Church of Santa Maria of Maluenda

The truncated minaret is preserved embedded in the south wall. Since it stands out neither by height nor projection, it is totally invisible from the plaza. As was the case with most of the Islamic and Mudéjar architectural elements in the territory of Calatayud, it was Augustín Sanmiguel who was most involved in the study of the minaret, and I have incorporated information from his presentations about it in Los Encuentros de Estudios Bilbilitanos for this description.

The tower is square in plan, of 4.70 meters to each side, except at the base, where it widens to 7.5 meters. Its remaining part is 14 meters high, of which 10 correspond to the lower adobe and rubble covering. The base, of rubble construction, is about half a meter high, and it is possible that this was added when it was discovered to prevent erosion. Above are the remains of a double sloping course of beveled porous limestone, which probably constituted its visible base. From this point upwards it is rough plastered rubblework, and the only preserved original part is towards the top. Halfway up can be seen the springing of a pointed groin vault. Below, a little window opened later allows the appreciation of the thickness of the walls—more than a meter. There are two interconnecting rooms in its interior covered with pointed groin vaulting.

2 3 4

The most interesting part is the brick top, which has been visible on all four sides since the restoration, though it’s of small size: around a meter and a half on the sides and half a meter in front. The north end is somewhat higher, but it’s not visible from the ground.

5 6

The bottom of this brick part has five courses with three little niches per side. Above is a line of angled bricks that make up a saw-tooth pattern of three courses.

On the eight following courses is a line of nine glazed ceramic disks along the sides and ten on the other two; originally there were 76, but many of them have been lost.

These disks are of two alternating colors: dark honey and dark green. They are domestic plates, bowl-shaped and flat based, with a vertical border, decorated with a simple striated circular motif measuring one-third the total radius of the center.

In Augustín Sanmiguel’s opinion, these disks, similar to the tower at Ateca, have nothing in common with the usual 14th century ones seen, for example in the towers of San Salvador and San Martín in Teruel, which were manufactured for architectural decoration.

10 11

Above these bands of disks is a fish scale motif, an important one, as it occupies 15 courses, that are only seen in Belmonte, Ateca and here in Maluenda. From what remains, it appears that above this was a second band of disks, but this is now the level of the roof tiles.

We can only make conjectures about what the upper part of the tower was like. It is supposed that it would have resembled the towers of Ateca and Belmonte, especially the latter, which also has a lower part of plaster and rubble construction, and a sloping base (Ateca’s tower is completely in brick). It is possible that there would have been a decoration of intersecting arches and ceramic colonettes at the upper level. It is almost certain that it would have had a narrower second level in the style of minarets, as at Belmonte.

The clearly Islamic construction and decoration of these towers leads to the conclusion that all three were minarets converted into bell towers, kept for the use of Christian churches built on sites of mosques. Therefore, Maluenda’s can be dated to before the 11th century, at the same time as the castle and earthwork tower that are still found here.

	Interactive map of the Region of the Community of Calatayud

Page of beginning