Fez city in Morocco the spiritual and cultural centre

Stroll through the alleys

Like sheets of light, the first rays of sunshine penetrate the laths of roseaux that cover the souks and provide them with refreshing shade. Sweet, sugared, amber, bitter, sharp smells mix together. Life gravitates around the market stalls loaded with their pyramids of spices, slippers, carpets, fruits and meat.

« Balekl Balek! » (Look out! Look out!). The muletiers have priority and call majestically for the bubbling, jostling crowd to make a path through the « derbs » (the narrow roads that wind through the Medina). The old Medina of Fez consists of different neighbourhoods that are affiliated to the numerous craft guilds. Markets and dwellings crowd together in a heady kaleidoscope of sounds, colours and smells. To enter the spirit, you must wander through the alleys and let yourself be carried along on the tide. Take the time to look, to breathe and feel the energy that animates this old city of 160,000 habitants.

As with all Moroccan medinas, life in each neighbourhood turns around five focal points. There is the bread oven, where the women leave the dough to be cooked, the fountain, with its crystalline sounds, and the hammam, which is the centre of social life. On the cultural side, there is the mosque, the spiritual centre, and the medersa, the Koranic school. The Bou Inania medersa, built between 1350 and 1357, is considered amongst the most beautiful of theological colleges because of its Arabo-Andalusian architecture. With its white marble columns, its zellige (decorative tiles), stucco adorned with plants and verses of the Koran and ceilings of sculptured cedar, it is a masterpiece.

The mosque, the jewel of the Maghreb

Five times a day the spellbinding chants of the muezzin echo out to call the faithful to prayer and near the magnificent Kairouan (or Qaraouiyyin) mosque, the crowd is at its densest. It can hold 20,000 people but it is difficult to appreciate all its dimensions and non-Muslims are not allowed to enter.
The mosque was founded in the 9th century by the Kairouans and then enlarged by the Almoravid Sultan, Ali ben Youssef, in the 12th century. The roof is covered with sparkling emerald tiles. Its elegant fountains are adorned with mosaics and its courtyards are made from marble. The university, built between 859 and 862 AD, is one of the oldest to be found anywhere and its library is one of the best in the Muslim world, containing more than 30,000 books.