Explore Marrakesh
There’s nowhere in Morocco like the Jemaa el Fna – no place that so effortlessly involves you and keeps you coming back for more. By day, most of the square is just a big open space, in which a handful of snake charmers bewitch their cobras with flutes, medicine men (especially in the northeast of the square) display cures and nostrums, and tooth-pullers, wielding fearsome pliers, offer to pluck the pain from out of the heads of toothache sufferers, trays of extracted molars attesting to their skill. It isn’t until late afternoon that the square really gets going. At dusk, as in France and Spain, people come out for an early evening promenade (especially in Rue Bab Agnaou), and the square gradually fills until it becomes a whole carnival of storytellers, acrobats, musicians and entertainers. Come on down and you’ll soon be immersed in the ritual: wandering round, squatting amid the circles of onlookers, giving a dirham or two as your contribution. If you want a respite, you can move over to the rooftop terraces, such as the Café du Grand Balcon, for a vista over the square, its storytellers and musicians, and the crowds who come to see them.
As a foreigner in the Jemaa, you can feel something of an interloper. Most of the crowd are Moroccan of course (few foreigners, for example, will understand the storytellers’ tales), but tourists also make a major contribution to both the atmosphere and the cash flow. Sometimes a storyteller or musician may pick on you to take part or contribute generously to the end-of-show collection and, entering into the spectacle, it’s best to go denuded of the usual tourist trappings such as watches, money-belts or too much money; pickpockets and scam artists operate (giving a “present” and then demanding payment for it is an old scam to beware of, asking tourists to change counterfeit euro coins is a more recent one). The crowds around performers are sometimes used as an opportunity to grope female foreigners, and by male Moroccans and gay male tourists for cruising.
Sideshow attractions include games of hoop-the-bottle, fortune-tellers sitting under umbrellas with packs of fortune-telling cards at the ready and women with piping bags full of henna paste, ready to paint hands, feet or arms with “tattoos” that will last up to three months, though beware of synthetic “black henna”, which contains a toxic chemical; only red henna is natural (the Henna Café guarantees to use only natural henna).
For refreshment, stalls offer orange and grapefruit juice (but have it squeezed in front of you if you don’t want it adulterated with water and sugar, or even squash), while neighbouring handcarts are piled high with dates, dried figs, almonds and walnuts, especially delicious in winter when they are freshly picked in the surrounding countryside. As dusk falls, the square becomes a huge open-air dining area, packed with stalls lit by gas lanterns, and the air is filled with wonderful smells and plumes of cooking smoke spiralling up into the night (see Jemaa el Fna food stalls).
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The development of the Jemaa el Fna
The development of the Jemaa el Fna
Nobody is entirely sure when or how the Jemaa el Fna came into being – nor even what its name means. The usual translation is “assembly of the dead”, a suitably epic title that may refer to the public display here of the heads of rebels and criminals (the Jemaa was a place of execution until well into the nineteenth century). The name might alternatively mean “the mosque of nothing” (Jemaa means both “mosque” and “assembly” – interchangeable terms in Islamic society), recalling an abandoned Saadian plan to build a new grand mosque on this site.
Either way, as an open area between the original kasbah and the souks, the square has probably played its present role since the city’s earliest days. It has often been the focal point for rioting and the authorities have plotted before now to close it down and move its activities outside the city walls. This happened briefly after independence in 1956, when the government built a corn market on part of the square and tried to turn the rest into a car park, but the plan lasted barely a year. Tourism was falling off and it was clearly an unpopular move. As novelist Paul Bowles observed, without the Jemaa, Marrakesh would be just another Moroccan city.
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Jemaa el Fna food stalls
Jemaa el Fna food stalls
Even if you don’t eat at them, at some stage you should at least wander down the makeshift lane of food stalls on the Jemaa el Fna, which look great in the evening, lit by lanterns. As well as couscous and pastilla, there are spicy merguez sausages, harira soup, salads, fried fish, or, for the more adventurous, stewed snails (over towards the eastern side of the square), and sheep’s heads complete with eyes. To partake, just take a seat on one of the benches, ask the price of a plate of food and order all you like. It’s probably worth avoiding places that try to hustle you, and it’s always wise to check the price of a dish before you order, or you’re likely to be overcharged. Stalls patronized by Moroccans are invariably better than those whose only customers are tourists. If you want a soft drink or mineral water with your meal, the stallholders will send a boy to get it for you. On the southern edge of the food stalls, a row of vendors sell a hot, spicy galangal drink (khoudenjal), said to be an aphrodisiac, and usually taken with a portion of nutty cake. Orange and grapefruit juice stalls line both sides of the food stall area at all hours of the day, but check the price first, and insist on having the juice pressed in front of you – if they pull out a bottle of ready-pressed juice, it’ll most likely be watered down, and quite possibly mixed with squash.
