The gateway
Muqarnas and zellige.
Tonowari — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Terki hassaine samir — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bernard Gagnon — CC BY 4.0 · Bernard Gagnon — CC BY 4.0 · Bernard Gagnon — CC BY 4.0
A religious and historic complex in El Eubbad on the hillside east of Tlemcen, holding the tomb of the Sufi saint Abu Madyan Shu'ayb al-Andalusi, known as Sidi Boumediene, one of the great figures of Sufism in the twelfth-century Islamic Maghreb, together with a fourteenth-century mosque and madrasa. The Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan built the mosque in 1339; it is famous for its monumental gateway decorated with coloured muqarnas and zellige, its wooden door clad in carved bronze, a prayer hall of arches and fine stucco, and an ornate minaret. Beside the mosque is the madrasa where great scholars taught, among them, by tradition, the historian Ibn Khaldun, together with the tomb that visitors seek out and the old stairway climbing between houses to the complex, giving the place a special spirituality. Entry is free outside prayer times, in modest dress. The district is quiet and overlooks the city and the plain, and morning is the nicest time to visit.
Muqarnas and zellige.
Fine carving.
Great scholars.
El Eubbad, east Tlemcen
Abu Madyan Shu'ayb al-Andalusi, a great twelfth-century Sufi of the Maghreb, buried in Tlemcen.
