Fez

Fez was founded in the late 8th century by Idris I and enlarged by his son Idris II, who made it his capital. Two settlements faced each other across the river, and in the early 9th century they filled with refugees: families from Córdoba on one bank, from Kairouan in Tunisia on the other, giving the city the quarters still called the Andalusian and Qarawiyyin banks. In 857 or 859 Fatima al-Fihri, of the Kairouan community, founded the Qarawiyyin mosque, which became the centre of religious learning in the western Muslim world.

The Almoravids joined the two towns behind one wall in the 11th century. Under the Marinids, from the 13th century, Fez was again the capital of Morocco and reached its height: the dynasty built Fes el-Jdid, the walled royal city, and the carved madrasas — Bou Inania, al-Attarine and others — that remain the finest medieval buildings in the country. Jews were moved to a new quarter, the Mellah, beside the palace in the 15th century, and refugees from Spain arrived after 1492. Under later dynasties the capital moved to Marrakesh and Meknes, but Fez kept its scholars, merchants and prestige.

The treaty that established the French protectorate was signed here in 1912 and was followed by a violent uprising in the city; the French then built a new town beyond the walls and moved the capital to Rabat. After independence in 1956 many wealthy Fassi families left for Casablanca and Rabat, and the Jewish community emigrated almost entirely. The medina was listed by UNESCO in 1981, and long restoration programmes have worked on its monuments, houses and craft workshops since.

Fez regards itself as the cultural and religious capital of Morocco, and much of the country's elite traces its roots to the city. The Fassi bourgeoisie is known for a distinctive dialect, elaborate hospitality, a refined cuisine and generations of scholarship attached to the Qarawiyyin, which supplied the kingdom with judges, notaries and ministers. Andalusian classical music is performed here, and the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, founded in 1994, has made the city a meeting point for devotional music from many religions.

Craft is the other half of its identity. Whole quarters of the medina are given over to single trades — tanning and leatherwork, zellige tile cutting, carved cedar and plaster, brass and copper beating, weaving, and the cobalt-blue pottery that carries the city's name. Apprenticeship still runs through families and workshops, and the sound of hammers on metal in the Seffarine square is one of the constants of the old city.

Religious life is strong and visible: the shrine of Moulay Idris II is a place of pilgrimage within the medina, Sufi brotherhoods have deep roots here — the founder of the Tijaniyya, followed widely in West Africa, is buried in the city — and the Friday rhythm of prayer and couscous shapes the week. Manners are formal by Moroccan standards, dress is conservative, and visitors are expected to observe both.

About 1.2 million people live in Fez, making it one of Morocco's largest cities. Perhaps a tenth of them live inside Fes el-Bali, where families share old houses with workshops and where every delivery arrives by handcart or mule; most of the city now lives in the Ville Nouvelle and in the districts that have spread over the surrounding plain and hillsides since the 1970s.

The economy rests on crafts, trade, tourism, education and administration. Tanning, leather, pottery and tilework still employ thousands, often in hard conditions and increasingly in competition with imported goods; the universities and the medina's restoration programmes bring in further work. New industry has been slower to arrive than in Tangier or Casablanca, unemployment among young people is high, and many leave for the coast or abroad; youth-led protests across Morocco between late September and October 2025 pressed for better public health care and education.

Daily rhythms follow the call to prayer from hundreds of minarets, the early morning bread run to the communal oven, a long midday pause, and the evening walk along the boulevards of the new town. Summer heat pushes life outdoors after dark, and families escape to Ifrane and the Middle Atlas at weekends. Water supply after years of poor rainfall and the cost of maintaining the medina's fragile houses are constant local concerns.

Fez is regarded as one of the homes of Moroccan haute cuisine, the city where the most elaborate dishes were refined in merchant households. Its signature is pastilla, a layered pie of pigeon or chicken with eggs and almonds in paper-thin warqa pastry, dusted with sugar and cinnamon and eaten at feasts. Fassi tagines are rich and slow — lamb with quince or prunes, chicken with preserved lemon and olives — and Friday means couscous steamed over a broth of meat and seven vegetables.

Street food fills the medina. Harira, the tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, and bissara, the thick fava-bean purée with olive oil and cumin, are sold from plain counters; so are snail broth in small bowls, sandwiches of grilled kefta, fried fish and merguez. Khlii, strips of beef dried and preserved in fat and spices, is eaten with eggs for breakfast. Bread is still taken to communal wood-fired ovens in every quarter.

Pastry shops sell chebakia, the flower-shaped dough fried in honey and sesame, and kaab el ghzal, crescent biscuits filled with almond paste. Mint tea is poured constantly, and fresh orange juice is sold from carts at the gates. Wine is produced around Meknes to the west but is drunk quietly, in hotels and a few restaurants in the new town rather than in the medina.