Rabat

Capital of the nation since independence - and, before that, from 1912 to 1956, of the French Protectorate - RABAT is in many ways the city you'd expect: elegant in its spacious European grid, slightly self-conscious in its civilized modern ways, and, as an administrative centre, a little bit dull. If you arrive during Ramadan, you'll find the main avenues and boulevards an astonishing night-long promenade -at other time, it's hard to find a café open past ten at night. Rabat, as they tell you in Casa, is provincial. None of this makes any difference to the considerable historic and architectural interest in the city - and across the estuary in Salé - which include some of the finest and oldest Arab monuments in the country, dating from the Almohad and Merenid dynasties. You can spend an enjoyable few days looking round these, and out on the local beaches, and there is a major plus in that, unlike Fes or Marrakesh , you can get round the place quite happily without a guide, and talk in cafés with people who do not depend on tourist money.

some history

Rabat's monuments punctuate the span of Moroccan history. The plains inland, designated Maroc Utile by the French, have been occupied and cultivated since paleolithic times, and there were Neolithic settlements on the coast south of Rabat, notably at present-day Temara and Skhirat. Both Phoenicians and Carthaginians established trading posts on modern-day Rabat's estuary site. The earliest Known settlement, Sala, occupied the citadel known today as Chellah. Here, after the demise of the Carthaginians, the Romans created their southernmost colony. It lasted well beyond the breakup of the empire in Africa and eventually formed the basis of an independent Berber state, which reached its peak of influence in the eighth century, developing a code of government inspired by the Koran but adapted to Berber customs and needs. It represented a challenge to the Islamic orthodoxy of the Arab rulers of the interior, however, and to stamp out the heresy, a ribat -the fortified monastery from which the city takes its name -was founded on the site of the present-day kasbah.

The ribat's activities led to Chellah's decline - a process hastened in the eleventh century by the founding of a new town, Salé, across the estuary. But with the arrival of the Almohads in the twelfth century, the Rabat Kasbah was rebuilt and a city again took shape around it. The Almohad fort, renamed Ribat El Fathi (Stronghold of Victory), served as a launching point for the dynasty's campaigns in Spain, which by 1170 had returned virtually all of Andalucia to Muslim rule.

Under the Almohad Caliph Yacoub El Mansour, a new Imperial Capital was created. Its legacy includes the superb Oudaîa Gate of the Kasbah, Bab Er Rouah at the southwest edge of town, and the early stages of the Hassan Mosque. Until recent years, this was the largest ever undertaken in Morocco and its minaret, standing high above the river, is still the city's great landmark. Mansour also erected over five kilometres of fortifications - but neither his vision nor his success in maintaining a Spanish empire was to be lasting. He left the Hassan Mosque unfinished, and only in the last sixty years has the city expanded to fill his dark circuit of pisé walls.

After Mansour's death, Rabat's significance was dwarfed by the imperial cities of Fes, Meknes and Marrakesh , and the city fell into neglect. Sacked by the Portuguese, it was little more than a village when, as New Salé, it was resettled by seventeenth-century Andalucian refugees. In this revived form, however, it entered into an extraordinary period of international piracy and local autonomy. Its corsair fleets, the Sallee Rovers, specialized in the plunder of merchant ships returning to Europe from West Africa and the Spanish Americas, but on occasion raided as far afield as plymouth and the Irish coast - Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe began his captivity "carry'd prisoner into Sallee, a Moorish port".

The Andalucians, owing no loyalty to the Moorish sultans and practically impregnable within their Kasbah perched high on a rocky bluff above the river, established their own pirate state, the Republic of the Bou Regreg. They rebuilt the Medina below the kasbah in a style reminiscent if their homes in Spanish Badajoz, dealt in arms with the English and french, and even accepted European consuls, before the town finally reverted to government control under Moulay Rashid, and his successor, Moulay Ismail. Unofficial piracy continued until 1829 when Austria took revenge for the loss of a ship by shelling Rabat and other coastal towns. From then until the French creation of a capital, Rabat -Salé was very much a backwater.

Imperialcitiesmorocco Imperialcities

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The Imperial City

The Imperial City

More than any other Moroccan town, Meknes is associated with a single figure, the Sultan Moulay Ismail, in whose 55-years reign (1672-1727) the city was built up from a provincial centre to a spectacular capital with twenty gates, over fifty palace and some fifteen miles of exterior walls. The principal remains of Ismail's creation - the imperial city (la Ville Imperiale )of palaces and gardens, barracks, granaries and stables- sprawl below the Medina, amid a confusingly maniac array of welled enclosures. If you intend to take in everything, it's a long morning's walk. Starting out from the Ville Nouvelle, make your way down to the main street at the southern edge of the Medina (Rue Rouamzine/Rue Dar Smen), and along to Place El Hedim and its immense gateway, Bab Mansour. There are usually guides hanging around here if you want to use one; you don't need to, but if you can find some-one entertaining, he'll probably elaborate on the story of the walls with some superbly convoluted local legend.

Luxury Imperial Cities

the undoubted highlight of this chapter is Fes. The imperial capital of the Merenid, wattasid and Alaouite dynasties, the city has for the past ten centuries stood at the heart of Morocco history - and for five of these it was one of the major intellectual and cultural centres of the west, rivalling the great university cities of Europe. It is today unique in the Arab world, preserving the appearance and much of the life of a medieval Islamic city. In terms of monuments, it has as much as the other Moroccan imperial capitals together, while the city's souks, extending for over a mile, maintain the whole tradition of urban crafts. In all of this-and equally in the everyday aspects of the city's life - there is enormous fascination and, for the outsider, a real feeling of privilege. But inevitably, it is at a cost. Declared a historical monument by its French colonizers, and subsequently deprived of its political and cultural significance, Fes today retains its beauty but is in evident decline. Its university faculties have been dispersed around the country, with the most important departments in Rabat; the Fassi business elite have mostly left for Casablanca; and, for survival, the city depends increasingly on the tourist trade. Nonetheless, two or three days here is an absolute must for any visit in Morocco. Meknes, Like Fes (and Rabat and Marrakesh) an imperial city, sees comparatively few visitors, despite being an easy and convenient stopover en route by train from Tangier or Rabat, or by bus from chaouen. The megalomaniac creation of Moulay Ismail, the most tyrannical of all Moroccan sultans, it is once again a city of lost ages, its enduring impression being that of an endless series of walls. But Meknes is also an important modern market centre and its souks, though smaller and less secretive than those of Fes, are almost as varied and generally more authentic. There are, too, the local attractions of Volubilis, the best preserved of the country's Roman sites. and the hilltop town of Moulay Idriss, home to the most important Islamic shrine in Morocco. South of the two imperial cities stretch the cedar-covered slopes of the Middle Atlas, which in turn gradually give way to the High Atlas. Across and around this region, often beautiful and for the most part remote, there are two main routes. The most popular, a day's journey by bus, skirts the range beyond the market town of Azrou to emerge via Beni Mellal at Marrakesh. The second climbs southeastward from Azrou towards Midelt, an excellent carpet centre, before passing through great gorges to Er Rachidia and the vast date palm oasis of Tafilalt - the beginning of a tremendous southern circuit. A third and distinctly adventurous route runs between these two, leaving the main Azrou - Marrakesh highway at El Ksiba and following a series of pistes (dirt roads) directly across the Atlas to Tinerhir. You can take the latter route if you have 4x4 car - or by get - ting lifts over the various stages in local Berber lorries, If you're travelling in Morocco one of the main highways, and you've got the time, the Middle Atlas has considerable attractions of its own. Close to Fes, Immouzer and Ifrane are popular summer resorts, their air and waters a cool escape from the city. The Berber market town of Azrou is host to great Tuesday souk and surrounded by pine forests and mountain lakes. And off the Marrakesh road, near Beni Mellal, are the cascades d'ouzoud - waterfalls which crash down from the mountains, even in midsummer, and beside which you can swim, cam and hike.

Fez

The most ancient of the Imperial Capitals, and the most complete medieval city of the Arab world, FES is a place that stimulates your senses, with haunting and beautiful sounds, infinite visual details and unfiltered odours. More than any other city in Morocco, it seems to exist suspended in time somewhere between the Middle Ages and the modern world. As with other Moroccan Cities, it has a French-built Ville Nouvelle-familiar and modern in appearance and urban life -but some 200,000 of Fes's half-million inhabitants continue to live in the extraordinary medina-city of Fes El Bali - which owes little to the West besides its electricity and its tourists.

As a spectacle, this is unmissable, and it's difficult to imagine a city whose external forms (all you can really hope to penetrate) could be so constant a source of interest. But stay in Fes a few days and it's equally hard to avoid the paradox of the place. Like much of "traditional" Morocco, the city was "saved" and then re-created by the french -under the auspices of General lyautey, the Protectorate's first Resident-General. Lyautey took the philanthropic and startling move of declaring the city a historical monument; philanthropic because he was certainly saving Fes El bali from destruction (albeit from less benevolent Frenchmen), and startling because until then many Moroccans were under the impression that Fes was still a living city - the Imperial Capital of the Moroccan empire rather than a preservable part of the nation's heritage. In fact, this paternalistic protection conveniently helped to disguise the dismantling of the old culture. By building a new European city nearby -the Ville Nouvelle -and then transferring Fes's economic and political functions to Rabat and the west coast, lyautey ensured the city's eclipse along with its preservation.

to appreciate the significance of this demise, you only have to look at the Arab chronicles or old histories of Morocco, every one of which takes Fes as its central focus. The city had dominated Moroccan trade, culture and religious life -and usually its politics, too -since the end of the tenth century. It was closely and symbolically linked with the birth of an "Arabic" Moroccan state due to their mutual foundation by Moulay Idriss I, and was regarded, after Mecca and Medina, as one of the holiest cities of the Islamic world. Medieval European travellers wrote of it with a mixture awe and respect -as a "citadel of fanaticism" and yet the most advanced seat of learning in mathematics, philosophy and medicine.

The decline of the city notwithstanding, Fassis - the people of Fes -have a reputation throughout Morocco a successful and sophisticated. Just as the city is situated at the centre of the country, so are its inhabitants placed at the heart of government,and most government ministries are headed by Fassis. what is undeniable is that they have the most developed Moroccan city culture, with an intellectual tradition,and their own cuisine (sadly not at its best in the modern city restaurants), dress and way of life.

the development of Fes

when the city's founder, Moulay Idriss I, died in 792, Fes was little more than a village on the east bank of the river. It was his son, Idriss II, who really began the city's development, at the beginning of the ninth century, by making it his capital and allowing in refugees from Andalucian Cordoba and from Kairouan in Tunisia -at the time, the two most important cities of western Islam. The impact on Fes of these refugees was immediate and lasting: they established separate, walled towns (still distinct quarters today) on either riverbank, and provided the superior craftsmanship and mercantile experience for Fes's industrial and commercial growth. It was at this time, too, that the city gained its intellectual reputation. The tenth-century Pope Silvester II studied here at the Kairouine University, and from this source he is said to have introduced Arabic mathematics to Europe.

the seat of government - and impetus of patronage - shifted south to Marrakesh under the Berber dynasties of the Almoravides (1068-1145) and Almohads (1145-1250). But with the conquest of Fes by the Merenids in 1248, and their subsequent consolidation of power across Morocco, the city regained its pre-eminence and moved into something of a "golden age", Alongside the old Medina, the Merenids built a massive royal city - Fes El Djedid, literally "Fes the New" - which reflected both the wealth and confidence of their rule. They enlarged and decorated the Kairaouine mosque, added a network of fondouks (inns) for the burgeoning commercial activity, and greatly developed the Kairaouine university - building the series of magnificent medersas, or colleges, to accommodate its students. Once again this expansion was based on an influx of refugees, this time from the Spanish reconquest of Andalucia, and it helped to establish the city's reputation as "the Baghdad of the West".

it is essentially Merenid Fes which you witness today in the form of the city and its monuments. From the fall of the dynasty in the mid-sixteenth century, there was decline as both Fes and Morocco itself became isolated from the main currents of Western culture. The new rulers - the saadians -in any case preferred Marrakesh, and although Fes re-emerged as the capital under the Alaouites, it had begun to lose its international stature. Moulay Ismail, whose hatred of the Fassis was legendary, almost managed to tax the city out of existence, and the principal building concerns of his successors lay in restoring and enlarging the vast domains of the royal palace.

Under French colonial rule , there were positive achievements in the preservation of the old city and relative prosperity of the Ville Nouvelle, but little actual progress. As a thoroughly conservative and bourgeois