Architectural Geology of Rabat, Part 2: Homage to the Bab Oudaya | Morocco
Facing northward. At the entrance to the Kasbah of the Udayas.
For the list of my primary sources for this series, see the bottom of the Part 1 essay.
How well I remember standing next to this, the Bab Oudaya, the Bab El-Kabir, the Bab Lakbir, or the Great Gate of the Kasbah of the Udayas—other versions and transliterations also exist. That was the moment I first beheld the true magnificence of Islamic architecture. And, in this specific case, the Moroccan-Amohad version thereof. For me, it was an epiphany that did much to modify my understanding of the beautiful.
In 1976 this great work of art was in need of some serious restoration, as is apparent here. Yet the rough and pitted surfaces gave the structure a timeless and primal quality. It almost made me think that this work of grace and patiently elaborated grandeur had risen from the Earth's crust all on its own.
However, if you look at the Great Gate on Google Earth Street View today, you’ll see that it’s in much better shape. Instead of a ramshackle scaffold behind a boarded-up entryway, there are iron-embossed timber doors filling the horseshoe arch. And the stonework has received some much-needed attention.
The primary building material employed throughout the Bab Oudaya is the Salé Calcarenite. Quarried just across the mouth of the Bou Regreg, it is of Pliocene-to-Quaternary age.
Calcarenites are a strange sort of limestone composed of fossil fragments set in a calcite matrix. Under the hand lens this mixture is highly suggestive of a certain health-bestowing cereal much in favor with upscale Neoliberals breakfasting in their custom-designed solaria. Architectural historians, many of them Neoliberal too, mistake calcarenite for sandstone with depressing regularity.
Wherever this offbeat carbonate rock is found, from Morocco to Sicily to southern Indiana, it’s an instant and enduring hit with quarriers and builders. Much of its popularity is attributable to the stone’s great workability: it can be sawn, shaped, shipped, and sculpted with great facility. But its grainy, porous nature also ensures that it’s easily undermined by water and dissolved salts. And carbonaceous particles in soot serve as a catalyst that converts the calcite binder into the softer and more soluble gypsum.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Architectural Geology of Rabat album.
Architectural Geology of Rabat, Part 2: Homage to the Bab Oudaya | Morocco
Facing northward. At the entrance to the Kasbah of the Udayas.
For the list of my primary sources for this series, see the bottom of the Part 1 essay.
How well I remember standing next to this, the Bab Oudaya, the Bab El-Kabir, the Bab Lakbir, or the Great Gate of the Kasbah of the Udayas—other versions and transliterations also exist. That was the moment I first beheld the true magnificence of Islamic architecture. And, in this specific case, the Moroccan-Amohad version thereof. For me, it was an epiphany that did much to modify my understanding of the beautiful.
In 1976 this great work of art was in need of some serious restoration, as is apparent here. Yet the rough and pitted surfaces gave the structure a timeless and primal quality. It almost made me think that this work of grace and patiently elaborated grandeur had risen from the Earth's crust all on its own.
However, if you look at the Great Gate on Google Earth Street View today, you’ll see that it’s in much better shape. Instead of a ramshackle scaffold behind a boarded-up entryway, there are iron-embossed timber doors filling the horseshoe arch. And the stonework has received some much-needed attention.
The primary building material employed throughout the Bab Oudaya is the Salé Calcarenite. Quarried just across the mouth of the Bou Regreg, it is of Pliocene-to-Quaternary age.
Calcarenites are a strange sort of limestone composed of fossil fragments set in a calcite matrix. Under the hand lens this mixture is highly suggestive of a certain health-bestowing cereal much in favor with upscale Neoliberals breakfasting in their custom-designed solaria. Architectural historians, many of them Neoliberal too, mistake calcarenite for sandstone with depressing regularity.
Wherever this offbeat carbonate rock is found, from Morocco to Sicily to southern Indiana, it’s an instant and enduring hit with quarriers and builders. Much of its popularity is attributable to the stone’s great workability: it can be sawn, shaped, shipped, and sculpted with great facility. But its grainy, porous nature also ensures that it’s easily undermined by water and dissolved salts. And carbonaceous particles in soot serve as a catalyst that converts the calcite binder into the softer and more soluble gypsum.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Architectural Geology of Rabat album.