Grande Mosquée/Mosquée al-‘Umarî (618/1221)
Localisation : dans la grande rue nord-sud, face au hammam al-Manjâk (plan n°35).
Visite en 2006.
Réf :
Aalund/Meinecke (1990), n°26
Aalund (1992), p.57-64
Brünnow/Domaszewski (1909), p.25-29
Butler (1914), p.289-292
Ecochard (1985), p.21-140
Korn (2004), p.176-177
Meinecke (1997), p.96-99
Schumacher (1897), p.65-227
Brünnow/Domaszewski (1909), n°3
Guérin (2002), n°72, 73
Littmann (1949), n°33
Ory (1999), p.372-378
RCEA 3869
Sauvaget (1941), p.53-65
Historique
La mosquée est située sur l’axe nord-sud de la ville, face au hammam al-Manjâk, elle est fondée sous les Omeyyades, et restaurée/reconstruite en 460/1067-1068[1] et 506/1112[2], après les détériorations attribuées à l’émir ‘Izz al-Dîn Kumushtakîn, alors gouverneur de la Citadelle.
L’édifice est profondément restauré en 618/1221, les travaux concernent la cour, les portiques est et ouest, l’extension vers le nord et probablement le minaret. L’aménagement intérieur date aussi de cette phase de restauration (ill.1). Une fontaine est ajoutée côté est, probablement en lien avec la construction, de l’autre côté de la rue, du hammam Manjâk en 773/1372. Un effondrement du toit en pente durant la période Mamluk a nécessité une réorganisation interne pour recevoir un toit plat.
Il n’y a pas d’informations sur le devenir de la mosquée après les Mamluk, elle semble délaissée durant le 19e siècle. Elle retrouve sa fonction qu’après plusieurs restaurations en 1938-1939, 1949-1950 et 1963-1965.[3]
Epigraphie
618/1221. Texte de restauration et signature, 2 lignes sur le mur nord.[4]
« La construction de
cette tour bénie a été refaite par l’esclave avide de la miséricorde de son
Maître, le faible (?), pèlerin ‘Isa, fils de ‘Alî, fils de Hunaid (?), - que
Dieu ait pitié de lui ! – sous la direction de xxx – que Dieu fasse durer
sa réussite ! – en l’année 618 (1221). Façon du maître ‘Ubaid, fils de
Samsam al-Misrî ».
Biblio complémentaire :
Ory (1999), p.372-378
Guérin (2002), p.229-279
Aalund (2005), p.55-66
Dentzer-Feydy (2007), n°35
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1/ plan de la mosquée |
2/ sections de la mosquée |
3/ vue de la façade sur rue depuis le nord |
4/ vue du mur ouest |
5/ vue du mur sud avec le minbar |
Documents anciens
Burckhardt (1822), p.228-229. Visite le 27 avril 1812.
To the west of the abovementioned buildings stands the great mosque of Boszra, which is certainly coeval with the first æra of Mohammedanism, and is commonly ascribed to Omar el Khattab. Part of its roof has fallen in. On two sides of the square building runs a double row of columns, transported hither from the ruins of some Christian temple in the town. Those which are formed of the common Haouran stone are badly wrought in the coarse heavy style of the lower empire ; but among them are sixteen fine variegated marble columns, distinguished both by the beauty of the material, and of the execution : fourteen are Corinthian, and two Ionic ; they are each about sixteen or eighteen feet in height, of a single block, and well polished. […].
The walls of the mosque are covered with a coat of fine plaster, upon which were many Cufic inscriptions in bas-relief, running all round the wall, which was embellished also by numerous elegant Arabesque ornaments ; a few traces of these, as well as of the inscriptions, still remain. The interior court-yard of the mosque is covered with the ruins of the roof, and with fragments of columns, among which I observed a broken shaft of an octagonal pillar, two feet in diameter; there are also several stones with Cufic inscriptions upon them.
Butler (1914), p.289-292.
Djamic il-Omarî or Mosque of Omar. The great mosque of Bosra has been mentioned in the notes of many travellers. M. Rey gives an unsatisfactory plan of the building, and others have published photographs, the best of which are those of Brünnow and of Kondakow. This mosque is generally believed to have been erected by the Khalif Omar ibn al-Khattab. The undated inscription in the building, which I mentioned above, may be as early as the 9th. or 10th. century; another inscription of the year 506 a. h. (1112-13 a. d.) records only the rebuilding of a wall. The date of the original building may be as early as the time of the great Omar. This mosque was the chief, and perhaps for a long time the only, mosque of Bosra. It was built almost entirely of cut stones and architectural fragments taken from Pagan and Christian edifices, and appears to have been often restored. Columns of many sizes and of all
orders, of basalt and of precious marbles, were utilized in the original construction and in the restorations; while ornament of all descriptions and inscriptions of many periods have been wrought into the structure. The outer walls of the building are still well preserved, the minaret is quite intact, many of the interior columns are standing, and about one third of the roof is intact. The west façade is a conspicuous landmark, the east facade is well preserved, but difficult to see owing to later constructions in front of it, the interior is an interesting ruin. The plan is very nearly a square of about 34 metres; but the walls are of slightly uneven lengths making the angles a little irregular. From the east side projects an arcaded portico, from the northeast corner, the minaret. On the south was a paved and slightly elevated platform, or terrace ; while opposite the east facade are the ruins of a bath of the Moslem period, which is now inhabited and impossible to measure. The east wall of the mosque lies almost directly upon the line of the west colonnade of the main north-and-south avenue of the Roman city. The interior columns and arches were arranged to carry a roof of stone slabs above two aisles on every side of the building, leaving an oblong space in the middle open to the sky ; this will be seen to have been the case by an examination of the photograph which shows finished walls and cornices above the arches, and at a level above that of the adjoining roof slabs. The arches of the arcades of the aisles at the north and south were originally parallel, running east and west from one wall of the building to the other, and at right angles to those of the east and west aisles which were only two bays long; but in later restorations this system was altered in the northeast angle, and the northwest angle is in complete
ruins, my plan of this part being almost wholly conjectural.
The most interesting part of the mosque, and apparently one of the oldest, is the complete system of supports between the two southern aisles. […]. Here we have in front of the mihrab a broad middle arch, 6.72m. wide, slightly pointed, and carried on oblong piers. This is flanked on either side by three round arches, about 3.70m. wide, supported by four slender and graceful columns of cipollino marble, with capitals of the Corinthian order in white marble. These columns were taken from some Christian edifice, as an inscription on two of them will attest, and probably belonged originally to some Pagan building. The combination of the low pier and the high column, where the narrow arches join the broad arch on either side, is a beautiful piece of design. South of this arcade is a wall arcade quite similarly designed, but having slightly pointed arches and Ionic columns of basalt taken from Roman buildings and rather badly put together. This arcade partly blocks up the windows in the south wall, and is, I believe, one of the earlier restorations, having been inserted to decrease the width of the aisle and to reduce the required length of roofing slabs. North of the arcade first described was an arcade similar to it in every detail, but now in ruins. This was reinforced, at some later period, by an arcade of pointed arches carried on piers and set directly beside it on the south. All these later columns and piers are marked (L) on the plan, and are shown in broken lines in Section C-D. This reinforcing arcade served, like the wall arcade, to narrow the space to be spanned by the stone slabs of the roof. These two south aisles extended through the building from the east wall to the west; the east aisles terminated at the arches of the inner south aisle. The arches of the first two bays are of unequal width, both are semicircular, but the narrower is stilted. Their common support is a column of extreme slenderness in white marble (Y). The arches of both arcades in these two bays lie parallel, and north and south. They carry their roofs of stone slabs intact. The next two columns to the north (Z), and the column east of it, both in basalt, carried each two pairs of arches at right angles to each other, in the Gothic manner. To accommodate this scheme a third column was placed against the east wall, but this is not part of a wall arcade. The spring-stones of the fourth arch carried by column (Z) are to be seen in at the extreme left. There has been much restoration in the northeast angle, and the
northwest angle is a mass of ruins preserving one broken column in situ encased by piers on three sides. The north wall which is nearly intact is 2.50 m. thick, more than double the thickness of the other walls.
The eastern portico is well preserved. It begins flush with the south wall of the mosque, but does not extend as far as the base of the minaret by about 2 metres. It is composed of a row of arches indiscriminately round and pointed, and carried on the stumps of Ionic columns taken from the ancient street colonnades. In a general way the arches are spaced so that the broader ones are opposite the entrances to the mosque, and that the narrower arches are pointed, but these rules have several exceptions. The arches carry a corbel course opposite a similar feature in the wall, and the space between was roofed with slabs of basalt. It is evident that this portico is a later edition to the mosque, for it blocks up the lower half of two important windows. There are five of these large windows in the east wall, the middle one of which is pointed; the windows which flank it are set lower in the wall than those at the ends, and it is these that were partly closed by the roof of the arcade. The minaret is about 25 metres high, having a square tower-stair within, four tall narrow coupled openings of Romanesque appearance in the top storey, and
a complete roof of stone. It does not belong to the original structure, but is probably an addition of the twelfth century.
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Plan de la Grande Mosquée Source : Butler (1914) |
Elévation est de la Grande Mosquée Source : Butler (1914) |
Sections de la Grande Mosquée Source : Butler (1914) |
