BUILDING ORNAMENT IN THE ACT OF CONSTRUCTION: THE UNFINISHED HASSAN TOWER

Almohad architecture is widely recognised for the coherence of its monumental language across the Maghrib and al-Andalus, expressed through geometric order, proportional control, and a restrained yet powerful ornamental vocabulary. While this architectural corpus has been extensively studied from stylistic, ideological, and political perspectives, the relationship between construction and ornamentation has received comparatively less attention.This article proposes a reading of the Hassan Tower in Rabat, an Almohad minaret whose vertical development was interrupted at the end of the twelfth century. Although unfinished in height, the constructed portions of the tower display fully executed ornamentation.Based on architectural observation this study suggests that, in this case,ornamentation was not conceived as a final decorative layer but progressed in parallel with construction.