EL BADI' PALACE |قصر البديع

 Badi' Palace is a destroyed palace situated in Marrakesh, Morocco. It was commissioned by the sultan Ahmad al-Mansur of the Saadian dynasty a few months after his accession in 1578, with construction and embellishment continuing throughout most of his reign. The palace, embilished with materials imported from outnumbers countries ranging from Italy to Mali, was used for receptions and designed to showcase the Sultan's wealth and power. The palace was neglected after al-Mansur's death in 1603 and fell into destroy after the collapse of the Saadian dynasty. Its valuable materials (namely marble) were stripped away and reused in other buildings across Morocco. Today ,it is a major tourist attraction in Marrakesh and an exhibition space; notably, the Minbar of the Kutubiyya Mosque is shown  here. 

 

  BACKGROUND 

Prior to the reign of the Saadian sultan Moulay Abdallah al-Ghalib (ruled 1557-1574), the rulers of Marrakesh , Morocco , resided in the fashionable  Kasbah (citadel) built by the Almohad dynasty in the late 12th and early 13th century. With regard to the contemporary chronicler Marmol, Moulay Abdallah, a main  builder in his time, was the prime  to build a new palace in the area in which The El Badi Palace stands, along the northern edge of the Almohad kasbah approach the Kasbah Mosque and the newly-started Saadian Tombs.The El Badi Palace proper  but was constructed by Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur al-Dhahabi (ruled 1578-1603) at the height of the Saadian dynasty's power. The palace's construction, along with al-Mansur's other 

projects, was presumably  funded by the substantial ransom paid by the Portuguese after the Battle of the Three Kings in 1578.The wealth of al-Mansur's reign was also because of  the Saadians' control of the sugar commercial . Morocco was at that time a significant exporter of sugar towards Europe, along with other products such as silk, copper, and leather. In 1590 al-Mansur launched military expeditions to the south that  resulted in the conquest of Timbuktu and Gao in Mali and the defeat of the Songhai Empire.This control of the trans-Saharan trade routes allowed al-Mansur to proliferate  Morocco's access not only to gold but also to slaves – on which the sugar processing industry relied  and which were necessary to compete with the sugar trade coming from Brazil and the Caribbean .