Though not so extensive, the Moorish monuments of Tlemcen rank in architectural merit with those of Granada, both having been built, it should be remembered, by the Almoravide and the Almohade sultans. Of the sixty-four mosques which existed in the city at the time of the French conquest, a number have disappeared or fallen into decay. Of those that remain the most important is the Great Mosque, the Djamaa-el-Kebir, which was not the creation of a single person, but grew, like so many of the Gothic cathedrals, during the reigns of several rulers. The greater part of the present structure, including the magnificent minaret, was erected by Yarmorasen, the great Berber monarch who reigned in Tlemcen in the sixth century after the Hegira, which, as every one knows, took place in the year 622 of the Christian era. The minaret, upward of a hundred feet in height, is adorned with marble columns and incased in superb mosaics; in the center of the alabaster-paved inner court stands a fountain of Algerian onyx, where the pious perform their ablutions before going in to prayer; and the arches of the interior, which is richly decorated in the arabesque style, is supported by a forest of columns—seventy-two in all, to save you counting them. The beautiful proportions of the arches and columns, the mellow colorings of the ancient tiles, and the dim religious light make the Djamaa-el-Kebir one of the most impressive places of worship in the world. Close by is the mosque of Abul Hassan, built in 1298 and now transformed into a museum. The exterior has been materially altered by the French, who have so covered it with modern tiles as to suggest a hotel bath-room; but the interior, which has two series of arches resting on alabaster columns and a ceiling which bears traces of polychromatic paintings, is charming. The building’s greatest glory, however, is the _mihrab_, the holy of holies, the recessed shrine which indicates the direction of Mecca, and toward which, consequently, the worshipers turn in prayer. Floored with glazed and lustrous tiles of great antiquity, gloriously rich colorings and its walls decorated in stucco-work of arabesque designs as delicate as the finest lace, and roofed with a painted and gilt stalactite vault of amazing intricacy, it has been described as the finest example of Mohammedan art in existence, and it very probably is. The surpassing beauty and endless variety of the conventional patterns which are employed in the decoration of Mohammedan places of worship is due, it should be remembered, to the fact that the representation of nature in any form is absolutely forbidden by the Koran, a restriction which applies not only to depictions of the human figure, and to animals or birds, but even to plants and foliage of all kinds. The only exceptions to this rule are the highly conventionalized representations of lions in the courts of the Alhambra and over the gateways of Cairo and Jerusalem.