Bab Agnaou

Bab Agnaou is the most ornate of the gates of Marrakech, and the one built for display more than defence. It stands inside the city walls, a short walk from Bab er-Robb, as the ceremonial entrance to the kasbah, the royal quarter that the Almohad caliph Ya'qub al-Mansur laid out at the southern edge of the medina; the gate was finished with it, around 1188–1190. Its other names say what it was for: Bab al-Qasr, the gate of the palace, and Bab al-Kuhl. The facade is sandstone, most likely quarried at Gueliz, carved in concentric bands that alternate radiating lines and interlaced arches around the horseshoe opening, with a shell at the heart of each spandrel. A frieze of foliated Kufic runs across the top, verses from the Surah al-Hijr cut into the stone. Two towers once flanked it and the passage turned at a right angle through a vaulted hall; both are gone, and the great arch was narrowed to a smaller brick one, probably under the eighteenth-century sultan Sidi Muhammad ibn Abdallah. What survives is the carved surface, and it survives well. Bab Agnaou sits off the main tourist circuit, unlike the Saadian Tombs a few steps beyond it, and is often encountered without a crowd. The Kasbah Mosque stands just to the north, its minaret above the rooflines: gate and mosque are what remains of al-Mansur's kasbah, later reused by the Saadians. Bab Ksiba, the kasbah's other, smaller gate, opens on the western side. The city has grown around the gate and half hides it from a distance; its scale and the quality of the carving reveal themselves only on foot.