Cuatrovitas (Bollullos de la Mitación, Sevilla, Spanien). Neue Untersuchungen zur almohadenzeitlichen Moschee und Wüstung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Siedlungskammer Aljarafe in islamischer Zeit

Abstract

In a joint research project, the University of Bamberg and the University of Sevilla have investigated the former mosque and contemporary church of the ›Ermita de Cuatrovitas‹ (municipality of Bollulos de la Mitación, province of Seville) and the associated lost medieval village. During four campaigns in two years, a wide range of research methods and techniques from various fields were applied in this project: prospective, archaeological and scientific methods, and traditional and modern techniques of building documentation. The main results of the project can be summarized as follows: For the first time, a deeper knowledge of the historical site of Cuatrovitas and its chronology has been gained. In its heydays during the 12th and the first half of the 13th century, a three-aisled mosque with a minaret and a courtyard towards the East formed the religious and cultural nexus of at least two separate settlements. Each of these settlements spread over an area of c. 10 ha, an extension that had not been foreseen. The village structures north of the mosque were recognizable on geomagnetic images, too, and could be substantiated by means of several archaeological investigations in the vicinity of the mosque. The built substance of this settlement consists of single-floor courtyard houses of the Mediterrenean type that were constructed of rammed clay and covered by a tiled roof. Nearly all excavated fragments of house structures seem to date to the late Almohad period. Two principal orientations can be seen in the plan: the N-S direction and the qibla orientation as practised during the Almohad period (157° from N). The finds are the first to demonstrate that the occupation of Cuatrovitas also predates the Almohad period. In several locations, older pit fills were secured, and pre-Almohad material could also be documented among more recent finds in horizontal filling layers. This pre- Almohad material consists, among others, of 10th and 11th century ceramics and single finds of the Emiral period (8th century). These finds thus clearly indicate that there must have been a pre-Almohad settlement, even if corresponding building structures could not (yet) be localized. A post-Almohad phase from the time after the Christian reconquest and re-establishment of power after 1248 could also be ascertained. The environment of the sacral building, by then converted from a mosque into a church, was used as a graveyard, with burials according to the Christian rite. Ceramics dating from the second half of the 13th century only offer few sherds of the so called transitional ceramics, produced by Islamic potters near the street of Gibraltar. From written sources and material remnants, the subsequent use of the church and the history of the fraternity of the Virgin of Cuatrovitas can be partly reconstructed. The architectural finds can be tallied with observations on brick measures and proportions in the architecture of the Almohad period.