During the Almohad period, prominent bands of ceramic decoration in green and white were already features on the minarets of the Kutubiyya Mosque and the Kasbah Mosque of Marrakesh. Relatively simple in design, they may have reflected artistic influences from Sanhaja Berber culture. Jonathan Bloom cites the glazed tiles on the minaret of the Kutubiyya Mosque, dating from the mid-12th century, as the earliest reliably-dated example of zellij in Morocco. The individual tile pieces are large, allowing the pattern to be visible from afar. Each piece was pierced with a small hole prior to being baked so that the tiles could be affixed by nails to a wooden frame set into a mortar surface on this part of the minaret. The minaret of the Kasbah Mosque, built slightly later in the 1190s, makes greater use of ceramic decoration generally, including geometric mosaics on the upper parts of the minaret in the same technique as those of the Kutubiyya (though slightly more varied in design). The tiles on both minarets today are modern reproductions of the originals, of which fragments have been preserved in the reserve collection of the Badi Palace museum. Generalization across the region (14th to 15th centuries) The more complex zellij style that we know today became widespread during the first half of the 14th century under the Marinid, Nasrid, and Zayyanid dynastic periods in Morocco, Algeria, and al-Andalus. Due to the significant cultural unity and relations between al-Andalus and the western Maghreb, the forms of zellij under Marinid, Nasrid, and Zayyanid patronage are extremely similar. In Ifriqiya (Tunisia), under the Hafsid dynasty, zellij tiling largely fell out of style during this same period and was replaced by a preference for stone and marble paneling. Zellij tiling was most typically used to pave floors and to cover the lower walls inside buildings. Zellij was also used on the exterior of minarets and on some entrance portals. Geometric motifs predominated, with patterns of increasing complexity being formed during this period. Less frequently, vegetal or floral arabesque motifs were also created. On walls, zellij geometric dadoes were commonly topped by an epigraphic frieze. By this period, more colours were employed such as yellow (using iron oxides or chrome yellow), blues, and a dark brown manganese colour. This style of tile mosaic, formed by assembling a large number of small hand-cut pieces to form a pattern, is evident in famous buildings