The Renaissance of the Caliphs: Roman Columns and the Canon of Ancient Architecture in Early Modern Morocco

Abstract

In the Maghreb, too, people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were well aware of the region’s Roman past. But unlike in Europe, the Roman Empire was not the ultimate reference for contemporary monarchs. For Muslim rulers in the early modern period, the era of the Umayyad caliphs in the first centuries of the rise of Islam was considered the period of greatest glory, which every new monarch wished to revive. The sultans of Morocco in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were eager to compare themselves to the great caliphs of that glorious, distant past. The architecture of their new palaces, especially those in Marrakesh and Meknes, was also a reference to the great examples of those ancient times. From the contemporary poems on these palaces, it becomes clear that the princes and their intellectual entourage had their own canon of architectural history. This included, as might be expected, the important monuments of the historical caliphs in Damascus and Cordoba, but also some pre-Islamic monuments in Egypt, Persia and in Sheba (Yemen). Roman architecture is given only a modest role in this canon. Nevertheless, the classical columns formed an essential part of the palace architecture of the Moroccan sultans, as antique spolia or as new all’antica columns imported from Italy. After all, the dominant example for the new palaces of these sultans was the late antique architecture of the great caliphs of the seventh and eighth centuries CE, and in this architecture columns, entirely in the classical tradition, were an essential component. During the transition from one dynasty to another in the middle of the seventeenth century, the palace in Marrakesh was largely dismantled, but the most beautiful parts, including two exceptionally large marble columns, were given a new place of honour in the palace of the new capital Meknes.