page_title: Bou Inania Madrasa
section_title: The water clock (Dar al-Magana)
hierarchical_section_title: Bou Inania Madrasa / Architecture and layout / The water clock (Dar al-Magana)
caption_attribution_description: At Dar al-Magana
context_page_description: The Madrasa Bou Inania is a madrasa in Fes, Morocco, founded in AD 1350–56 by Abu Inan Faris. It is widely acknowledged as a high point of Marinid architecture and of historic Moroccan architecture generally.
context_section_description: Also opposite the Madrasa Bou Inania is the Dar al-Magana, a house whose street facade features a famous but not fully understood hydraulic clock. The symbolic and practical importance of a clock lay in its use for determining the correct times of prayer, and the system was overseen by the mosque's muwaqqit (timekeeper). The structure is believed to have also been built by Abu Inan alongside his madrasa complex, with one chronicler (al-Djazna'i) reporting that it was completed on May 6, 1357 (14 Djumada al-awwal, 758 AH). The facade of the building has 13 consoles (corbels) intricately carved in cedar wood, with panels of wood-carved arabesques and stylized Kufic decoration between them. Above these are twelve windows surrounded by stucco-carved decoration, above which in turn are two rows of projecting wooden corbels. The uppermost row of consoles is longer than the ones below and presumably supported a parapet or canopy that has since disappeared.
  Each of the 13 consoles under the windows once supported a bronze bowl, seen in old photographs. Historical accounts describe how at every hour a lead ball or weight fell into one of the bowls to make a ringing sound, while at the same time opening the "doors" or shutters of the corresponding window. The exact mechanism that operated this system has disappeared and its workings are unknown today. It was likely powered in some way by running water, and it appears the weights or balls may have been suspended by a lead line attached to the projecting consoles above the windows. The surviving bronze bowls of the clock were removed in the later 20th century for ongoing study, though the structure itself was restored in the early 2000s.
caption: The restored facade of the Dar al-Magana today, with the remains of the hydraulic clock (except for the missing metal bowls).
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