The Koutoubia Mosque
Marrakesh's emblem - جامع الكتبية
The Koutoubia Mosque, was built by the Almohads to be the city’s Friday congregational mosque. The original version was completed in 1157. Its minaret, visible across town, is the city's emblem.
The minaret
The minaret is 77m tall, with a ratio of 5:1 height to width. That worked so well that it was taken as being the perfect minaret shape from then on. Rabat’s Hassan Tower and Seville’s Giralda are both modelled on it.
Originally the minaret was covered with plaster and painted, like the Kasbah Mosque, but the plaster fell off over the years, and it was decided during restoration in the 1990s that bare stone looks better on it.
Text © Daniel Jacobs
Images by Anna & Michal, Daniel Jacobs, James Byrum, Jorge Láscar, Jose Luis Garcia de los Salmones, Mzximvs VdB, Valentin Munitsa