It is often said that Morocco has four imperial cities — Marrakesh, Rabat, Meknes, and Fez, with each of these having played the role of the historically divided country’s capital at one time or another. Rabat, of course, is the present capital.
Marrakesh is in the south of Morocco looking up towards the Atlas Mountains. Rabat, a short train ride away from the country’s main port city of Casablanca, the commercial capital, is on the Atlantic coast, and Meknes and Fez are in central Morocco on the ancient trade routes that used to run inland across the country from the coastal plains and towards what is now Algeria.
Not being able to visit all four imperial cities, Al-Ahram Weekly decided to visit two, Meknes and Fez, on a recent trip to Morocco, among other reasons because they are next to each other and just 40 minutes or so apart by train. As the Weekly party subsequently discovered, this close proximity disguises considerable differences between two cities that have historically also often been bitter rivals.
Today one of the world’s leading tourism destinations, perhaps particularly for Europeans, Morocco is particularly well-served in terms of international flights. There are regular routes from many western European cities to Casablanca, Rabat, Fez and Marrakesh, with Morocco positioning itself as a country that is easily accessible to European tourists — Casablanca is around a three-hour flight from Paris — and one that offers many varied activities.
Visitors can choose to go trekking in the Atlas Mountains, explore the southern desert areas on a desert safari, or dive deep into the country’s multi-layered cultural heritage, expressed particularly in the built environment of its ancient towns and cities.
Because of Morocco’s historically strong links to France, French remains one of the country’s most widely spoken languages — the other two are varieties of the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and of Berber — and this means that anyone worried that they might not be able to make themselves understood in Arabic, or understand the Moroccan dialect, can usually fall back on French, as they can in the other two Arab Maghreb countries of Algeria and Tunisia.
Morocco does not have the same variety of landscapes and ecosystems that characterises Egypt, from the Nile Valley, to the Delta, the Western and Eastern Deserts, and the mountains and coastlines of the Red Sea and Sinai. It does not have the same historical depth or grandeur — since clearly very few if any countries can compete with Egypt when it comes to the layered remains of its ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Coptic, and Islamic civilisations.
But while there is nothing in Morocco that can compare to the Karnak Temple, the Valley of the Kings, and Abu Simbel, or, in more modern times, the grandeur of the Mameluke mosques, madrassas, tombs, and architectural complexes that mark out Historic Cairo, the country does have its own architectural traditions, perhaps most familiar to many from the surviving Islamic architecture of southern Spain that includes the Alhambra Palace complex outside Granada and Cordoba’s famous mosque-cathedral.
The Islamic dynasties of the Idrisids, Almoravids, Almohads, and Marinids that successively ruled over Morocco and other parts of North Africa in the mediaeval and later periods also ruled over much of Spain, uniting the two sides of the Mediterranean in one Islamic empire. Anybody familiar with the ingredients of Islamic architecture as these were employed in Andalusia in southern Spain will recognise the same elements at work in traditional Moroccan architecture, including the low tiled roofs, the slim columns surrounding gardens featuring tiled paths and sunken pools, and the decorative programmes of carved stucco and, at ground-floor level, the dadoes of colourful geometric tiles.
Moroccan minarets, square in design and decorated with patterns in brick and ceramic tiles, are also quite different from the designs employed in Egyptian Mameluke architecture, which are far more varied and even daring. The bell tower of the cathedral in Seville in southern Spain, once the minaret of the city’s largest mosque, is typical of the style and was in fact modelled on minarets in North Africa.
CASABLANCA TO FEZ:
Fez has its own international airport, necessary for a city that is now a major tourist destination, but the Weekly party decided to fly to Casablanca instead and take the train to Fez as a way of seeing something of the intervening country.
The historic centre of Casablanca itself, built in the early decades of the last century according to a masterplan drawn up by French architect Henri Prost, was allowed to decay in the decades following Moroccan independence in 1956 as businesses moved to more modern premises and residents moved out of or were no longer able to maintain apartments in city-centre buildings.
Some of the problems of downtown Casablanca have thus likely been similar to those of downtown Cairo or Alexandria, built at a similar time and according to a similar conception of city living. Rather as they have in Egypt, the authorities in Casablanca have made major efforts over recent years to restore and rejuvenate the historic downtown area, helped in their case by its proximity to the port and its possession of large squares and gardens, an inheritance of French urban planning.
It was good to see, on this visit to Casablanca, that many buildings had been renovated. Major development work is underway in the port area, and the new Casablanca Port train station, an addition to the Casablanca Voyageurs station some way from the historic centre, is now bringing visitors closer to the heart of the commercial district.
The city’s new tram system, built between 2012 and 2019, makes it easy to travel round central and not-so-central Casablanca — the Weekly party spent an afternoon going up and down the tram’s two lines — and historic thoroughfares that had earlier seemed down at heel are now being given a new lease of life, notably in the area around the old Central Market that includes a new Lincoln Hotel being built behind the preserved façade of the famous historic building.
It takes three and a half hours to travel to Fez on a railway system that delights most visitors. Moroccan trains are fast, reliable, and well maintained, and unlike in many European countries where years of under-investment, pressures from the car industry, and infrastructure and other problems have led more and more people to avoid travelling by train, Morocco’s railways bring back memories of what train travel used to be like in years gone by when it was a pleasure as well as a practical and economic option.
Not only is it possible to buy tickets easily and quickly in Moroccan railway stations without the need to fiddle with websites and telephone apps, but the Moroccan state operator, the ONCF, has also not been tempted to engage in the kind of dynamic pricing that makes it impossible to know how much they are going to cost in advance. Passengers are able to go into railway stations, buy a ticket, and then be shown courteously to their trains, things which are impossible in parts of Europe.
Like other Moroccan cities, Fez is divided into two main parts — the old city, in Morocco called the medina, the standard Arabic word for town or city, and the ville nouvelle, the new town built next to or around it during the last century and later. Because of the particular way Fez developed, the old city is divided into two parts, with the second part somewhat confusingly named Fez Al-Jadid (New Fez).
This arrangement, begun by the French during the colonial period, meant that the old city of Fez was substantially preserved instead of being demolished to make way for new development as happened to other cities in some other countries. However, it also meant that over time residents of the old city moved out into the newer one, typically in search of more space, more modern accommodation, and better amenities, in a process familiar, for example, from Historic Cairo.
Like in the latter area, the challenge in many Moroccan old cities, including Fez, has been to retain and preserve the historic architecture and cityscape, while at the same time ensuring that these remain living districts and do not turn into open-air museums or artificial heritage reserves.
FEZ AL-BALI:
Arriving in Fez new town by train, the Weekly party took a taxi to Fez Al-Bali, the traditional name of the old city.
Founded in the ninth century CE, Fez is often said to have enjoyed its most prosperous period under the Marinid Dynasty that ruled much of Morocco from the 13th to the late 15th centuries. Visiting the city a few hundred years after its foundation, the 12th-century Arab geographer Al-Idrisi wrote of its impressive buildings and overflowing markets, the city’s prosperity being the result of surrounding agriculture and trade.
“Fez is at the centre of the western Maghreb and is surrounded by Berber tribes that speak Arabic,” Al-Idrisi wrote. “It is where they go most often, along with a flood of caravans bringing all sorts of marvelous fabrics, merchandise, and beautiful products. The city’s inhabitants are wealthy and enjoy luxurious living and great prosperity.”
It was in Fez, too, that the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta, born in Tangiers, regaled the Marinid Sultan Abu Inan with tales of his voyages. Returning home after years on the road on a journey that took him across Central Asia to China and then back via India, perhaps he can be forgiven some local chauvinism.
“I arrived at the royal city of Fez on Friday, at the end of the month of Shaaban of the year 750 [November 1349],” Ibn Battuta says. “I presented myself before our most noble master, the most generous imam, the Commander of the Faithful, Al-Mutawakkil Abu Inan — may God enlarge his greatness and humble his enemies.”
“I laid down the staff of travel in his glorious land, having assured myself after unbiassed consideration that it is the best of countries, for in it fruits are plentiful, and running water and nourishing food are never exhausted. Few indeed are the lands which unite all these advantages.”
It was under Marinid rule that the familiar lay-out of Fez really took shape — something like three square km of densely populated winding streets, sometimes not more than a couple of metres wide, with the sun shut out by tall buildings on each side. Interspersed among the shops and houses, and occasional small squares, are many examples of the religious and commercial institutions that once made Fez famous and are now magnets for appreciative visitors.
These include a clutch of mediaeval madrassas (religious schools) built mostly under the Marinid Dynasty and not far from mosques, among them Al-Qarawiyin, founded in the ninth century and whose rooftops and minarets still dominate the old city. These madrassas, often beautifully restored, compete for visitor attention with the city’s other historic buildings, including fundoks, similar to the wikala (commercial hostels) in Historic Cairo, though on a smaller scale, and various historic riad and dar — often sumptuously appointed private residences now sometimes converted into guesthouses or restaurants.
Some of the city is given over to traditional markets, as in Historic Cairo, with different areas being associated with different goods or crafts. Streets are named after the craftsman that traditionally worked in them, often selling their wares out of kiosk-like openings fronting workshops behind. Names such as al-attarine, al-najjarine, and al-sherabliyine (perfume-sellers, carpenters, and slipper-makers) signal the wares traditionally made and sold, though unlike in Historic Cairo where tents are still made in the historic tentmakers bazaar, artisans in Fez have not always kept to the traditional areas.
Crafts needing space and elaborate equipment, such as pottery, have been moved out to surrounding districts, where workshops and showrooms draw busloads of appreciative visitors. One craft that has not been moved out is tannery, with two areas of the old city still being associated with open-air tanneries that use traditional methods to make a range of leather goods. Visiting these areas, or rather looking down on them from above, one gazes across open-air vats containing murky liquid in which workers doggedly plunge animal skins. The smell is overpowering, and helpful guides provide sprigs of mint to mask it.
The Weekly party had elected to stay in a historic dar in Fez, in other words in one of the city’s traditional homes now converted into a guesthouse. A heavy door in a wall in a narrow lane just a couple of metres wide opened to reveal a corridor leading into a central courtyard four storeys high, with stairs winding up within the doubled walls and rooms arranged on the upper floors.
This style of domestic building, barricaded against outsiders and with thick walls protecting against the sun, is characteristic of traditional urban architecture in Fez and other older Moroccan cities.
MEKNES:
Located some 60 km west of Fez, Meknes was founded in the 11th century under Morocco’s Almoravid Dynasty, eventually becoming the country’s capital in the later 17th century and thus temporarily supplanting Fez.
Arriving at the second of the city’s two railway stations in the ville nouvelle named after the 19th-century independence fighter Abdel-Qader, the Weekly went by taxi to the Al-Hedim Square in the old city. Built by Sultan Moulay Ismail in the late 17th century, this borders on the old market areas as well as on the royal palaces, called in Morocco the Dar Al-Makhzen, something like “royal palace” or “house of government”.
The square is a vast open space that was traditionally used both for commercial purposes, with buying and selling spilling out of the nearby covered markets, as well as for all manner of social purposes, from drinking coffee to taking in a show by traditional street performers in a manner associated with the similar Jemaa Al-Fnaa Square in Marrakesh, today a major tourist attraction.
When the Weekly visited, a multi-year restoration and renovation project seemed to be drawing to a conclusion, though the square itself and the imposing Bab Mansour gate leading to the Dar Al-Makhzen that gives onto it were still a building site, the latter shrouded in scaffolding. Fortunately, and perhaps as a token of things to come, the old Dar Jamai Museum, once containing an uninspiring collection of historical odds and ends, had been completely renovated and redesigned as a museum of traditional Moroccan music.
Visitors are welcome to while away many happy hours here sampling extracts from recordings of traditional music, all helpfully indexed and available through touch screens and often with associated videos. Adjacent display cases present traditional Moroccan musical instruments and contain details of the different forms of music that have traditionally flourished in the country, whether among the urban elite, in rural areas, or among majority Berber populations in the mountains.
Two other destinations often attract visitors to Meknes. The first is the ancient town of Moulay Idriss Zerhan that was founded by Moulay Idriss, a descendant of Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohamed, who was driven out of Arabia by the Abassid Dynasty in the late eighth century CE. Fleeing westwards to Morocco, he arrived at this site where he founded the country’s Idrisid Dynasty.
The second destination is the ruins of the Roman settlement of Volubilis, quite close to Moulay Idriss Zerhan and possibly the southernmost Roman settlement in this part of North Africa and once part of the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana.
Pressures of time meant that the Weekly party was only able to visit Volubilis, though the plain on which it sits is dominated by Moulay Idriss Zerhan, which occupies a nearby mountainside. Arriving by car in the early afternoon, the rain gently falling, the site appeared grey and deserted, though dramatically illuminated under a vast mountain sky. This part of Morocco, some 400 metres above sea level, is both temperate and has significant rainfall, allowing it to sustain agriculture that includes both staple crops like wheat and even some dairy farming.
The few standing columns that mark the site can be seen from a distance from across the plain, and perhaps the Weekly party was not alone in feeling some pang of sympathy for the Roman soldiers that once manned this outpost of Roman rule deep among intermittently hostile tribes. Perhaps they felt that they had drawn the short straw in being sent out to man the Roman border in North Africa — though perhaps life here was no worse than on other frontier posts and, given the temperate climate and the city’s position on a major trading route, it may have been a great deal better.
Even so, the remoteness of Volubilis from the centres of Roman rule adds to the melancholy of the site, adding a poignancy to its remains of standard Roman urban planning from the Atlantic to the Levant and including the blackened stones of what were once the city’s Forum, Capitoline Temple, and Triumphal Arch dedicated to the Roman Emperor Caracalla. The Latin inscription on this, praising Caracalla’s military exploits across the Empire, can still be read by visitors today.
All three of these sites — the Archaeological Site of Volubilis, the Medina of Fez, and the Historic City of Meknes — have been listed by the UN cultural agency UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. The old city of Fez is “an outstanding example of a mediaeval town created during the first centuries of the Islamisation of Morocco and presenting an original type of human settlement representative of Moroccan urban culture from the ninth to the beginning of the 20th centuries,” the organisation says.
Commenting on neighbouring Meknes, it notes the old city’s market areas, Dar Al-Makhzen, and spectacular gates and ramparts reaching 15 metres in height, all “exemplary testimony of the fortified towns of the Islamic Maghreb”.
Visiting these two imperial cities today, it seemed clear that responsible tourism in both has helped in the preservation and conservation of these remarkable urban sites, helping them to flourish as living cities in which the economic and other benefits that tourism can bring are helping to maintain local businesses and provide employment in a wide range of areas.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 13 July, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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