Category: Spain, Portugal and Morocco, November 2017

We had a full morning to spend in Marrakesh before flying out to Madrid in the afternoon, and to spend it we were offered a choice between unstructured free time and an optional visit to the Jardin Majorelle. Sandie did not feel up to much walking, so she chose the former, and I the latter. I was not disappointed.

The Jardin Majorelle presented a very different prospect from the venues we had previously experienced in Marrakesh, and indeed in all of Morocco. We had been immersed in the history and culture of the country, both its ancient and modern facets, and that had been a splendid and eye-opening odyssey for all of us, I think. In the Jardin Majorelle, we encountered something totally novel: a verdant tropical garden in the midst of what is essentially a desert country, the implant of a culture quite unlike the Islamic Berber-Arab civilization we had been imbibing.

The Jardin Majorelle is the creation of Jacques Majorelle (1886-1962), a French artist who moved to Morocco for health reasons in 1917 and settled in Marrakesh. In 1923 he bought a 4-acre piece of property, had a house built and began planting a landscape garden. Over the years he continued to expand it.

The garden proved quite costly to maintain – after seeing it I can understand why – and in 1947 Majorelle was compelled to start charging admission to the public for visiting it. But the resulting income was meager, and Majorelle had to start selling parts of the property to keep out of the red. In the 1950s, following an expensive divorce, he was forced to sell the property altogether, and the new owners failed to keep it up, so it fell into decrepitude.

However, in the 1980s the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent and his partner and business manager Pierre Bergé discovered the property and fell in love with it. They bought it, restored it and opened it to the public. (They also acquired many of Majorelle’s paintings.) When Yves Saint-Laurent died in 2008, his ashes were interred in the garden. The property is now owned by the French non-profit Foundation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, and managed by the Marrakesh-based non-profit Foundation Jardin Majorelle.

The gardens now cover two and a half acres. Beside the villa and botanical collection, several museums are located there as well, including the Islamic Art Museum of Marrakesh, the Musee Yves St. Laurent, and the Berber Museum. I only had time to visit the last of these.  It was quite interesting, but it did not allow photography inside, so I only shot the exterior of the museum.

In 1931 Jacques Majorelle commissioned the architect Paul Sinoir to design a Cubist villa to replace his previous house, and he bought additional acreage to expand the garden. During these years he also became noted for his so-called “Orientalist” paintings – I would characterize them rather as “Maghrebist” because they mostly depicted scenes from the streets, souks and kasbahs of the Maghreb – Islamic North Africa – rather than Asia. In Marrakesh Majorelle discovered — and ultimately patented — a rich deep-cobalt color, now known as bleu Majorelle, using it as the color of his villa.

Bleu majorelle appears elsewhere throughout the garden, for example on a lushly overgrown arbor near the villa, many of the flowerpots scattered around the grounds, and the banks of the pools and watercourses.

The gardens include exotic plants from all over the world, especially the tropical areas, but they are most noted for their collection of cacti, which comprise the majority of their holdings. Some people, especially from the southwestern USA and Mexico, tend to dismiss the gardens as uninteresting because they can see plenty of cactus in their own countries. Now I’m from southern California myself, and I can see plenty of cactus around where I live, and they are certainly well-represented in the Jardin Majorelle; but it also has many more varieties, from all over the world, and they include more diverse, bizarre and intriguing species than I could have ever dreamed of. For example, there are Opuntia galapageia, a tree-like cactus from the Galapagos Islands, Lepismium cruciforme or Hurricane Cactus from South America and Euphorbia canariensis from (surprise!) the Canary Islands. (Manuel Sueiras ought to know about these, since he was born there.)

The Euphorbia canariensis especially struck my fancy because with its many offshoot branches it looked like a Jewish menorah gone crazy. As for the non-cactus plants, I most loved the pony-tail palm, also known as the elephant’s-foot tree, with its stout bulbous base which enables it to store considerable amounts of water to tide it over through dry spells. It is native to southern Mexico and Central America.

There were many other bizarre and wonderful plants that I would mention if I could, but there were not always signs or placards to identify them. At least I captured a number of them in the photos displayed above, and readers are invited to identify them and submit comments if they recognize them.

After resting up from the terrifying ordeal in the Jemaa el-Fnaa earlier in the day, we boarded the bus for a ride to a caravanserai on the outskirts of Marrakesh. The caravansarai, an institution ubiquitous in the Islamic world, was an inn providing lodging for travelers, especially merchants, accommodations for their horses and camels, and storage for their goods. It was known under a variety of names, funduq being the commonest in North Africa. Typically located along major trade routes at a distance equivalent to a day’s travel, caravanserais supported a commercial network spanning North Africa, Asia and Southeast Europe, including the famed Silk Road of central Asia.

Our destination was typical of the genre – a rectangular one-story structure with one protected entrance and a central courtyard surrounded by dormitory rooms, storage rooms, kitchens and dining areas. There was also an outer courtyard where caravans assembled for departure and arrival.

We arrived at the caravanserai just before sunset and were given a brief tour of the inn, then treated to tea and refreshments as a preliminary to our excursion. Preparations for the ride included being fitted with blue cloth turbans, which could be partially unfurled to serve as face-masks in the event of a sandstorm.

I confess I had some trepidation about mounting the camels, which I had always heard were irritable and unruly beasts. However, this went quite smoothly. It’s not like mounting a horse, where you leap up into the saddle; the camel has to be made to kneel so the passenger can climb onto its back. Here the camel-driver plays an essential role. He has to whack the camel with a stick, crying “kutsch!” as he does so. This may sound a bit cruel, and the animal-rights people would doubtless object, but the camel doesn’t seem to mind. It kneels, and then placidly accepts its burden, rising and patiently waiting for the command to set forth. Or at least that was the way it worked for us. We heard later that these were young camels, easier to work with than their elders, who get crotchety and ornery with advancing age.

Never having ridden a camel before, I was prepared for a rough and uncomfortable trip, but the camel was no bucking bronco and the ride turned out to be surprisingly smooth and comfortable. I could understand how merchants and warriors traveled hundreds of miles on them over the burning desert.

It was not long before we arrived at our destination, which was a nondescript spot off a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, but what made it welcome was that our bus was waiting to take us to dinner at the Palais Baraka in Marrakesh. The camels munched happily on the thorny desert vegetation as we dismounted and checked to ensure that we were still functional. It was the highlight of a memorable day.

This was the longest day I can remember spending in Africa or anywhere else. We had packed a lot of adventure into that day, but it wasn’t over yet. The finale was a sybaritic dining experience that served as our sendoff from Marrakesh and Morocco. It was held in a palace that rivaled the one we had visited in the morning, and it validated the reputation of Marrakesh as a “party city.” Sandie and I were seated at a table with Chuck and Elouise Mattox, Bill Chermak and Bill Glenn. As we finished dinner, the entertainment began, which consisted of Moroccan music and, inevitably, belly dancing – the latter performed by an attractive and seductive woman who lured me into dancing with her. I’m a completely inept dancer and probably looked quite ridiculous, but it was all good fun.

We had only one full day to savor Marrakesh, but it was a memorable day. On the morrow we were scheduled to board a flight to take us to Madrid, but it departed in the afternoon, leaving us a morning to enjoy one more adventure in Marrakesh, which I’ll recount in the next post.

Without a doubt, the Jemaa el-Fnaa provided for me the most bizarre and indelible experience of the entire trip. It is a huge open square in the middle of Marrakesh, surrounded by souks, cafés, hotels and other service establishments, such as a post office. To get to the Jemaa el-Fnaa, we had to walk from the rug shop near the Tinsmiths’ Square through a maze of narrow, crowded alleys where we inevitably became disoriented and utterly dependent on our guides’ geographical expertise. I was trying intently to keep up with the guides, but at some point I stopped to adjust my camera to the lighting conditions in the passage, and when I looked up, I was alone, with no members of the tour group visible and no indication as to which direction they had gone. There was a fork in the road, and following Yogi Berra’s advice, I took it. That is, I tried both directions in turn, but found no trace of the tour group on either path. One path led directly into the square, the other went deeper into the labyrinth. Finally I took the path that led directly into the square, figuring that the group must have gone that way. (It later turned out that the group had gone into a spice shop off that same lane, but the group was invisible from the outside, so I had missed them entirely.)

This was a very disquieting situation. Our guides had given us dire warnings beforehand about the dangers awaiting us in the Jemaa el-Fnaa, stressing the necessity of sticking together and not getting lost, and that greatly deepened my anxiety. I had no way of communicating with the tour guides or anyone else since my cell phone didn’t work outside the USA. I had no idea how to get back to the bus or the hotel. For want of anything better to do, I started wandering around the Jemaa el-Fnaa, hoping that at some point I would run across the tour group. But it was a forlorn hope given the vastness of the square and the extreme difficulty of identifying anyone amidst the crowds that thronged it.

Instead of finding the group, I shortly stumbled into a snake pit. This was actually an open area in the square where a crew of snake charmers had spread a rug on which they displayed their menagerie of deadly poisonous serpents. I dislike snakes intensely, but I am fascinated with them nevertheless. I had never before encountered snake charmers and my curiosity overcame my aversion.

If I had had any inkling of what I was getting into, I would have fled the scene forthwith. But either the guides had not warned us about the snake charmers, or I hadn’t heard the caveats. Since then, I have read a bit about the snake-charming profession and learned that it is a sordid and unsavory business. According to one source I consulted,

“…the snakes, having been caught and trapped in the countryside, then have their teeth pulled out. To prevent their captors being injured by them their mouths are usually then sewn almost completely shut. Sometimes their venom ducts are burst with a hot needle in a painful and debilitating way. The snakes you see in front of you cannot eat, are in constant pain and completely unable to defend themselves. They are prisoners and lead a sad and hopeless life. They will soon be unable to move around and will be thrown away, to be replaced with another. The only way this will end is if tourists stop pausing for photographs with these poor, sad, dying snakes. You are simply feeding a tourist industry that needs to stop. It is incredibly cruel.”

It might seem difficult to feel sorry for creatures that in the wild, with all their equipment intact, can kill you with one bite, but I do and I heartily regret having gotten involved with this scam. In my defense I can only plead ignorance. The snakes I saw did not seem to be in pain or defenseless, and the charmers did not act as if they had nothing to fear from them – at least that was true of the cobras. (But that was most likely part of the con.) Occasionally one of them would tease a cobra with his cap to get the snake to strike, but when picking a cobra up with his hands, he was careful to hold the creature in a way that the snake would not have a chance to bite him. I could not tell by looking at them that the snakes were defanged.

The snake charmers had two kinds of snakes, Egyptian cobras (asps) and puff adders. Puff adders are rather stout reptiles, generally about a meter in length as adults; their name comes not from their girth but from the fact that when bitten, their victims swell up like a balloon. Although rather sluggish, they are nevertheless aggressive and ill-tempered, and they are responsible for more fatalities than any other snake in Africa. But the ones I saw in the snake pit seemed much more docile than the cobras, quite sluggish indeed – they might have been drugged – and the men handled them rather casually, so I suspected they were indeed defanged. The cobras were more aggressive and did not seem to be in any way impaired. The charmers indeed tried to get me to handle one of the puff adders, but I declined. (Actually, as I found out later, they were probably not puff adders but rather pythons, which are non-poisonous, but I can’t tell the difference unless one bites me, which I prefer to avoid.)

The cobras, by contrast, seemed active and alert, remaining in their typical “threatened” posture, upright with their hoods spread, most of the time while I was present. I was careful not to get close to them, photographing them with my zoom lens.

After finally escaping from the clutches of the snake charmers, I wandered around the Jemaa el-Fnaa for a while, increasingly dismayed at being alone and adrift in such a place of peril. Nevertheless I did have some pleasant moments, such as an encounter with a shoe-shine boy who gave my shoes the best shine they ever had.

After about an hour of traipsing around the square, I heard Karim, our Moroccan guide, shouting my name from a sidewalk restaurant which I had just passed by unknowingly without seeing any of our group seated in plain sight — which is a lesson in the difficulty of finding people in a crowd. The guides, as well as Sandie, had become quite alarmed to find me missing, and Karim had sent two of his assistants to search for me. Our tour director, Manuel, gave me a thorough scolding for my ineptitude, but I was merely relieved at not having to find my way back to our hotel, the location of which I had no clue, on my own.

After a decent lunch, we finished our sojourn in the Jemaa el-Fna without any further misadventures, and then re-embarked on our bus to return to the hotel. On the way out I was able to get some nice pictures of the square with its pinkish-red buildings softly saturated by the November afternoon sun.

By this time we were all fairly well exhausted and needed a good rest before embarking on the next arduous adventure, which was to be a camel ride at dusk on the outskirts of Morocco, followed by a farewell-to-Marrakesh dinner in a palatial restaurant — to be related in the next post.

When we left the Palais Bahia, we found ourselves in the Marrakesh Kasbah, a citadel and palace district on the south side of the city, dating from the time of the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur (r. 1184–1199). Wending our way through the picturesque streets, we shortly came to the Place Moulay Yazid, the site of the Kasbah Mosque, built by Yaqub al-Mansur to serve as the main mosque of the governing elite. It rivals the more famous Koutoubia Mosque, located not far away, which we did not visit. Both mosques are considered prime examples of Moroccan mosque architecture; the Koutoubia has the taller minaret, at 77 metres (253 ft), but they are quite similar in appearance.

In the late 16th century – the exact date is not recorded – a gunpowder explosion in a nearby store severely damaged the Kasbah Mosque. At that time Morocco was ruled by the Saadi dynasty, whose reigning sultan, Abdallah al-Ghalib Billah (r. 1557-1574), undertook extensive repairs to the Kasbah Mosque; it is thought that the restoration work resulted in extensive changes to the interior of the mosque, reflecting Saadian tastes and preferences. This did not matter to us, since as infidels we were not permitted to go inside, and the exterior appearance apparently remained little affected, with one major exception.

The exception was the result of the construction of a necropolis for the Saadi rulers, right up against the qibla (southeastern, in this case) wall of the mosque. It consists of two mausoleums, where the members of the ruling family were interred, as well as an exterior cemetery where tombs of the lesser dignitaries are located. The first mausoleum was begun by Abdallah al-Ghalib himself, who is buried there, along with his father, Muhammad al-Shaykh, the founder of the Saadian dynasty. This is now known as the Eastern Mausoleum. The next Saadian sultan, Ahmad al-Mansur (r. 1578-1603), a brother of al-Ghalib, greatly expanded and embellished the Eastern Mausoleum, adding two rectangular loggia rooms on its eastern and western sides, as well as a large rectangular room known as the Grand Chamber on the southern side. He had his mother buried in the Eastern Mausoleum, next to her husband, Muhammad al-Shaykh. For himself, al-Mansur built what is now known as the Western Mausoleum, where he was buried upon his death in 1603. Unlike the mosque, we were not excluded from the Saadian Tombs, and we went through them, but because of lighting issues I was only able to obtain one decent photo of the interior, a shot of the Grand Chamber.

 After touring the Saadian Tombs, we needed a rest stop, which we took in a nearby shop where various Moroccan artifacts, most notably rugs, were for sale. The vendors rolled out a number of large and beautiful rugs to display in an effort to seduce us into buying them, and I would have been tempted to do so had we not already, on our previous trip to Turkey in 2006, acquired a lovely rug which we had never dared to put on the floor because we were afraid our dogs and cats would not accord it sufficient respect; and we hadn’t been able to put it on the wall either because we couldn’t find enough space. (It now languishes in my observatory, where there is no room to put it on the floor or wall there either.) So we merely relaxed and rested up during our sojourn in the shop, and looked at some of the other wares, which were also tempting but not irresistible.

Having rested up a bit, we resumed our stroll through the Kasbah, which took us next to the most rigorous and challenging venue of the day, the great marketplace of the Jemaa el-Fnaa, the subject of the next post.

Setting forth to view the wonders of Marrakesh on the morning of November 15, 2017, our Go-Ahead tour group arrived first at the Palais Bahia. Located in the middle of the Marrakesh Medina, the Bahia (“Brilliant” in Arabic) Palace is a sprawling, labyrinthine complex with around 150 rooms as well as multiple courtyards and extensive gardens. It was begun in the 1860s by Si Musa, a descendant of black slaves who became the grand vizier of the Alawi Sultan Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman (r. 1859-1873). Si Musa’s son, Ahmad ibn Musa, more commonly known as Ba Ahmed, became hajib (chamberlain) to Abd al-Rahman’s successor, Sultan Moulay Hassan, and upon the latter’s death in 1894, ensured the succession of his son, Abd al-Aziz. Since Abd al-Aziz was only 16 years old at the time, Ba Ahmed, was able to exercise control in his name as regent and became the de facto ruler of Morocco until his own death in 1900.

Ba Ahmed greatly expanded the palace begun by his father and made it truly worthy of a ruler. Being obese, he did not like to climb stairs, so he limited construction to the ground floor.

Upon Ba Ahmed’s death in 1900, Sultan Abd al-Aziz immediately seized control of the government and made the Palais Bahia royal property. It subsequently came under the control of the powerful el-Glaoui family, who were instrumental in the overthrow of Abd al-Aziz in 1908 and the enthronement of his successor, Moulay Abd al-Hafid. During that time some second-story additions were made to the palace.

In 1912 the French established their protectorate, whereupon the French Resident-General, Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey, made the Palais Bahia his own residence and headquarters. After Morocco regained full independence in 1956, Sultan Mohammed V used it for a time as a personal residence, but his successor Hassan II turned it into a tourist attraction. It is now one of Morocco’s main draws, with over 400,000 visitors per year.

Our tour group entered the Palais Bahia through its unpretentious south gate, which led via a broad path to the Small Riad (Petit Riad). A riad in this context is a square courtyard garden divided by walkways along its two central axes. The Petit Riad was a feast for the eyes, overflowing with lush greenery.

The Petit Riad is surrounded by richly decorated galleries and chambers, one of which served as Ba Ahmed’s diwan or Council Chamber.

The smaller chambers around the Petit Riad were equally sumptuous.

After exploring the chambers around the Petit Riad, we strolled on to another court, known simply as the Small Courtyard – whereas “riad” denotes a courtyard which is also a garden, “courtyard” in this context denotes a paved patio. But it also was surrounded by decorated chambers, which we proceeded to explore in their turn.

From the Small Courtyard we graduated to the Grand Courtyard, a much larger space which is also known as the Cour d’Honneur. Built in 1896-7, it is paved with Carrara marble from Italy and surrounded by an elegant gallery decorated in an unusual blue-and-yellow color scheme which I found quite pleasing. The gallery fronts a set of apartments which are believed to have been part of Ba Ahmed’s harem. We were not told how many women dwelt in the harem, nor how they felt about being the concubines of a fat old man who couldn’t climb stairs.

Next to the Grand Courtyard, one of the newest parts of the Palais Bahia, lies the Grand Riad, which is the oldest, having been built under Si Musa in 1867. Like the Petit Riad, it is filled with lush vegetation, but is much larger, and contains some exotic plants which we could neither recognize nor identify but were certainly a feast for the eyes. Also like the Petit Riad, it is surrounded by salons and apartments, but in this case they mostly belonged to the harem.

At either end of the Grand Riad are two large salons, one of which served as the main hall of Ba Ahmed’s first and presumably most honored wife, Lalla Zaynab.

Beyond the main hall, we explored the luxuriously furnished apartments of Lalla Zaynab.

We soon became lost in the gorgeously furnished rooms of the harem, and one seemed to blend into another indistinguishably.

From the Grand Riad, we retraced our steps back through the Palais Bahia to the Medina; and there we strolled through the souk, the marketplace outside the palace, until we arrived at the great gate called the Bab Agnaou, where we began our next adventure in Marrakesh.

By the time our bus delivered us to our hotel in Marrakesh, on the evening of November 14, 2017, it was already too late, and we were too exhausted, to do anything except eat dinner and retire to our rooms. Our schedule for the following day, November 15, was quite full and left us no free time to go exploring on our own, except late that night. There was also a little time for free-lance discovery on the morning of November 16, after visiting the Jardin Majorelle. I took advantage of these brief opportunities, but they were limited mostly to scenes of the immediate area around our hotel and a few candid street shots from the bus while en route to and from the hotel. Although I shot these photos toward the end of our stay in Marrakesh, they are more suitable for an introduction than a conclusion, so – following a brief preface on the history and character of the city – I’ll begin with them and save the epic adventures of the following two days for the next few posts.

Marrakesh, now the fourth-largest city in Morocco, was founded around 1070 by the Almoravids, a Berber dynasty seeking to reform Islam. With Marrakesh as their capital, they expanded north and created an empire which eventually embraced not only most of the Maghreb (North Africa west of Egypt) but also al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled territory in Iberia. For a time they brought to a halt the Christian reconquest of the peninsula, but their hegemony did not last long. Their decline began in the early 12th century and eventually they were overthrown by a rival Berber group, the Almohads, who captured Marrakesh in 1147 and went on to take over the Almoravid dominions in both the Maghreb and the Iberian peninsula.

Marrakesh grew rapidly under both the Almoravids and the Almohads and established itself as a cultural, religious, and trading center for the Maghreb. In the thirteenth century, the Almohads were in turn overthrown by another Berber dynasty, the Marinids, who made their capital at Fes. This led to a period of relative decline for Marrakesh, though it remained important.

In the 16th century Marrakesh regained its status as capital with the rise to power of the Saadian dynasty, which initiated a renaissance in the city by renovating the monuments left by its predecessors and building new ones of its own.

In the 17th century, a new dynasty, the Alawis, came to power and took Marrakesh in 1668. Although the Alawi rulers frequently moved their capital from one city to another – Fes, Meknes and Rabat as well as Marrakesh – and finally settled on Rabat, Marrakesh continued to thrive.

In the 19th century, France established an empire in North Africa, conquering Algeria outright and imposing a protectorate upon Tunisia. The French also had their eyes on Morocco, as did the Spanish, who established spheres of influence in far northern and southern Morocco, while the French focused on the areas in between, which included Fes and Marrakesh. Hassan I, the Sultan of Morocco from 1873 to 1894, undertook serious military and administrative reforms and was thereby fairly successful in resisting foreign encroachments, but the situation changed after his death. His son and successor, Moulay Abd al-Aziz, was only 16 and thus came under the aegis of Hassan’s Grand Wazir, Aḥmad bin Mūsa bin Aḥmad al-Sharqī al-Bukhārī, known as Ba Ahmed, who secured the succession of Abd al-Aziz and ruled more or less capably until he himself died in 1900. Ba Ahmed’s father, who was also Grand Wazir, began the Palais Bahia in Marrakesh, but it was mostly Ba Ahmed himself who was responsible for its construction. I’ll have more to say about this in my next post.

After Ba Ahmed’s death in 1900, Abd al-Aziz assumed full control of the government but quickly found himself in a deteriorating situation, having to contend both with accelerating foreign encroachments and serious domestic unrest. Increasing disorder eventually led to full-scale military invasion. Abd al-Aziz was replaced in 1908 by his elder brother Abd al-Hafid, previously viceroy of Marrakesh, but he proved no more able to manage the situation. With the Treaty of Fes in 1912 France turned its sphere of influence into a formal protectorate, and Spain quickly followed suit. Abd al-Hafid was in turn replaced as sultan by another son of Hassan I, Yusef ben Hassan, who however was little more than a figurehead; the French Resident-General, the same General Hubert Lyautey who had led the French invasion forces, had total control over foreign policy and primary control over internal affairs, with the Sultan retaining some authority in the domestic sphere, especially over religious matters.

Moroccan resistance to foreign domination did not cease with the establishment of the protectorates; it continued to fester and erupt in various places and forms, until finally, after World War II, with colonialism on the retreat everywhere, the Kingdom of Morocco regained its full sovereignty. Since then, the country has established strong ties with the outside world, both Islamic and Western, and the government has promoted tourism enthusiastically – an effort which has especially benefited Marrakesh, now the #1 tourist destination in Morocco.

It was immediately evident upon our arrival why Marrakesh is nicknamed the “Red City.” Both old and new structures are overwhelmingly tinted in various shades of rose-red. There is no mystery as to why: the city is situated in a region rich in materials of high iron oxide content, such as red sandstone, which have a strong reddish tint, and these locally sourced substances impart their earthy tones to the structures in which they are used, as they have been for many centuries.

The builders of the Marrakesh city walls used a technique called pisé, a type of rammed-earth construction in which a mixture of earth, water and other materials is compacted within a framework of wooden boards. It is an ancient, durable and sustainable form of construction particularly suited to dry climates, and has been used in Marrakesh down to modern times. A similar type of construction has been extensively used here in America – it is called adobe.

Our hotel, called Le Meridien N’Fis, was situated not far outside the old walls, on Boulevard Mohammed VI near the corner of Rue Moulay Rachid, about 3 km south-west of the Marrakesh Medina. Across the boulevard was a major ultra-modern mall, the Menara, and south of Moulay Rachid were two large parks. It was hard to get a good photo of the hotel because of the vegetation surrounding it, which blocked the view. I couldn’t seem to find a vantage point that didn’t have a large palm tree blocking the view.

On our second evening in Marrakesh, not being ready to fall asleep yet, I went for an after-dinner walk in the hotel vicinity with my Canon EOS-6D and took some pictures of the area. I was surprised to find that after dark this part of Marrakesh felt more like a city in the southwestern USA at Christmas time than an Islamic country in Africa. The Menara Mall across the boulevard from the hotel reminded me in particular of malls in Los Angeles or Las Vegas. To enhance the holiday atmosphere, the street lights were festooned with something that looked like Christmas decorations.

The parks south of the hotel sprouted light sculptures in a form that appeared to mimic Christmas trees. I doubt whether the local inhabitants thought of them as such, but they nevertheless made a comforting contribution to the ambience of the place.

This brief pictorial introduction to Marrakesh highlights the modern aspect of the city; in the next post, we’ll begin to delve into the remarkable legacy of its past.

Immediately after our arrival at the Hotel Golden Tulip Farah in Casablanca on the evening of November 13, I fell sick. It was the usual type of dysentery that comes from being far from home in an environment with different strains of gut bacteria. Nothing life-threatening, but very distressing and uncomfortable. I called Karim, our Moroccan guide, and he contacted a Moroccan doctor who came immediately. The doctor spoke no English, but he did speak French, so I had to communicate with him using my extremely rusty and very inadequate French – although I can read it well enough, I’m pretty much deaf to spoken French – but I did understand enough to know how to take the meds he provided. Those were quite effective and I was back on my feet in short order, although I had to miss dinner at Rick’s Café that evening. I consoled myself with the knowledge that it wasn’t the real Rick’s Café – actually there was no such establishment in Casablanca during World War II – and that Rick wouldn’t have been there anyway, since after the shooting of Major Strasser he had left with Captain Louis Renault to join the Free French in Brazzaville.🙃

By the next morning I was feeling well enough to go on that day’s outing to the King Hassan II Mosque. I’m glad I didn’t have to miss that because it was an amazing experience. In contrast to most mosques in Morocco, non-Muslims are permitted and indeed encouraged to visit. Both inside and outside, it is a stunning architectural achievement. According to Wikipedia, it is the second largest functioning mosque in Africa and the 14th largest in the world. The minaret, 210 metres (689 ft) high (60 stories) is also the world’s second tallest. Designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau, it was built by Moroccan artisans to King Hassan II’s specifications and completed in 1993. It stands on a promontory overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and is situated half on land and half over the sea, and visitors can see the ocean through windows in the floor.

The mosque is built on a 22-acre complex which also contains a madrasah, a museum, conference halls, hammams (bathhouses), and a very large multimedia library, the Mediathèque. Despite the number of establishments, the complex was not crowded, and the esplanade on which it stands seemed mostly empty, a feature which maximized the towering majesty of the mosque itself.

The mosque took seven years to build, with 35,000 workers laboring on it day and night, and cost somewhere between $400 and $700 million. The Moroccan government could not afford the cost out of its normal revenues (the King paid for a third of it) and had to appeal to the public for donations, which were abundantly forthcoming, but still not enough; it was necessary also to take out loans from business sources and other governments, which were eventually repaid. The completed mosque is 200 metres (660 ft) in length and 100 metres (330 ft) in width.  The architecture is a blend of Moroccan and non-Moroccan Islamic elements as well as some modernistic features. The mosque is built of reinforced concrete, but the exterior, overlaid with marble, limestone and tile, is abundantly decorated using various materials such as titanium and bronze, pale blue marble and zellij tiles, all in traditional Moroccan motifs. For example, the minaret, faced with marble, is decorated with green and turquoise blue tiles. Seashell-shaped basins at the corner towers of the square arcade surrounding the minaret have a stunning backplane consisting of beautiful blue-green mosaic tilework, and are set into a horseshoe arch flanked by pillars with crosshatch façades matching those on the sides of the minaret.

Entering the mosque, we found ourselves in the great prayer hall, which is designed to accommodate 25,000 people (the plaza outside is designed to accommodate another 80,000, but I’m very glad that neither was filled to capacity the day we were there). The hall is said to be big enough to fit either St. Peter’s basilica in Rome or Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral inside, although I’m a bit skeptical about that, and I’d hate to see anyone try to do so. It would be like putting a Volkswagen Beetle into a dorm room (this has actually been done) only on a grander scale, with the difficulty of undoing the deed exponentially multiplied.

The design of the prayer hall to me looked suspiciously similar to that of a Christian cathedral. Indeed, it is built on a basilica plan, with three naves perpendicular to the qibla (direction of prayer, facing toward Mecca) wall, where the apse and altar would be found in a Christian church; instead of an altar you find a mihrab, or prayer niche. (It should be noted that both mosque and cathedral have a common origin in the Roman basilica, which was originally a public building, containing courts or other government agencies, rather than a religious temple; the Muslims were not copying Christian churches.) However, the soaring arches with their elaborate muqarnas, the stucco carvings with their elegant Quranic epigraphy, and the profusion of zellij tiles with their lovely floral and geometric figures, all ensure that there was no way the mosque could ever be mistaken for a Christian church. Another quintessentially Islamic feature was provided by the two mezzanine floors on either side of the prayer hall, which appear to be suspended in the air between the columns lining the naves. Their square bases are faced with elaborately carved stone and tile, with elegant fences of dark carved wood lining the borders to keep people from falling off. The mezzanine floors are reserved for women, with entry restricted by electrically operated doors.

The ceiling panels too are made of intricately carved dark wood. 56 elaborate chandeliers made of Murano glass imported from Italy hang from the ceiling, making it especially hard to imagine how the roof could be retracted; but we were informed that it is indeed retractable, and that even though it weighs 1,100 tons, it can be retracted in five minutes. It was not opened during our visit, but we were told that it is often opened during services so that worshippers can pray in the sunshine or under the stars on clear days and nights.

Other than the Murano-glass chandeliers and the white-granite columns, also imported from Italy, all the materials used in the Mosque were sourced domestically in Morocco: cedar for the carved wooden furnishings from the Atlas Mountains, marble from Agadir and granite from Tafraoute. The six thousand or so highly skilled artisans who labored for five years to transform these materials into a mosque were drawn exclusively from Morocco and produced structures and decorations of traditional Moroccan design. It was all quite impressive and drove home to me that over the many centuries of its existence Morocco developed a truly unique and sophisticated civilization, the peer of any in the world, and today blends a distinguished heritage of Berber, Arab and Andalusian elements with modern technology.

One respect in which the designers of the mosque appear to have overreached themselves is in locating it partly over the ocean. After the first ten years of the mosque’s existence, the concrete foundations began to exhibit serious deterioration from the salt water soaking into it, rusting the steel rebar and eventually causing the concrete to crack. An elaborate and expensive restoration project, eventually costing 50 million euros, had to be undertaken to arrest the deterioration and repair the damage. It took three years of research to devise a plan for the restoration, which involved the development of new grades of seawater-resistant concrete and molybdenum-alloy stainless steel. But the results were impressive, and the work is supposed to have extended the life of the mosque by a century.

The section of the mosque built over the ocean replaced a huge municipal swimming pool, the Orthlieb Pool, which was built in 1934, during the French protectorate era. It was demolished in 1986 to make way for the mosque. Today one can look down at the water from large windows built into the floor of the mosque.

Muslims are obliged to perform a ritual washing (wudu) before prayer, and the King Hassan Mosque provides facilities for doing so in the basement. These include an ablution hall, where one can complete the basic wudu of face, arms, hands and feet, and a hammam (bathhouse), which accommodates 1,400 people. We were not invited to enter the hammam, but we did visit the ablution hall, which was accessed via a corridor from the outside of the mosque. The hall itself contains 41 mushroom-shaped marble fountains and 600 taps and is very elegantly decked out, with marble floors, granite columns, tiled walls, sculpted ceilings and strikingly original light fixtures. Both prayer and ablution halls were spotlessly clean and looked brand-new, as if they had been completed the day before.

Leaving the mosque, our tour group boarded the bus to go to lunch. On the way we dropped by the Royal Palace of Casablanca. As I think I’ve mentioned already, the King maintains palaces not only in the capital but in the largest cities, and since Casablanca is the largest city in Morocco, of course he would have a palace there. As I recall it is not an especially pretentious one, as palaces go, but we were unable to see what it was like inside, although Chuck Mattox respectfully knocked at the door to request admission. The cat who normally guards the door was absent this time, so there was nobody to let him in; and we were hungry, so we went on to lunch without further ado.

From the King Hassan II Mosque, there is a Maritime Promenade which extends westward between the seashore and the Boulevard de la Corniche, ending at El Hank Point, where the tallest lighthouse in Morocco proudly stands. The El Hank Lighthouse, 51 meters (167 feet) tall, can be mistaken for a minaret, but it is a working lighthouse, equipped with a Fresnel lens putting out 2.1 million candelas of illumination, visible for 30 nautical miles or 55 kilometers. Our lunch stop was somewhere to the west of the lighthouse – I forget the name of the café – and gave us a great view of the promenade, the seashore and the city itself. By this time my GI distress of the previous evening was a distant memory and I was able to enjoy a good meal without any discomfort.

After lunch we reboarded our faithful tour bus for the long (243-kilometers, about 3 hours) ride to our final destination in Morocco, the fabled city of Marrakesh.

The climax of our visit to Fes was a gala dinner and show in an impossibly elegant restaurant, the name of which I don’t remember and can’t find in any of our trip records; but it was as opulent and beautifully furnished as any of the palaces we saw in Morocco.

Fes is not noted for nightlife. According to one web site I visited, “Fes is a conservative city so raucous nightlife is not on the menu.” Another advised “If you are looking for a party town, try Marrakesh instead.” The entertainment presented to us was relatively sedate, but then we were not looking for a particularly raffish or outré experience.

It was inevitable, of course, that in a Maghreb Muslim country we would get belly-dancing, so that was no surprise. There was also dancing with audience participation to the accompaniment of what I assumed to be traditional Moroccan music. I have never gained much of a taste or appreciation for the dance in any of its forms, so I didn’t find these activities especially beguiling. My favorite part of the show was the magician, who pulled doves out of his hat and did other sleight-of-hand tricks. It was all good food and good fun in a beautiful setting, on the whole a suitable ending to our stay in the fascinating city of Fes.

The Medina, or Old City, of Fes is often considered as encompassing the two old quarters of Fes el-Jdid, where the royal palace is located, and Fes el-Bali, which constitutes the commercial and cultural hub. But the two are very different, and although both are quite old, Fes el-Bali is by far the older of the two, having been founded in the eighth century CE. Fes el-Jdid was begun in the 13th century as an administrative capital for Fes el-Bali. The wide boulevards and open squares of the palace area seem a world apart from the narrow alleys and packed market stalls of the Fes el-Bali. Entering those crowded lanes, I felt that I was traveling back in time to the world of the medieval and early modern era. Butchered meat was laid out on open tables for close inspection; traders hawked their wares in front of their shops; donkeys hauled their burdens through the streets, from which cars and trucks were banned. To me, life in such surroundings seems less constricted and sterile, earthier, more sensuous and piquant. Of course, it’s also less hygienic, but then it wasn’t entirely premodern; no open sewers or people throwing garbage out of windows onto the heads of passers-by. Also, as far as I remember, no beggars, although there were plenty of aggressive vendors.

But Fes el-Bali is not only a commercial hub – it is a cultural and religious center as well, home to some of the Islamic world’s most venerable institutions. Foremost among them is the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, considered by some authorities to be the oldest continuously operating institution of higher learning in the world. It was founded as a mosque in the ninth century, but for most of its history it operated as a madrassah, a school of Islamic studies. Since 1963, when it was incorporated into the Moroccan state university system, it has also taught some secular subjects, although the curriculum remains predominantly Islamic. We did not visit Al-Qarawiyyin, since its main attraction, the mosque, is not open to non-Muslims. Instead, wending our way through the crowded streets, we followed our guides (there were several, so as to ride herd on us and keep individuals from becoming detached and lost in the throng) to a nearby and no less venerable institution, al-Attarine Madrasah, which does welcome infidels. Perhaps this is because it is run by cats. This was evident when we entered the central court of the establishment, where a cat was strolling about near the central fountain, quite confident that it was in charge, and clearly well-disposed to us tourists as well as the staff. Al-Attarine was so named because it was located close to the spice and perfume market in the Medina (cf. the English word “attar,” as in “attar of roses,” deriving from an Arabic/Persian word for perfume).

The madrasah was a type of academy that originated in northeastern Iran in the early 11th century with the purpose of training students in Islamic subjects, especially religious law and jurisprudence. (I go back a long way with madrasahs, having stayed in one – the Char-Minar, at that time being used as a hostel – for a few days in Bukhara, Uzbekistan in April 1973.) But madrasahs really came into their own in Morocco in the 14th century CE.

In the 13th century CE a faction of Berber nomads known as the Marinids overthrew the ruling Almohad dynasty of Morocco and established their own regime. They made their capital at Fes, and they found the madrasah a useful institution for fostering orthodox Islamic teachings against what they considered the heretical doctrines of their Almohad predecessors, in the interest of bolstering their legitimacy. They established a number of madrasahs in Fes in hopes of securing the loyalty of the city’s notoriously unruly intellectual elite and of educating candidates for government service. The madrasahs, including al-Attarine, were mostly located near Al-Qarawiyyin University, and in addition to teaching their own curricula, they supported the university by providing food and lodging for poor students, which the university did not. The madrasahs were typically supported by charitable trusts endowed with properties by the sultan.

Entering al-Attarine via the vestibule at its west end, we passed through an archway into the courtyard. There our Moroccan guide, Karim, explained the layout and operations of the madrasah, while the cat who actually ran the place strolled about to ensure that the visitors observed correct decorum and did not get into mischief.

Entry to the al-Attarine courtyard is from the west; on the east side is the entrance to the prayer hall. On the north and south sides are galleries with square pillars and marble columns supporting a melange of wooden and stucco muqarnas arches. The galleries in turn support the second floor, which is accessible by a stairway, and which originally contained thirty rooms serving as a dormitory for the students. Some of our group, including our tour leader Manuel, ascended the stairway and took in Karim’s talk from the second-floor windows. The feline custodian made no objection.

We also visited the prayer hall at the eastern end, which is somewhat unusual for its time and place. Usually Marinid madrasahs were built with the main axis aligned with the qibla, the direction of prayer (i.e. toward Mecca), so that the prayer hall with its mihrab, or prayer niche, would also be oriented in that direction. That would have been on the east wall in this case, but the geometry of the space available to the builders did not allow for the normal arrangement, so instead they located the mihrab of the al-Attarine madrasah on the south wall of the prayer hall. They also built a square wooden cupola over the space in front of the mihrab, with a stunning bronze chandelier (flanked by two smaller bronze lanterns) dangling from the ceiling.

The al-Attarine madrasah is considered to represent the apogee of Marinid architecture, and nowhere is this more evident in the tilework. In the courtyard the floor, lower walls and pillars are all covered with zellij (mosaic tilework), arranged in geometric motifs; at eye level there is a band of sgraffito-style tiles with calligraphic inscriptions. Above the tilework, the courtyard as well as the interior rooms are adorned with intricately carved stucco decorations, including arches and niches sculpted with muqarnas. At the highest levels are ceilings, eaves and panels consisting of elaborately carved cedarwood. As with the Moorish palaces of Andalusia, the overall effect is overwhelming, a feast for the eyes, and I regard Moorish/Moroccan architecture as among the most sublime achievements of the human race.

But now it was time for lunch, which we enjoyed in an upstairs restaurant not far from al-Attarine. I’m not sure about the exact location, but afterwards we were able to venture out on the terrace to get a rooftop view of the Medina. It was quite an expansive vista, but given our brief acquaintance with the area, it was hard to identify many of the structures and landmarks we were seeing. Easily the most identifiable and striking was the Zawiya (or zaouia) of Moulay Idris II, who ruled Fes from 807 to 828 and is considered its primary founder. A zawiya is an Islamic shrine and religious complex, and the Zawiya of Moulay Idris II is considered one of the holiest shrines of Morocco. It contains the tomb and mausoleum of Idris II, lavishly furnished and decorated. It is recognizable from afar by its minaret, the tallest in Fes el-Bali, and the large pyramidal roof of the mausoleum chamber. It is closed to non-Muslims, but we were able to get a glimpse of the interior later in the afternoon.

Fes is historically a center of production for high-quality leather goods, and there are several tanneries in the Medina. It turned out that one of them was just downstairs from our vantage point. This was not a coincidence, but rather a planned stop on the tour itinerary, and as we surveyed the tannery from our aerie, our guide gave us a rundown on the process of tanning hides and turning them into fine leather articles.

Descending back to street level in the labyrinthine Medina, we were led past the portals of the Zawiya of Moulay Idris II, where we sneaked a peek into its gorgeously carpeted anteroom, to a shop where the final products of the tannery we had just visited are sold. The wares were attractive, but the prices not so much, and the salesmen were among the most annoying we encountered in Morocco. It was memorable only because Manuel Sueiras started a new fashion trend with a piece of headgear, composed entirely of string, that he tried on in the shop. It soon became all the rage, and before we left Morocco it had spread over the country like wildfire, displacing the traditional fez hat that had been worn in the city since time immemorial.

Of course I didn’t expect anyone to believe that last outrageous lie. Actually the fez, or tarboush – a short, cylindrical, brimless and peakless red hat with a tassel attached to the top – was associated mainly with 19th-century Ottoman Turkey, where Sultan Mahmoud II decreed it to be worn by all civil and religious officials. Though it may indeed have originated in the Maghreb, it was called the fez because Fes was the source of the dye used to color the felt. Tarboush was the Turkish name. I never saw one being worn in Fes – or Turkey, for that matter: it was outlawed in 1925 as part of Atatürk’s reforms.