AGADIR

At the eastern exit of Tlemcen, below, in the continuation of the street Mrabet-Mohamed.

The fortress built by Idriss I and the foundations of the mosque, whose ruins can be seen through a fence in front of the minaret, raised at the end of the 8th century are certainly among the oldest monuments of Tlemcen. The agadir has changed a lot over the centuries following the defense devices adopted by the Umayyads of Cordoba or by the Zianids who undertook great renovations. Of the mosque, there remains only the minaret ordered in the thirteenth by Yaghmoracen and now isolated on the edge of the city. It is necessary to climb 127 steps to reach the top of the minaret, which is almost 26 meters high. The stones used for the base were taken from Roman buildings, as Latin inscriptions show.

Shortly after the minaret, Bab El-Akba, "the gate of ascent", is one of the oldest gates in the old city. By continuing on this road, we reach the Sacred Wood of Sidi Yacoub which shelters under its shade the sober tomb of the saint, the Koubba of Sidi El-Ouahab, which would have sheltered the remains of a companion of the prophet close to Okba the conqueror of the Maghreb, and the tomb of the Sultana. So called because the epitaph of a princess, a descendant of Yaghmoracen, who died in 1412, and that of a woman of royal blood were found there, the tomb would in fact have been built in the 12th century by the Almoravids. The koubba rests on an octagonal base supported by lobed arches.