Tombeaux saadiens

The necropolis lies in the kasbah of Marrakesh, against the south wall of the Almohad mosque of Ya'qub al-Mansur, the mosque of the kasbah^4,3. Historical texts call it Qubur al-Ashraf, the tombs of the sharifs³. Discover Islamic Art notes that Almohad and Marinid ruling families had already buried relatives beside this mosque, although the present buildings are all Saadian³. According to Morocco’s Ministry of Culture, Sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib established the core of the necropolis in 1557 to house the tomb of his father Muhammad al-Shaykh, founder of the dynasty². Al-Ghalib, who died in 1574, was also buried here, as were several other members of the Saadian family².

Ahmad al-Mansur, who reigned from 1578 to 1603, restored Marrakesh to its former grandeur, according to Britannica⁷. He buried his mother Lalla Mas'uda here in 1591 and enlarged and embellished the necropolis². Archnet dates the second and larger mausoleum, al-Mansur’s own, to 1591-1603⁴. He died at Fez in 1603 and was buried here with several of his heirs^7,2. Archnet records that the necropolis was sealed off in 1677, yet the ministry names among its tombs that of the Alawite sultan Moulay al-Yazid, who died in 1792^4,5,2. In 1917 the Service des Beaux-Arts et des Monuments found the complex, and the same service restored it^2,6.

UNESCO lists the Saadian tombs among the works of architecture and art in Marrakesh that could each, on its own, justify recognition of outstanding universal value¹. A walled garden of 85 by 25 m holds two mausoleums and is entered from the west through a narrow open-air corridor about 13 m long⁴. The older one, on the north side, began as al-Ghalib’s domed qubba, a cubic chamber about 4 m wide with muqarnas niches and carved plaster picked out in polychrome gilding^4,3. In the 1590s al-Mansur wrapped it in a room of about 10 by 6 m and two loggias with paired white marble columns and cedar lintels carved with inscriptions, forming a pavilion 10 m square under a green tiled roof⁴. The ministry calls this part the Qubba of Lalla Mas'uda^2,8.

Al-Mansur’s own mausoleum, along the west wall, measures about 15 by 23 m⁴. From south to north it holds a prayer hall with a mihrab, the Hall of Twelve Columns and the Hall of Three Niches^3,2. The central hall is 10 m square and 11.5 m high according to Discover Islamic Art (12 m according to Archnet); twelve columns carry three muqarnas arches on each side, and a muqarnas cornice frames its geometric wooden ceiling^3,4. Zellij covers the floors and the walls up to about 2 m, below carved stucco with inscription bands and a cedar entablature⁴. Abbey Stockstill notes that the tombs are thought to follow the Marinid necropolis at Chellah, and the ministry sees both Marinid and Andalusian influences in the decoration^5,2.

In the Hall of Twelve Columns, five large cenotaphs, al-Mansur’s among them, stand in the central space, and smaller ones lie in the surrounding gallery⁴. Muqarnas arches span the galleries, with small square domes at the corners³. The prayer hall to the south is divided into three aisles, and its wooden ceiling is covered with geometric knotwork except behind the mihrab, where muqarnas take over³. In the older pavilion lie Muhammad al-Shaykh and al-Mansur’s mother Lalla Mas'uda^4,2. The tombs are pyramidal in shape and faced with marble or zellij². Discover Islamic Art counts 56 stelae and about 100 tombs in the chambers and the walled garden³.