Culture
Almohad universities continued the knowledge of Greek and Roman ancient writers, while contemporaries cultural figures included Averroes and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides.
The style of Almohad art was essentially an oriental one, although most of the workers were from al-Andalus. The main sites of Almohad architecture and art include Fes, Marrakech, Rabat and Seville. Figurative arts suffered somewhat from the orthdox interpretation of the Quran, which forbade human representation, and thus the genre of art which flourished mostly in the Almohad lands was architecture, although it also did not reach peaks of originality.
The Almohads reduced decorations, and introduced the use of geometrical holes, following in general the principle of expressing a certain degree of magnificence. As centuries passed, the buildings had increasingly oriental appearance and similar structures: mosques with rectangular plans, divided into naves with pillars, as well as a wide use of horseshoe-shaped arches. The most common building material was brickwork, followed by mortar. Foreign influence can be seen in domes of Egyptian origin and, in the civil sector, the triumphal arches inspired by those in the same country. The construction of fortifications with towers was also widespread.
The main Almohad structures include the Giralda of the former mosque of Seville (founded in 1171), the Koutoubia Mosque and the Kasbah of Marrakech, the Hassan Tower of Rabat and the Atalaya Castle in Andalusia.
-
La Giralda.
-
Koutoubia Mosque.
-
The Almohad minaret in Safi
Read more about this topic: Almohad Caliphate
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)
“Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)