Meknes, Morroco

Meknes is an ancient city, founded in the 11th century by the Almoravids as a military settlement.  It is one of a number of cities in Morocco that are UNESCO World Heritage sites.  I began my recent trip to Morocco on the eve of Purim, and so the second day entailed a trip to Meknes for a very swift and entertaining reading of the Megillah by a member of the Jewish community there.  The sanctuary was nothing special, but it always causes pause when I see an ark with the Torah in it in my travels around the world.  Jews have inhabited Morocco for longer than Islam has existed, and while in the post WWII world, where Israel is an option for every Arab Jew, it is very nice to be in a synagogue.

The Historic City of Meknes represents in an exceptionally complete and well-preserved way the urban fabric and monumental buildings of a 17th century Maghreb capital city combining elements of Islamic and European design and planning in a harmonious fashion. It has exerted a considerable influence on the development of civil and military architecture (kasbah ) and works of art. It also contains the remains of the royal city founded by Sultan Moulay Ismail (1672-1727). The presence of these rare remains within a historic town that is in turn located within a rapidly changing urban environment gives Meknes its universal value.

The name Meknes goes back to the Meknassa, the great Berber tribe that dominated eastern Morocco as far back as the Tafilliet and which produced Moulay Idriss I, founder of the Moroccan state and the Idrissid dynasty in the 8th century AD.

The Almoravid rulers (1053-1147) made a practice of building strongholds for storing food and arms for their troops; this was introduced by Youssef Ben Tachafine, the founder of Marrakesh. Meknes was established in this period. The earliest part to be settled was around the Nejjarine Mosque, an Almoravid foundation. Markets congregated around the mosque, specializing in firearms, woodwork and metal products. Like other settlements of the time, Meknes was not fortified: walls were not added until the end of the Almoravid period.

Behind the high defensive walls, pierced by nine monumental gates, are key monuments including twenty-five mosques, ten hammams, palaces, vast graneries, vestiges of fondouks (inns for merchants) and private houses, testimonies to the Almoravid, Merinid and Alaouite Periods.  Meknès is distinctive by the monumental and voluminous aspect of its ramparts reaching 15 metres in height.  It is considered as an exemplary testimony of the fortified towns of the Maghreb. It is a property representing a remarkably complete urban and architectural structure of a North African capital of the 17th century, harmoniously combining Islamic and European conceptual and planning elements. Endowed with a princely urbanism, the Historic City of Meknes also illustrates the specificities of earthen architecture (cobwork) of sub-Saharan towns of the Maghreb.