Explore Fez, Meknes and the Middle Atlas
More than any other town in Morocco, Meknes is associated with a single figure, Sultan Moulay Ismail. During his 55-year reign, the city was tranformed from a forgettable provincial centre into a spectacular capital with twenty gates and over fifty palaces enclosed within 45km of exterior walls. The principal remains of Ismail’s creation – the Ville Impériale of palaces and gardens, barracks, granaries and stables – sprawl below the Medina amid a confusing array of walled enclosures, and it’s a long morning’s walk to take in everything.
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Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail
Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail
Together with the tomb of Mohammed V in Rabat, and the Medersa Bou Inania in Fez, the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail is the only active Moroccan shrine that non-Muslims may visit. The mausoleum has been a point of reverence since Ismail’s death (it was constructed in his own lifetime) and is still held in high esteem. Given tales of the ruler’s excesses, this might seem puzzling to Westerners, but Ismail is remembered in his homeland for his achievements: bringing peace and prosperity after a period of anarchy, and driving out the Spanish from Larache and the British from Tangier. His extreme observance of orthodox Islamic form and ritual also conferred a kind of magic on him, as, of course, does his part in establishing the ruling Alaouite dynasty – although, technically, the dynasty began with his brother, Moulay Rachid, Ismail is generally honoured as the founder.
You are allowed to approach the sanctuary in which the sultan is buried, but cannot go beyond the annexe, though this still gives you a good idea of the reverence with which the shrine is treated – you will almost invariably see villagers here, especially women seeking baraka (charismatic blessing) and intercession from the saintly sultan’s remains.
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Sultan Moulay Ismail (1672–1727)
Sultan Moulay Ismail (1672–1727)
“The Sultan Moulay Ismail,” wrote his chronicler, Ezziani, “loved Mequinez, and he would have liked never to leave it.” But leave it he did, ceaselessly campaigning against the rebel Berber chiefs of the south, and the Europeans entrenched in Tangier, Asilah and Larache, until the entire country lay completely under government control for the first time in five centuries. His reign saw the creation of Morocco’s strongest ever – and most coherent – army, which included the Black Guard, a regiment of sub-Saharan “slave soldiers”, and, it is reckoned, a garrison force of one in twenty of the male population. The period was Morocco’s last golden age, though the ruthless centralization of all decisions, and the fear with which the sultan reigned, led to a slide into anarchy and weak, inward-looking rule.
Ismail’s achievements were matched by his tyrannies, which were judged extreme even by the standards of the time – and contemporary Europeans were burning their enemies and torturing them on the rack. His reign began with the display of four hundred heads at Fez, most of them of captured chiefs, and over the next five decades it is estimated that he was responsible for over thirty thousand deaths, not including those killed in battle. Many of these deaths were quite arbitrary. Mounting a horse, Ismail might slash the head off the eunuch holding his stirrup; inspecting the work on his buildings, he would carry a weighted lance, with which to batter skulls in order to “encourage” the others. “My subjects are like rats in a basket,” he used to say, “and if I do not keep shaking the basket they will gnaw their way through.”
Yet the sultan was a tireless builder throughout Morocco, constructing towns and ports, and a multitude of defensive kasbahs, palaces and bridges. By far his greatest efforts were focused on Meknes, where he sustained an obsessive building programme, often acting as architect and sometimes even working alongside the slaves and labourers. Ironically, time has not been kind to his constructions in his favoured home town. Built mainly of tabia, a mixture of earth and lime, they were severely damaged by a hurricane even in his lifetime, and were left to decay thereafter, as subsequent Alaouite sultans shifted their capitals back to Fez and Marrakesh. Walter Harris, writing only 150 years after Ismail’s death, found Meknes “a city of the dead…strewn with marble columns and surrounded by great masses of ruin”. Thankfully, more recent city authorities have tackled the restoration of the main monuments with more energy.
