already
mentioned, there is an inside Thursday market in the
open space called Jumû'a el Fana, where busi-
Juuma .
e l Fanâ. ness ls done, t°°> on Friday, and a considerable
trade in country produce is conducted
every day. Here is the great centre for jugglers, snake-
charmers, acrobats, story-tellers and mountebanks generally
; on feast days also for “ powder-play,” which is likewise
indulged in outside the Bab el Khamees and near
the shrine of Sidi bel Abbâs.
To the south-west of the Jumû’a el Fana, in the midst
of the gardens which fill most of the space
The Kûtûbîya , . . . .
Mosque. beyond within the walls, towards Bab er-Rubb,
stands the most prominent feature in all
Marrakesh, the Kûtûbîya tower, sister to the Giralda of
Seville and the Borj el Hassan of Rabat. The mosque
at its base can be but a portion of that erected with it
about the year 1200, at the same time as the kasbah
and its mosque.1 AH that the foreigner now sees is
some elegant stone-work adorning a sunken exterior
wall, o f an age and style corresponding to those of the
tower, and a glimpse of theinterior. The roof is supported
by large square columns, said to be o f marble, which is
very likely, although they are white-washed. It is said
that there is a tank beneath of the size of the mosque,
such as once existed underneath its fellow at Rabat.
The tower itself, commanding in simplicity, straight
and square, with crenellated parapet, and then a lanthorn
tower, rises to the height of about 250 feet.*
The Tower. .
its massive walls of hewn stone enclose seven
* Or 270 ft., according to another calculation. Jackson makes it 200 ft.,
Beaumier 70 mètres, but it has been estimated at 120 metres. Cape Cantin
storeys, each consisting of a single, vaulted chamber,
round which an inclined way, solidly arched, conducts
to the summit. Those narrow slits, as the windows
appear from below, are splayed within, so that there is
plenty of light, and it is said that the interior is richly
decorated, but from what one knows of kindred buildings
this statement is rendered doubtful. A t various stages
three blind muédhdhins chant the calls to prayer, their
salary being provided by the produce of certain olive
groves. The name of this mosque is said by Leo Afri-
canus to be derived from the book shops which at one
time surrounded it, no less than two hundred in number!
The funds with which it was erected were largely the
ameer’s fifth of the booty taken from Spain, and European
workmen, if not architects, were employed in its
construction. Close by is the unpretentious grave of the
builder of Marrákesh, surrounded only by a ruinous wall,
of which tradition says that whenever a shrine has been
raised there it has fallen as soon as the tower was finished.
The lanthorn is surmounted, in the quaint words of
Pory’s Leo, by “ a golden halfe móone, vpon a barre
of iron, with three spheares of golde vnder
it; which golden spheares are so fastened vnto The
the saide iron barre that the greatest is lowest,
and the least highest,” which, “ spheares” have given
rise to much discussion and some confusion with a similar
set on the kasbah mosque tower.* Both sets seem to
have roused the cupidity of impecunious ameers and
others, but still they remain— or their successors do —
for when some yeats ago they had to be restored after
is said by Leo to be visible from its summit. The west face measures
12 m. 30 c. across, or 3 m. 20 c. less than that of Rabat. For illustration
see The Moorish Empire, p. 77.
* Captain John Smith understood that “ these golden Bals of Affrica”
were on the Christian church— surely the mistake of some copyist.
20