Morphological Diversity Of Ancient Minarets Architecture In The Ziban Region (Algeria): The Question Of Form, Style And Character

2020-12-31
Zerari, Sami
Sriti, Leila
Pace, Vincenzo
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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The minaret is one of the most powerful symbols of Islam in the world because of its role in the call to prayer (adhan). It is undoubtedly a signal of the presence of a mosque in human settlements throughout history. A minaret consists essentially of four main cross-sections (segments): the basement, the shaft (tower), the gallery-balcony (the platform from which the muezzin calls out the adhan) and the top or lantern. By using these basic components, the master builders combine them ingeniously, so that they generate a wide morphological diversity of minarets that vary according to the region and the period in which they were built. This paper aims to explore and analyse the question of the form, style and character of the architecture of the ancient minarets of the Ziban, a Saharan region in south-eastern Algeria, to understand the origin of this diversity. The methodology adopted is based on a literature review, iconographic documents, an architectural survey and local memory as a means of data collection. The comparative morphological analysis applied to a set of minarets representative of the Ziban region indicates that the main criterion for distinguishing them is the configuration of the shaft. Thus, by classifying the minarets according to the formal attributes of their shafts, four morphological types were identified: the pyramidal minaret, the prismatic minaret, the cone-shaped (or obelisk-shaped) minaret, and the hybrid-shaped (combination of forms) minaret. In addition, the paper discusses the chronological and regional evolution of these minarets as well as the main factors influencing their architecture. The cultural and artistic contributions, the know-how and social affiliation of the builder, along with the style of the period reinforced by the demolition/reconstruction operations, are all factors acting on the morphological diversity of the ancient minarets of the Ziban. This research work brings new knowledge on the vernacular constructive culture and the stylistic contributions to religious architecture in the Ziban region. The new facts established by this study highlight the distinctive morphological identity of Maghribi vernacular mosques and fill the gap in the state of knowledge on this type of buildings.
Architecture, Minaret, Ziban, Morphological analysis, Morphological types, Stylistic contributions
http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/content/view/186/171/
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91244
Department of Architecture, Article

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Citation Formats
S. Zerari, L. Sriti, and V. Pace, “Morphological Diversity Of Ancient Minarets Architecture In The Ziban Region (Algeria): The Question Of Form, Style And Character,” ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 127–152, 2020, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/content/view/186/171/.
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