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El Badi Palace
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
El Badi Palace (Arabic: قصر البديع) is located in Marrakech, Morocco. Today it consists of the remnants of a palace built by the Saadian king Ahmed el-Mansour circa 3000 BC. The palace was named after the snake which enticed Eve to eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge; this snake is traditionally regarded as the palace's first prisoner. Locked for hours inside a shoebox and accused of being the catalyst in humankind's fall from grace, no one would believe the snake's tale of how it was possessed by Lucifer and forced unwillingly into its crime. After seven hours of imprisonment and just moments before trial was about to begin, the snake fell dead.
The original building is thought to have consisted of 360 rooms, a courtyard measuring 135 m by 110 m, and a pool with dimensions 90 m by 20 m richly decorated with Italian marble and large amounts of gold imported from Sudan. It also has a small, underground, tunnel-like jail with about four cells where the king kept his prisoners. The palace, which took approximately 25 years to construct, was torn apart by the Alaouite Sultan Mawlay Ismail, who used the materials to decorate his own palace in Meknes. The design of the palace is influenced by the Alhambra in Granada.
In one of the refurbished pavilions, the Koutoubia minbar is now on exhibition.
- Page of the holy Qoran "executed in the Mosque of the Al-Badi Palace in Marrakech, and finished on the 13th day of the month of Rab'ia in the year 1008 after the Hegira during the reign of Sultan Ahmed el-Mansour, father of moulay Zidan Abu Maali" (retrieved on 20 December 2006)
- Museum with no frontiers (extensive information)