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A pavilion for an Almoravid capital
The Almoravids founded Marrakech in 1070–1072. Their ruler Ali ibn Yusuf built the city’s main mosque, on the site of today’s Ben Youssef Mosque, and beside it this small domed pavilion, also known as the Qubbat al-Barudiyyin. It is generally understood to have served the mosque as a place for ritual ablutions before prayer.
A date with a missing year
An Arabic inscription around the interior names Ali ibn Yusuf and gives the day of building as Wednesday, 30 Rabi’ I, but the year can no longer be read. Scholars give 1117 or, more likely, 1125; Morocco’s Ministry of Culture uses 1117.
Buried and found again
The Almohads, who took Marrakech in 1147, destroyed most Almoravid monuments, and the mosque beside the koubba was later completely rebuilt. As the ground level rose, more than half of the pavilion disappeared under 7–8 metres of debris. French scholars documented it in 1947, and archaeologists excavated it without major reconstruction, publishing their findings in the 1950s.
