The Minaret, 115 ft. high, resembling the tower of Agâdir (p. [196]), affords a beautiful view of the town and environs.
On the W. side of the Place d’Alger (Pl. C, 2), where the ruins of the famous Medersa Jadîda or Tâkhfînîya, a school for the learned erected by the Abdelwadite Abû Tâkhfîn (1322–37), existed down to 1876, rises the—
*Sidi Bel-Hassen Mosque, now the Museum (Pl. 2, B, C, 2; custodian in the court of the Mairie; fee ½ fr.), erected in 1296 by the Abdelwadite Abû Saïd Otsmân. It consists of nave and two aisles, with a low minaret. Used by the French successively as a storehouse and a school, it was carefully restored in 1900, and is now a perfect gem in the interior. The stucco *Decoration of the walls, preserved in part only, with its rich and graceful arabesques (p. [445]), and the geometrical ornamentation of the round-arched plaster windows, recall the sumptuous rooms of the Alcázar at Seville and the Alhambra of Granada. The half-dome of the **Mihrâb, whose horseshoe mural arch rests on two small columns of onyx, is borne by stalactite or honeycomb vaulting. The ancient roof of cedar is well preserved in the left aisle only.
Below the two friezes with Cufic inscriptions adjoining the Mihrâb are fragments, built into the wall, of fayence tiles from the old Medersa Tâkhfînîya and the Méchouar. The beautiful onyx basin once belonged to the latrine-court of the Great Mosque. Along the walls are several Roman and numerous Mohammedan tombstones, some of them belonging to kings of Tlemcen. Near the entrance is the so-called Coudée Royale, a marble slab from the Kessaria (comp. p. [191]), bearing an ell-measure and regulations for the trade of Christian merchants with the natives (1328). In the second room are the old candelabrum and remains of the old maksûra of the Great Mosque (comp. above), Moorish and Turkish tiles, etc. On the first floor is the Geological Museum.
The dirty streets to the S. of the Place de la Mairie and the Place d’Alger, which have been laid out in straight lines under the French régime, belong to the Jewish Quarter, where, however, a few of the old one-storied houses with a kind of sunken flat, still survive.
A pleasanter walk may be taken through the Mohammedan Quarters, especially that to the E. of the Place de la Mairie, where we may witness, especially on market-day (Mon.), the most lively and picturesque scenes of native life. The busiest points are the Marché Couvert (Pl. C, 2) in the Place du Kessaria, where the Italian merchants had their offices in the middle ages, and also the Rue de Mascara (Pl. C, D, 2, 1) and the Rue Kaldoun (Pl. C, D, 1). Adjoining the Rue de Mascara, once the Sûk el-Berada’in (saddlers’ market), is an impasse called the Derb el-Msoufa, in which is situated the little Mosque of Sidi Senoussi (Pl. D, 2; his tomb is near Sidi Bou-Médine, p. [194]), with a graceful minaret inlaid with tiles and a small house of prayer on the first floor.
In the street between the Rue de Mascara and the Rue Kaldoun are the so-called Bains des Teinturiers (Pl. D, 1; Hammâm es-Sebbâghîn), an ancient Moorish bath-house (12th cent.?), the plan of which seems to have been an exact copy of the Roman bath.
The ante-room, now much altered, was apparently the tepidarium. Straight on we come to the apodyterium, a domed room on twelve short mediæval columns, with a gallery running round it. To the left of this room is the caldarium in three sections, with the heating apparatus on the E. side. The S. side-room is the frigidarium.
At the end of the Rue Kaldoun we leave the town by the Porte de l’Abattoir (Pl. D, 1; road to Agâdir, see p. [196]), and turn to the left, skirting the town-walls, above the dilapidated Sidi Lahsen Mosque, built by Abû’l-Abbâs Ahmed (p. [189]), which has an elegant minaret and an interior restored in the Turkish period.
On a slope near the N.E. angle of the town-walls, below the railway, and formerly below the Bâb Sidi’l-Haloui, is the tomb of the saint of that name (d. 1307), adjoined by the—