1000 Monuments of Genius. Christopher E.M. Pearson
the original fortress to reflect the latest French ideas on fortification. The main building, surrounded by two ranks of thick walls with twenty towers, had extensive storage facilities, stables, a chapel and a meeting hall. Water cisterns allowed it to withstand long sieges, perhaps up to five years. At its height, the castle housed a garrison of some 2000 men. After a series of unsuccessful sieges through the 12th century, it was eventually taken by Sultan Baibars in 1271, forcing the Knights to depart for Rhodes. The interior features rare frescoes from the Crusader period. It is now owned by the Syrian government and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.
41. Citadel of Saladin, Cairo, 1183 and later (Egypt)
42. Bahla Fort, Oasis of Bahla, 12th-15th century (Oman)
43. Great Mosque, Djenné, 13th century (rebuilt in 1907) (Mali)
Djenné, which was converted to Islam in 1240, was a major city in the Mali and Songhai Empires. Built on the site of an earlier palace, this huge religious complex eloquently reflects the incursion of Islam into West Africa. The mosque is constructed largely of bricks of sun-dried mud coated with mud plaster, and as such is the largest adobe building in the world. The rounded appearance of its envelope reminds many people of a giant sand castle. As with all such structures, its thick walls serve to regulate the temperature, protecting the interiors from heat during the daytime and radiating stored warmth at night. Ostrich eggs, symbols of purity and abundance, provide a covering for its towers and spires. The prayer hall is supported by 90 wooden columns. Because of regular flooding the mosque is built on a raised platform. The present structure dates from a rebuilding of 1907. Its custodians have resisted any modernisation, allowing only the installation of a loudspeaker system. The mosque is kept in good condition by means of an annual festival, in the course of which any damage is repaired. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
44. Citadel of Aleppo, Aleppo, 1230 (Syria)
45. Stelae and capitol of Aksum, Aksum, 0–1250 (Ethiopia)
46. Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani, Kilwa, 13th-16th century (Tanzania)
47. The Great Enclosure and other stone ruins at Great Zimbabwe, c. 1200–1440 (Zimbabwe)
The mysterious stone ruins at Great Zimbabwe are some of the oldest and most impressive monuments of southern Africa. Great Zimbabwe, or the “house of stone,” is an extensive area containing hundreds of such structures. Archaeology has shown this to have been an important trading centre, with a network of contacts stretching across the continent. The Enclosure may have held as many as 18,000 inhabitants at its height. The ruins are notable for their eschewal of rectilinearity: their walls form a series of fluent and elegant curves. Most impressive of all the sites is the Great Enclosure, whose walls extend for some 250 metres and reach 11 metres in height. The first Europeans to see the ruins were Portuguese traders in the 16th century. During the subsequent imperialist era, the notion that the structures were the work of Africans was widely discredited for racial and political reasons, but excavations have since proved that they were indeed an indigenous production, probably built by a people belonging to the Bantu linguistic family. It is unclear why the settlements were abandoned, but drought, disease or a decline in trade are current theories. The modern-day nation of Zimbabwe is named for the ruins.
48. Madrasa Al-Firdaws, Aleppo, mid-13th century (Syria)
49. The Alhambra, Granada, 13th-14th century (Spain)
The royal citadel of the Alhambra was the centre of Muslim power in southern Spain. It was begun in the 13th century by Muhammad I Ibn al-Ahmar and added to piecemeal over a number of decades. The Alhambra comprises both a great fortress with 23 towers as well as a cool and luxurious retreat for the Caliphs, with many spacious rooms, courtyards and gardens. A variety of media, including stucco, colourful mosaic tiles, marbles and bas-relief sculpture, was used to ornament its walls. In many of the Alhambra’s interior spaces we find muqarnas vaulting, a decorative ceiling treatment in carved plaster that has a purely visual rather than a structural function. The most famous of the Alhambra’s outdoor spaces is the gracefully arcaded Lion Court: with its central fountain and four sunken water channels it is said to represent an earthly manifestation of paradise. Some of the complex was destroyed and built over when the Christians retook the region in 1492, but much remains. The Alhambra’s name means “red ” in Arabic, referring to the colour of the bricks of its outer defensive walls.
50. The Church of St. George, Lalibela, c. 1250 (Ethiopia)
51. Great Mosque of Divrigi, Divrigi, c. 1299 (Turkey)
52. Sultan Qala’un funerary complex, Cairo, c. 1285 (Egypt)
53. Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan, Cairo, 1356–1363 (Egypt)
54. Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, 1459 and later (Turkey)
This immense palace, which served as the official residence of the Ottoman Sultans from 1465 to 1853, is set on a prominent point overlooking the Golden Horn. Built on the site of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, it was begun shortly after the conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II. Insulated from the outer world, the palace was largely self-sufficient, having its own water supply, cisterns and kitchens. As many as 4000 people lived here at its height. Its plan is roughly rectangular, organised around four main courtyards, but frequent extensions and alterations resulted in an asymmetrical complex of hundreds of rooms, interspersed with gardens. Life in the palace was carried out according to strict ceremony, and speaking was forbidden in the inner courtyards. The innermost spaces were the private and inviolable sanctum of the Sultan and his harem. In 1921, with the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Topkapi Palace was turned into a museum. Its name, which dates only from the 19th century, means “cannon gate,” after a portal once located nearby.
55. Chinli Kiosk, Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, 1473 (Turkey)
56. Fortress city of Fasil Ghebbi, Gondar, c. 16th-17th century (Ethiopia)
57. Bayezid II Mosque, Istanbul, 1501–1506 (Turkey)
58. Tomb of Askia, Gao, c. 1550 (Mali)
59. Sankore Mosque (University of Sankore), Timbuktu, 1581 (Mali)
60. Mimar Koca Sinan ibn Abd al-Mannan, also known as Sinan, Mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, Istanbul, 1550–1558 (Turkey)
This spectacular mosque, which occupies a prominent location near the harbor, is only one part of a larger religious complex featuring a cemetery, madrasas, shops, a caravanserai and many social services. Typical in many respects of Ottoman religious buildings, it is one of the masterworks of the architect and engineer Koca Sinan (c. 1490–1588). Though Sinan was not Muslim by birth, he was trained as a Janissary and served as the official court architect to the Sultans of Constantinople for half a century. The mosque was visibly inspired by the nearby Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia (532–537), which had been converted into a mosque after the Muslim conquest of 1453. Following its prototype,