Azrou

Azrou grew where the roads from the Saïss plain meet the high plateaux of the Middle Atlas, at a place marked by a great outcrop of dark rock; the name is simply the Tamazight word for rock. The surrounding country belonged to Amazigh confederations, above all the Beni M'Guild, who moved flocks between winter and summer pastures and traded grain, wool and livestock at markets like this one.

Its strategic value was recognised by Sultan Moulay Ismail, who built a kasbah here in the late 17th century to hold the routes between Fès, Meknès and the mountains, one of a chain of forts intended to bring the tribes under control. The attempt was never wholly successful, and the Middle Atlas remained largely self-governing until the 20th century. French forces took years to subdue the region after 1912, meeting sustained resistance in these mountains.

Under the protectorate Azrou became an administrative and forestry centre, and in 1927 the French opened the Collège Berbère, a school intended to train an Amazigh elite educated apart from Arabic-speaking Morocco as part of a divide-and-rule policy. The plan backfired: many of its pupils became nationalists and later served independent Morocco as officers and officials; renamed the Tarik Ibn Ziad high school after independence, it is still among the best known in the country. Since independence the town has grown on forestry, farming, its markets and the traffic passing between the north and the south-east.

Azrou is one of the clearest places in Morocco to see Amazigh mountain culture at work rather than on display. Tamazight is the everyday language of the market, and the villages around it keep the seasonal movement of flocks, the communal granary traditions and the ahidous, the line dance in which men and women perform to frame drums and chanted verse at weddings and moussems.

Weaving is the craft the town is known for. Carpets from the Beni M'Guild and neighbouring groups are thick, high-piled pieces made for cold mountain houses, usually in deep reds, oranges and browns with geometric patterns, and flat-woven blankets and cloaks are made alongside them. Much of the work is done by women in villages and sold through cooperatives and dealers in the town. Cedar wood is carved into bowls, boxes and furniture.

Life is religious in a quiet, rural way, centred on neighbourhood mosques, local saints' shrines and the moussems held in the surrounding countryside. The mix of mountain villagers, town traders, forestry workers and students from the region's schools gives Azrou a plain, unpolished character; it sees far fewer visitors than Ifrane, and those who stop are generally treated with curiosity and straightforward hospitality.

About 80,000 people live in Azrou, and the number in the streets swells on market day, when families come down from villages across the plateau. The town has grown outwards in blocks of low concrete housing around the older quarters, and many households have relatives working in Meknès, Fès, Casablanca or Europe whose remittances matter a great deal.

Work is in farming and livestock, forestry and sawmilling — the cedar forest is managed, and its timber and cedar oil are sold — along with carpet weaving, the markets, schools and a tourism trade that is small compared with Ifrane's. Apple and cherry orchards and cereal fields cover the plateau. Drought and irregular snow have hit both farming and the winter visitor season in recent years, and illegal cutting and grazing pressure on the cedars are a continuing worry.

The day begins early, with the animal market, the bread ovens and children walking to school, and the pace slows through the afternoon before the cafés fill in the evening. Winters are cold and firewood and butane gas are heavy expenses; households stock up in autumn. Young people are drawn to the bigger cities, and unemployment is a constant topic in the town's cafés.

Azrou eats the food of the Middle Atlas: warming, plain and built on what the plateau produces. Tagines of lamb or beef with vegetables, harira and the thick broad-bean purée called bissara are everyday dishes, and Friday couscous is steamed over a broth of mutton and root vegetables. Barley features more than on the coast, in bread and in the rough semolina dishes of village kitchens.

The market supplies the rest: mountain honey in several varieties, walnuts, apples, quinces, pulses, dried mint, and cheeses made from sheep's and goat's milk that are sold fresh and lightly salted. Trout from the rivers of the Middle Atlas is the local restaurant speciality, fried or grilled with lemon and cumin. Grills around the main square cook brochettes and kefta to order, and bowls of snail broth are sold on cold evenings.

Breakfast is msemen or harcha, a semolina griddle bread, with butter, honey and mint tea, or sfenj doughnuts fried at a street stall. Tea is drunk very sweet and poured from height, and in village houses it is often flavoured with wild herbs such as thyme or wormwood picked on the slopes above the town.