Dictionary of islamic architecture

Plan of Lashkari Bazar, Afghanistan (after Allen)

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fourteenth-century) houses of Dewal-i Khodayda
and Gol-i Safed. The village of Dewal-i Khodayda
comprises a number of courtyard-iwan houses
aligned to protect them from the north-west wind.
Gol-i Safed is a walled town with houses of a similar
design to Khodayda but more elaborate decoration
in the form of blind niches and decorative brickwork.
See also:
Herat, Iran, Lashkari Bazar, Mughals,
Timurids
Further reading:
F.R.Allcin and N.Hammond (eds), 
The Archaeology of
Afghanistan from Earliest Times to the Timurid Period,
London, New York, San Francisco 1978.
Agades (also Agadez)
Islamic trading city located in the Aïr region of Niger,
West Africa.
The origins of the city are obscure although it is likely
that it began as a Tuareg encampment like its western
counterpart Timbuktu. The first arrival of Tuareg into
the region is not known although Ibn Battuta
describes the area as under Tuareg domination in
the fourteenth century. In 1405 the Tuareg sultanate
of Aïr was inaugurated and it is likely that Agades
was founded at this time. Nevertheless, the first
Tuareg sultans remained nomads and were not based
in the city until the mid-fifteenth century by which
time the town was an important entrepôt for the
trade between Timbuktu and Cairo. In the early
sixteenth century Sonni Ali the emperor of Gao
deposed Adil the ruling sultan of Agades and
replaced him with a governor. At the same time a
Songhay colony was established and Songhay was
established as the official language of the city.
Although the city was not captured during the
Moroccan invasion of 1591, the disruption of the
trade routes meant that the city declined and by 1790
it was almost completely deserted. Many of the
inhabitants migrated to the Hausa cities of the south.
By the mid-nineteenth century the city had recovered
and was once more a prosperous trading centre with
a mixed population of Berbers from the Algerian
Sahara and immigrants from the Hausa cities of Kano
and Sokoto.
The main building material in Agades is mud-brick
although immediately outside the city in the Tuareg
encampments stone is the main material of
construction. Most houses are single storey with roofs
built from split palm trunks laid diagonally across
the corners supporting more beams on top of which
are palm frond mats with earth piled on top.
Little remains of the pre-nineteenth-century
town although descriptions by early European and
Arab travellers give some idea of what the earlier
Tuareg city looked like. A sixteenth-century
description by Leo Africanus describes the city as
built in the ‘Barbary mode’ (i.e. Berber) which
implies that it may have consisted of stone houses
like those inhabited by the present-day Tuareg of
the region. These houses are simple two-roomed
rectangular buildings made of stone and mortar
often with mud-brick courtyards and outhouses.
The Tuareg nature of the city is further emphasized
by the open prayer place (musalla) and shrine
Twelfth-century minaret, Jam, Afghanistan, © Ashmolean
Museum
Agades (also Agadez)

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known as Sidi Hamada just outside the south walls
of the city. The site consists of an open area of
ground with a low bank at the east side against
which is built a dry stone wall which rises up to
the mihrab in the centre. A nineteenth-century
description of the southern part of the city mentions
a large mud-brick complex surrounded by a walled
enclosure crowned with pinnacles. It seems likely
that this may have been the citadel of the Tuareg
city although it has also been interpreted as a khan.
Also in this area were some well-built (stone?)
houses amongst which was a building interpreted
as a bath house (hammam).
When the city was resettled in the nineteenth
century a large northern extension was added
which was enclosed within a city wall (katanga).
The houses of this period were built of mud and
their interiors resembled those of the Hausa cities
of northern Nigeria with moulded mud decoration.
The major work of this period was the rebuilding
of the minaret of the Great Mosque between 1844
and 1847. The mosque consists of a large rectangular
sanctuary with a mihrab in the centre of the east
wall and the huge minaret attached to the north-
west corner. A nineteenth-century description
mentions another ruined minaret to the south of
the mosque; this has now entirely disappeared. The
present minaret is over 30 m high and tapers from
a square base (10 m per side) at the bottom to a
square platform (3 m square) at the top. The exterior
faces of the minaret are characterized by thirteen
layers of projecting palm timbers which act as tie
beams for this complex structure. Inside the minaret
there is a timber-framed staircase lit by twenty-eight
openings (seven on each side). This structure is
distinguished from other monumental minarets in
the region by its base which consists of four massive
earth piers instead of a solid block. The architectural
origins of the building are not known although it
has been suggested that it bears some similarity to
the tapering stone-built minarets of southern
Algeria.