page_title: Bab Dekkakin
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Bab Dekkakin / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Outer facade of Bab Dekkakin, seen from the New Mechouar. Note: An inscription above the gate gives the date 1302 (AH), which seems to be a reference to the works carried out by Sultan Moulay Hassan in this area in 1886, when he built the adjoining Dar al-Makina. Presumably, Moulay Hassan also renovated the gate at this time too.
context_page_description: Bab Dekkakin or Bab Dekakene is a fortified and ceremonial gate in Fes, Morocco. The gate is situated between the Old Mechouar and the New Mechouar on the northern edge of Fes el-Jdid.
context_section_description: The gate's inner side faces the Old Mechouar and the northeastern gate to the Royal Palace, historically the main entrance to the palace grounds (until the construction of the new palace gates in the southwest in the 20th century). Its outer facade faces the New Mechouar. 
  The gate is made of masonry stone and brick and set between two pairs of massive square towers that are indicative of Marinid military architecture. The interior passage of the gate is composed of several horseshoe archways arranged at the thresholds of three sequential chambers. The middle chamber is open to the sky above; a defensive feature from the original gate which allowed defenders to shoot or drop projectiles on attackers inside the gate's passage. In addition to this central passage, however, are two other side passages through smaller archways on the gate's outer facade and through equal-sized archways on its inner facade (thus appearing as a triple gateway on this side). This symmetrical arrangement is a result of modern modifications to the gate to ease circulation. The original gate had a bent entrance: from the central opening on its north (outer) side, the gate's inside passage turned 90 degrees twice and emerged at what is now the westernmost archway on the Old Mechouar side. 
  The gate's outer facade is also its most richly decorated. The outline of the central archway is decorated with a molding sculpted in a repeating semi-circular motif. The spandrels above this are filled with tiles painted with interlacing arabesque (vegetal or floral) patterns. All of this is in turn surrounded by a rectangular frame consisting of a band or frieze carved into a darj wa-ktaf motif (a Moroccan motif roughly resembling a repeating palmette or fleur-de-lys). Above the central archway is a panel of tiles featuring an elaborate Arabic inscription. The two lateral archways on the gate's inner facade are decorated with a simple semi-circular molding like the one around the central archway of the outer side, but otherwise there is little decoration on this facade.
caption: View of the decoration around the central arch of the gate on the outer (northern) facade.
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