Ahmad ibn Baso
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
He spent his youth in Seville, and then in 1160 he directed architectural works for the Almohads at Gibraltar, then erecting some public buildings and frontier fortresses in Cordova, then, by 1171-2, at the latest was back in Seville.
In Ramadhan of that year, he started the basic mosque and its minaret on which he worked until 1184-5, before in that year, he constructed the Buhaira palace outside the Puerta de Chahuar of Seville.
It was the Almohad ruler Abu Yaqub Yusuf who represented the architects Ahmad Ibn Baso and Abd Allah Ibn Amr to build the Great mosque of Seville on 1172-6. Little remains now but the blind pointed horseshoe brick façade with stepped cresting in the Court of Oranges, and two entrances one covered with a Mukarnas vault, and the other with bold stucco carving in the soflit of its arch. The bronze door of the latter has engraved on it floral motifs within hexagonal compartments, an open work door handle with frilled outline, and lettering in Kufic with the formula `The Kingship is Allah's.'
Ibn Basso's work on the Giralda was continued by Ali-Al-Ghumari, and finished by Abu-l-Laith As-Siqilli in 1198.
The matter of Hisba has been looked at in great detail in the entry on Malaga under its author there Al-Saqati. Seville, also, had its author on the same subject: Ibn Abdun Muhammad B. Ahmad. He flourished at the end of the 11th century, and lived under the early Almoravids as he speaks of them as the new masters of the city.
His short treatise, together with that of his contemporary Al-Saqati (of Malaga), is a most valuable source of urban, economic and social life in Muslim Spain in this period.
The treatise by Ibn Abdun is available in French thanks to the labours of Levi Provencal, who edited it and translated it into French, from which the following is extracted to highlight a very interesting point not dealt with anywhere else in the depiction of Islamic civilization, and which relates to the Muhtasib's regulation with regard to prison and prisoners.
Thus goes Ibn Abdun:
`Prisons must be inspected twice or three times a month so as to make sure of the good welfare of the prisoners, and in case the cells become overcrowded. Those who had committed light crimes should be taken out of prison quickly.
When relaxed, prisoners ought to be on the days of Ramadhan, or the 10th day of Dhu al-Hidja, or in the middle of Shaaban as these are days of celebration.
People ought not be detained too long in prison, but either the judgments against them must be executed, or they must be freed…
Nobody is to be executed until the head of the government had been consulted three times in succession.
Agents of authority ought to be banned from using whips; whipping prisoners is utterly forbidden. [Those who] can only deliver such punishment the head of government [are] the prefect of the city, the Cadi (the judge), the Muhtasib and the judge second in command.
Nobody has the right to put anyone in prison without the authorization of the Cadi or the head of the government.
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