The Lalla Ghriba Mosque is one of the main neighbourhood mosques of Fes el-Jdid, a part of the historic

medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...

Fes Fez or Fes (; ar, فاس, fās; zgh, ⴼⵉⵣⴰⵣ, fizaz; french: Fès) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fès-Meknès administrative region. It is the second largest city in Morocco, with a population of 1.11 mi ...

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

. The mosque was founded in 1408, under the reign of the

Marinid The Marinid Sultanate was a Berber Muslim empire from the mid-13th to the 15th century which controlled present-day Morocco and, intermittently, other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) a ...

sultan Abu Sa'id Uthman III. The surrounding Lalla Ghriba neighbourhood is named after the mosque, and occupies the far east and northeast of Fes el-Jdid. This area had previously been occupied by grain

silo A silo (from the Greek σιρός – ''siros'', "pit for holding grain") is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store fermented feed known as silage, not to be confused with a grain bin, which is used t ...

s and open spaces where passing troops could camp. The mosque's relatively late foundation (compared to other Marinid mosques in the city, which were mostly founded before the 15th century), likely reflects the fact that this area, far from the city's main street, took longer to develop into a residential area. After the neighbourhood's development, only the southeast part of the city, near

Bab Semmarine Bab Semmarine () is the monumental southern gate of Fes el-Jdid, a part of the old city of Fez, Morocco. History The original gate at this location was initially called ''Bab 'Oyun Sanhaja'' ("Gate of the (water) Sources of the Sanhaja"). Th ...

, was left as yet unsettled. The mosque's minaret is slimmer and more tapered than those of other contemporary mosques. Curiously, it was used as a reference point for the orientation of the main avenue (Avenue Hassan II today) of the ''Ville Nouvelle'' (New City) of Fes when it was being built under the

French colonial French colonial architecture includes several styles of architecture used by the French during colonization. Many former French colonies, especially those in Southeast Asia, have previously been reluctant to promote their colonial architecture ...

governor Lyautey in 1916.

References

Mosques in Fez, Morocco Marinid architecture {{Morocco-mosque-stub

See also

References