EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALJune
13, 1999
Meknes, Morocco
An Imperial City and a Centuries-Old Way of Life
There’s a quilt of green and yellow plains nestled between Morocco’s Middle
Atlas Mountains. Meknes is named for the Berber tribe Meknassa and has the largest Berber
population in Morocco. The Sultan Moulay Ismail chose Meknes as his seat of power in 1672
and then using famously brutal discipline he attempted to turn the little university town
into a capitol that would rival Versailles. His 25 kilometres of ramparts surrounding the
Dar el-Kebira (Imperial City) were personally supervised -- Ismail strolled about the
construction sites with a pickax and whip and decapitated workers who displeased him.
Slaves who died of exhaustion were buried within the walls they were building. In order to
construct his Imperial monuments, Ismail plundered materials from all over Morocco
including the Roman marble from the nearby and otherwise intact ruins of Volubilis. The
city flourished and peaked during Ismail’s reign but now upholds the reputation as
the most easy going, least touristy and tranquil medina of the four Imperial cities of
Morocco.
At the gates of Meknes’ place el-Hadime, an enormous open-air market, peers the 19th
century Dar Jamai Palace, built by Sultan Moulay Hassan I. The palace now houses a museum
of Moroccan art, displaying restored, furnished rooms dripping with ornate plasterwork,
inlaid wood and painted ceilings, carved walls, wall to wall hand-knotted Berber carpets
and embroidered silk lounges, divans and pillows. The master sitting room is domed with a
copula of delicate plaster stalactites. Everyone needs a comfortable and inspired place to
smoke.
The medina, or old city, is a maze of narrow streets of cobblestone and dirt, with
traffic of donkeys and children and craftspeople on their way to and from their own unique
souq, or market/shop. The souqs are organised by craft – wood, metal, carpet, food,
spices -- today we wander through a twisting labyrinth of wall-holes, each revealing a
cluster of men sitting cross-legged on the floor sewing and embroidering with lightening
hands. They work in the dim shade of the street, where medieval walls are so high there is
little direct, scorching sunlight. Hundreds of shades of silk thread are spun and twisted
together to make thicker, stronger threads for making dresses and robes and fabrics for
upholstery. The men are steadfast in their work, leaning over lapfuls of delicate fabric
and pulling needles with emergency.
At almost every boggling corner, where there is no right or left, only deeper and
narrower, there is a fountain – an essential component of Islamic life. The fountain
at one time was the necessary means by which members of the community retrieved water.
Today it is a symbol of community, a wash basin for the vendors at the souqs, a
splash-station and watering hole for the children. The fountains are decorated entirely
with tiny colourful tiles and carved and painted wood. Some have been left to decay and
get filthy, some have stopped running altogether, but some remain as useful and integral
to the corner as they did centuries ago.
Every Mosque in Morocco is tiled in green. Green is the colour of Islam. The Minaret is
never hard to find, towering above the terra cotta tiles of the medina’s souqs and
upstairs dwellings. The al-masjid al kebira, or Great Mosque is the largest and the centre
of the Meknes medina, and although as non-Muslims we cannot enter, as a consolation across
the way is the 14th century Madrasa Bou Inania, a college of theology and
Muslim law. The Madrasa typifies the architecture, combining carved cedar from the forests
of the Atlas Mountains with stuccowork and zellij (mosaics). Bathed in light and
outshining the Alhambra and other Mudejar buildings in Spain, this courtyard is well
preserved by Moroccan standards and provides refuge to a few dozen families of cats.
Upstairs, surrounding the open square below, are four hallways of small stone rooms, like
cells, where students, in pairs, once studied and slept with only a pocket of sunlight.
From the terrace above we overlook the medina and its unruly rooftops, and the green tiled
minarets of at least a dozen Mosques.
