Colonial Zaytuna

The Making of a Minaret in French-Occupied Tunisia

Bibliographic Data

ID19416407
AuthorsSihem Lamine (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume38
Issue1
Pages185-221
Publication date2021-12-06
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMuqarnas Online (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0732-2992 • E-ISSN: 2211-8993
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/22118993-00381p07
OpenAlexW4200304154
LanguageEN
Citations received49

In March 1892, eleven years after the establishment of the French protectorate in Tunisia, a congregation of ulemas, religious scholars, and students, as well as representatives of the waqf administration ( Jamʿiyyat al-Awqāf ) gathered in the ṣaḥn of the Zaytuna Mosque to lay the cornerstone of a new minaret. The pre-exiting tower, whose latest major renovations dated from the seventeenth-century Ottoman Muradid times, was deemed hazardous; it was therefore entirely demolished and replaced by a large-scale replica of the nearby Hafsid Kasbah Mosque of Tunis. The new minaret of the Zaytuna Mosque rose in tandem with the Saint Vincent de Paul Cathedral of Tunis, and simultaneously with the nascent French neighborhoods of Tunis outside and along the medina walls. This article explores the intricate and fascinating context of the construction of a monumental minaret in a city that was gradually severing ties with its Ottoman past and surrendering to a newly established colonial rule. It questions the role and aspirations of the French administration in the minaret project, the reasons that led to the revival of the Almohad architectural style in the late nineteenth-century Maghrib, and the legacy left by the re-appropriation of this style in North Africa

Ancient history · Appropriation · Archaeology · Art history · Colonialism · Protectorate · SAINT · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical Studies of Medieval Iberia · History

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