i. Plaster as decorative architecture

Carved plaster is one of the most striking architectural legacies of Morocco. In every Marinid madrasa, in every old riad, in every monumental mosque, plaster covers a significant part of the surfaces — friezes, panels, door frames, muqarnas domes.

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According to Mahmoud Bayram al-Tunisi, a 19th-century Tunisian writer, "the art of carving on plaster, notably on the wall surfaces commonly called Naqsh Hadida, is executed with great mastery in the Kingdom of Morocco" — at a time when the technique had disappeared in Tunisia.

ii. The gesture, the time, the iron

The technique rests on a strict temporal constraint: the plaster, laid in successive layers on the wall, remains carvable only 15 to 30 minutes after application. Beyond that, it hardens irreversibly. The artisan must therefore work fast, without hesitating, without an eraser.

The tools are rudimentary: a flat iron (hence hadida = iron), a modelling knife, a punch, sometimes a brush to sweep away the powder. The motif is traced beforehand with a brush or pencil; the artisan hollows it by hand, depth by depth, line by line.

iii. Muqarnas, the art of stalactites

The muqarnas — those architectural stalactites that cover the domes and the corner transitions — are the plasterer's supreme feat. Composed of nested concave cells, they break light into a thousand fragments. Mathematically, they obey precise rules of radial symmetry and division — a geometry close to that of zellige.