Explore Fez, Meknes and the Middle Atlas
With its mosques, medersas and fondouks, back alleys crammed with goods-laden donkeys, and a mile-long labyrinth of souks, there are enough sights in Fez el Bali (Old Fez) to fill three or four days just trying to locate them. In this – the apparently wilful secretiveness – lies part of Fez’s fascination, and there is much to be said for Paul Bowles’ somewhat lofty advice to “lose oneself in the crowd – to be pulled along by it – not knowing where to and for how long…to see beauty where it is least likely to appear”. Do the same and you must be prepared to get really lost, but then that is half the fun – and it is all the more uplifting to stumble across the magnificent Medersa Bou Inania, or to unexpectedly find yourself on Rue Boutouail and realize that the courtyard you are peering into is that of the Kairaouine Mosque, the epicentre of religious life in Morocco.
- Medersa Bou Inania
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The tanneries Chouwara
The tanneries Chouwara
There is a compulsive fascination about the tanneries Chouwara, the biggest in Fez and the most striking sight in the Medina. Every morning, when the tanneries are at their most active, cascades of water pour through holes that were once the windows of houses, hundreds of skins lie spread out on the rooftops to dry, while amid the vats of dye and pigeon dung (the white vats at the back), an unbelievably Gothic fantasy is enacted as tanners treat the hides. The rotation of colours in the honeycombed vats follows a traditional sequence – yellow (supposedly “saffron”, in fact turmeric), red (poppy), blue (indigo), green (mint) and black (antimony) – although vegetable dyes have largely been replaced by chemicals, to the detriment of workers’ health.
This “innovation” and the occasional rinsing machine aside, there can have been little change here since the sixteenth century, when Fez replaced Córdoba as the pre-eminent city of leather production. As befits such an ancient system, the ownership is also intricately feudal: the foremen run a hereditary guild and the workers pass down their specific jobs from generation to generation.
For all the stench and voyeurism involved, there is a kind of sensuous beauty about the tanneries. However, it is a guilty pleasure, as one glance across at the gallery of camera-touting foreigners snapping away will testify.
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The Borj Nord
The Borj Nord
Like its southern counterpart across the valley, the fortress of Borj Nord, perched on the hillside overlooking Bab Boujeloud, was built in the late sixteenth century by the Saadians to control the Fassis rather than to defend them. Carefully maintained, the borj now houses the country’s arms museum (daily except Tues 8.30am–noon & 2.30–6.30pm; 10dh; t 0535 645241), full off daggers encrusted with stones and an interminable display of row upon row of muskets, most of them confiscated from the Riffians in the 1958 rebellion. The pride of place is a cannon 5m long and weighing twelve tonnes, said to be used during the Battle of the Three Kings. The main reason for coming up here, though, is for the commanding views across the Medina: a spectacular sweep of daily life that, together with the views from the Merenid tombs (a 500m walk round the hillside, along Avenue des Merenides), constitute the best panorama of the city.
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The cult of Moulay Idriss
The cult of Moulay Idriss
There is no particular evidence that Moulay Idriss II was a very saintly marabout, but as the effective founder of Fez and son of the founder of the Moroccan state he has considerable baraka, the magical blessing that Moroccans invoke, and his moussem brings the city to a standstill. Originally, it was assumed that Idriss had been buried near Volubilis, like his father, but in 1308 an uncorrupted body was found on the spot where his zaouia now stands and the cult was launched. Presumably, it was an immediate success, since in addition to his role as the city’s patron saint, Idriss has an impressive roster of supplicants: this is the place to visit for poor strangers arriving in the city, for boys before being circumcised and for women wanting to facilitate childbirth – and for some long-forgotten reason, Idriss is also the protector of Morocco’s sweetmeat vendors.
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The Fez
The Fez
The red cylindrical hat with its black tassel, more correctly known as a Fassi tarbouche, is not only worn and manufactured in Fez but as far afield as Egypt and Syria. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the fez became associated with the Ottoman Empire and in some places it was donned as a mark of support, a gesture that led to it being banned by Kemal Atatürk when he took power in Turkey and abolished the empire. The fez is also going out of fashion in its home town, and tends to be worn only by older men – most young men now prefer the Tunisian chechia or baseball caps.
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A tomb with a view
A tomb with a view
Up above Bab Guissa, the crumbling remnants of the Merenid tombs stand vigil over the sprawling Medina, a particularly atmospheric place at dawn or dusk, when the call to prayer sweeps across Fez el Bali. From this superb vantage point you can delineate the more prominent of Fez’s reputed 365 mosque minarets. At sunset, the sky swarms with a frenzy of starlings, egrets and alpine swifts adding further spectacle to the scene. All around you are spread the Muslim cemeteries that flank the hills on each side of Fez, while below, the city’s major monuments protrude from the hubbub of rooftops. The pyramid-shaped roof of the Zaouia of Moulay Idriss II is easily defined. To its left are the two minarets of the Kairaouine Mosque: Burj en Naffara or the Trumpeter’s Tower (the shorter of the two) and the original minaret. The latter, slightly thinner in its silhouette than usual and with an unusual whitewashed dome, is the oldest Islamic monument in the city, built in 956 AD.
The sounds of the city, the stillness and the contained disorder below all seem to make manifest the mystical significance that Islam places on urban life as the most perfect expression of culture and society.
