Madrasas and mausoleums of the Casbah of Algiers

Sidi Abdarrahman al-Thaalibi was the patron saint of al-Djazaïr, and he died in the year 877 of the Hijra, 1470 in the common era. The building history of his shrine begins well after that and runs across three phases.

A dome was raised over the tomb in 1020 of the Hijra, 1611. A major transformation followed in 1108 of the Hijra, 1696, ordered by Dey al-Hadj Ahmad al-Atchi, and the work was completed in 1141 of the Hijra, 1730. What that transformation did is the interesting part: it turned the square mausoleum into a prayer hall, principally by introducing a mihrab. A tomb became a mosque without ceasing to be a tomb.

The structural problem in a domed square building is the transition from a square plan to a circle, and here it is solved with four pairs of semi-engaged columns that carry the plan from square to octagon so the dome can sit on it. That is a piece of straightforward, legible engineering and it is visible from inside the room.

The mihrab is flanked by two columns and faced in faïence. The minaret is square in plan and carries three levels of blind arcading, each level crowned with earthenware tiles. Within the enclosure there is a small cemetery holding the tombs of other notable figures, among them other saints and Dey ‘Umar.

The vocabulary is the same as everywhere else in the quarter: tile at the level a body meets the wall, arcading in tiers, and the whole thing turned inward behind an enclosure. The architecture page sets out that grammar.

A zaouia is not a tomb and not a mosque. It is a religious and teaching institution, typically attached to the memory of a particular figure, with a building, an endowment and a role in the education of the quarter.

The Casbah once had eighteen. It now has two. Over the same period a hundred and thirty mosques became ten and about a hundred hammams became six. Those are not separate statistics, they are one statistic recorded three times, and the mechanism behind it is the one the mosques page sets out: these institutions were funded by habus, permanent endowments of property assigned to a named building's upkeep. Break the link and the building has a repair bill and no income.

When the mosques page was written it named Sidi Abderrahmane as its principal omission, because no source meeting this site's standard had been found for it. That source has since been found and this page is the result. The gap is closed and the mosques page now points here.

That is how this site is meant to work, and it seems worth saying out loud rather than quietly editing the older page and pretending the gap was never there.

The madrasas themselves. This page is titled for them and cannot yet describe a single one properly. The teaching institutions of Ottoman Algiers, what they taught, who endowed them, where they stood and what became of their buildings, are not covered here because no institutional or peer-reviewed description of them was obtained.

The one documented connection this site can make is indirect: Dar Khdaouedj el-Amia may stand on the site of an eighth-century zaouia, and Djamaa el Djedid of 1660 was built on the site of the Abu Inan madrasa. Both of those are recorded, and both of them are records of a teaching institution being built over.

If you have material on the madrasas of Algiers, please write to admin@casbah-alger.com.