[1][14][6] Major centers of artistic development included the main capitals of the empires and Muslim states in the region's history, such as Córdoba, Kairouan, Fes, Marrakesh, Seville, Granada and Tlemcen.

The territory of Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia), and its newly founded capital city of Kairouan (also transliterated as "Qayrawan") became an early center of Islamic culture for the region.

Another small room in the fortress, located above the front gate, is covered by a dome supported on squinches, which is the oldest example of this construction technique in Islamic North Africa.

[2]: 25  The tall cylindrical tower inside the ribat, most likely intended as a lighthouse, has a marble plaque over its entrance inscribed with the name of Ziyadat Allah I and the date 821, which in turn is the oldest Islamic-era monumental inscription to survive in Tunisia.

[4] The mihrab of the prayer hall is among the oldest examples of its kind, richly decorated with marble panels carved in high-relief vegetal motifs and with ceramic tiles with overglaze and luster.

Its main hall is a rectangular space divided into three naves by two rows of horseshoe arches and nearly every wall surface is covered in exceptional stone-carved decoration with geometric and tree of life motifs.

He endowed it with some of its most significant architectural flourishes and innovations, which included a maqsura enclosed by intersecting multifoil arches, four ornate ribbed domes, and a richly-ornamented mihrab with Byzantine-influenced gold mosaics.

[1]: 139–151 [6]: 70–86 A much smaller but notable work from the late caliphate period is the Bab al-Mardum Mosque (now known as the Church of San Cristo de la Luz) in Toledo, which has a nine-bay layout covered by a variety of ribbed domes and an exterior façade with an Arabic inscription carved in brick.

Inside its enclosure of fortified walls, one courtyard has been preserved from this period, occupied by pools and sunken gardens and wide rectangular halls fronted by porticos at either end.

The carved stucco of the southern portico, enveloping a simple brick core, is especially dizzying and complex, drawing on the forms of plain and multifoil arches but manipulating them into motifs outside their normal structural logic.

[48][2]: 93 The late 11th century saw the significant advance of Christian kingdoms into Muslim al-Andalus, particularly with the fall of Toledo to Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085, and the rise of major Berber empires originating in northwestern Africa.

[2]: 98–100  Ibn Mardanish also constructed what is now known as the Castillejo de Monteagudo, a hilltop castle and fortified palace outside the city that is one of the best-preserved examples of Almoravid-era architecture in the Iberian Peninsula.

The minaret of the Kasbah Mosque of Marrakesh, with its façades covered by sebka motifs and glazed tile, was particularly influential and set a style that was repeated, with minor elaborations, in the following period under the Marinids and other dynasties.

[22] What remained of the Muslim-controlled territories in al-Andalus was consolidated by the Nasrid dynasty into the Emirate of Granada, which lasted another 250 years until its final conquest by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, at the end of the Reconquista.

[1][18] Among the most famous and celebrated examples is the Alcazar of Seville, which was the former palace of the Abbadids and the Almohads in the city but was rebuilt in by Christian rulers, including Peter the Cruel who added lavish sections in Moorish style starting in 1364 with the help of craftsmen from Granada and Toledo.

During his siege of the city at the beginning of the century, the Marinid leader Abu Ya'qub built a fortified settlement nearby named al-Mansurah, which includes the monumental Mansurah Mosque (begun in 1303, only partly preserved today).

[1][56][80][17] The Saadians, especially under the sultans Abdallah al-Ghalib and Ahmad al-Mansur, were extensive builders and benefitted from great economic resources at the height of their power in the late 16th century.

In 1765 Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah (one of Moulay Isma'il's sons) started the construction of a new port city called Essaouira (formerly Mogador), located along the Atlantic coast as close as possible to his capital at Marrakesh, to which he tried to move and restrict European trade.

Major port cities such as Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli also became centers of pirate activity, which brought in wealth to local elites but also attracted intrusions by European powers, who occupied and fortified some coastal positions.

Characteristic elements of the western regional style include horseshoe-shaped, intersecting, and polylobed arches, often with voussoirs of alternating colors or patterns, as well as internal courtyards, riad gardens, ribbed domes, and cuboid (square-base) minarets.

By contrast, architectural styles in the eastern parts of the Islamic world developed significantly different and innovative spatial arrangements in their construction of domed halls or vaulted iwans and featured increasingly imposing and elaborate exteriors that dominated their surroundings.

[17][1] This motif, typically called sebka (meaning "net"),[24]: 80 [99] is believed by some scholars to have originated with the large interlacing arches in the 10th-century extension of the Great Mosque of Cordoba by Caliph al-Hakam II.

One common version, called darj wa ktaf ("step and shoulder") by Moroccan craftsmen, makes use of alternating straight and curved lines which cross each other on their symmetrical axes, forming a motif that looks roughly like a fleur-de-lys or palmette shape.

[1]: 351–352 Muqarnas (also called mocárabe in Spain), sometimes referred to as "honeycomb" or "stalactite" carvings, consists of a three-dimensional geometric prismatic motif which is among the most characteristic features of Islamic architecture.

In the western Islamic world they were particularly dynamic and were used, among other examples, to enhance entire vaulted ceilings, fill in certain vertical transitions between different architectural elements, and even to highlight the presence of windows on otherwise flat surfaces.

[65] In the traditional Moroccan craft of zellij-making, the tiles are first fabricated in glazed squares, typically 10 cm per side, then cut by hand into a variety of pre-established shapes (usually memorized by heart) necessary to form the overall pattern.

[1]: 316  The cold, warm, and hot rooms were usually vaulted or domed chambers without windows, designed to keep steam from escaping, but partially lit thanks to small holes in the ceiling which could be covered by ceramic or coloured glass.

In Marrakesh, Morocco, the Almohad Caliphs in the late 12th century built a large new palace district, the Kasbah, on the south side of the city, which was subsequently occupied and rebuilt by the later Saadian and 'Alawi dynasties.

The Fatimids built a heavily fortified new capital at Mahdia in present-day Tunisia, located on a narrow peninsula extending from the coastline into the sea and surrounded by walls and a single land gate.

[129] In these regions, often traditionally Amazigh (Berber) areas, kasbahs are again made of rammed earth and mud-brick (or sometimes stone), often marked by square corner towers and decorated with simple geometric motifs.