Sidi El Haloui Mosque

The Sidi El Haloui mosque stands just outside the north wall of the medina, an elegant Marinid building from the 1350s with a slim brick minaret carved with intricate geometric panels. The interior follows the standard Maghrebi T-plan; a delicately painted cedar wood ceiling above the prayer hall has survived almost intact.

It is still an active mosque, so visit outside prayer times and with appropriate modesty. The minaret seen from the surrounding lanes is particularly fine — a smaller cousin of the great minaret at Mansourah, by the same Marinid patrons.

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A story
Sidi El Haloui — 'the sweetmeat-seller' — was a thirteenth-century scholar from Seville who, according to Tlemcen legend, walked the city's streets at night handing free sweets to children and offering free advice to anyone who asked. The Sultan, suspecting subversion, had him executed. Later regretting it, he commissioned this mosque on the site of the saint's death in atonement. It was finished in 1353 by the Marinid sultan Abu Inan.

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