The Maghreb

The zellige of Fez.

Fez is the workshop city of the western Islamic world, the place the cut-tile craft was kept and taught. Its Marinid madrasas set zellige mosaic below, carved plaster in the middle and cedar above, the same geometry in three materials. This is the Maghrebi register, sibling to the Alhambra across the Strait.

FIG. 1 - An eight-fold star-and-cross in the Fes tetrachord, drawn live: plaster white, saffron, copper green and cobalt over oxblood.

The Marinid madrasa

The Marinids ruled Morocco from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and their teaching colleges, the madrasas, are where their geometry is fullest. The Bou Inania, finished around 1355, and the Attarine a generation earlier, wrap a small tiled courtyard in the complete western vocabulary: a zellige dado of stars and crosses, a band of carved plaster, a cornice of worked cedar. The mason, the plasterer and the carpenter are all drawing the same lattice.

The Fes tetrachord

Fez colour is disciplined. The old palette runs to four glazes, a plaster white, a saffron yellow, a copper green and a cobalt blue, usually over an oxblood ground on the lime-plaster wall. The studio ships it as the zellige register, and because it assigns colour by congruence class, no two touching pieces alike, you can keep the Fes four or swap them for your own and the whole panel re-glazes without breaking the rule.

FIG. 2 - The Fez manner at two scales: a compound rosette field, smaller rosettes seated in the connecting cells of larger ones.

One craft, both shores

The Marinids of Fez and the Nasrids of Granada were neighbours and rivals who shared masons, so the zellige of Fez and the dados of the Alhambra are one craft worked on two shores. Everything the studio draws here comes from the construction and is coloured by class, derived not generated. The difference from Granada is register and depth, not method.

FES ZELLIGE, IN ONE SENTENCE - the Marinid cut-tile mosaic of Morocco, star-and-cross and compound rosette geometry in a four-glaze palette, set below matching friezes of carved plaster and cedar.

Read on

Patterns inside patterns: the compound zellige of Fez How the Fez workshops seated rosettes inside rosettes, at a scale the geometry fixes and never lets you choose.

Draw a Fez dado yourself.

Build the Marinid star-and-cross and the compound rosettes, recolour in the Fes tetrachord and export print-ready files - free in the browser.

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Common questions

What is the zellige of Fez?

It is the Moroccan cut-tile mosaic tradition at its source. Fez is the old workshop city of the Maghreb, and its Marinid madrasas of the fourteenth century, above all the Bou Inania and the Attarine, carry zellige dados of star-and-cross and rosette geometry beneath friezes of carved plaster and cedar. Zellige is alicatado: every piece is hand-cut glazed tile, set so no two touching pieces share a colour.

What are the Marinid madrasas?

The Marinids were the dynasty that ruled Morocco from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and their madrasas, teaching colleges around a tiled courtyard, are the high point of Fez ornament. The Bou Inania madrasa, finished about 1355, and the Attarine, about 1325, pair zellige geometry below with carved-plaster and cedar geometry above, the same patterns in three materials.

What colours are used in Fes zellige?

The classic Fes palette, sometimes called the tetrachord, is a plaster white, a saffron or honey yellow, a copper green and a cobalt blue, often over an oxblood ground, on the lime-plaster wall. The studio ships this as its zellige register; because colour is assigned by congruence class, you can swap the four for any other set and the pattern re-glazes at once.