Meknes

Meknes takes its name from the Miknasa, a Zenata Amazigh tribe that settled the Saïss plain and founded a group of villages here in the 10th century. The Almoravids fortified the site in the 11th century, and the Almohads and Marinids who followed gave the medina its walls, its Great Mosque and the Bou Inania madrasa. For six hundred years it was a prosperous but secondary town, overshadowed by Fès an hour's ride away.

Its transformation came with Moulay Ismail, the Alaouite sultan who reigned from 1672 to 1727 and chose Meknes as his capital. Over more than fifty years he built an imperial city on a scale that astonished visiting European embassies: kilometres of rammed-earth walls, monumental gates, palaces, barracks for his Black Guard, gardens, a reservoir and the enormous granaries and stables of Heri es-Souani, raised by conscripted labour and by Christian captives taken at sea. He was often compared to his contemporary Louis XIV, and had begun his palace complex before news reached him of the work under way at Versailles.

After his death the court returned to Fès and Marrakesh, and much of the imperial city was left unfinished or allowed to decay; the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755 damaged it further. Under the French protectorate after 1912 Meknes became a garrison and farming centre, and a Ville Nouvelle grew across the valley among vineyards and olive groves planted by settlers. The historic city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and restoration of the walls, gates and granaries has continued.

Meknes has the manners of a provincial capital that was once an imperial one: proud of its monuments, less used to tourists than Fès, and slower in pace. Craftsmen in the medina still work in inlaid and engraved metal, alongside carpet weaving, woodwork and embroidery, and the Dar Jamaï palace houses the national museum of music.

Religious life is strong. The tomb of Moulay Ismail is visited by Moroccans as well as by travellers, and the city is the home of the Aissawa, a Sufi brotherhood founded by Sheikh al-Kamil, Mohamed ben Aissa (1465–1526), whose followers gather for a large moussem around the Prophet's birthday with processions, drumming and trance music that carries far beyond Morocco in reputation.

The surrounding plain is farming country, and the agricultural show held in the city each April is a national event that fills the hotels. Meknes is also the centre of Moroccan wine, grown on the slopes towards El Hajeb and Moulay Idriss, which sits awkwardly beside the city's religious conservatism and is handled with discretion. Amazigh culture is close at hand: market days bring people down from the Middle Atlas, and Tamazight is heard alongside Darija in the souks.

About 550,000 people live in the city, making it one of Morocco's larger urban centres, though the population has spread outward into districts such as Toulal and Marjane rather than upward. The medina remains densely inhabited, the Ville Nouvelle holds the offices and the schools, and the growth of recent decades has gone to housing estates on the southern and western edges.

The economy rests on farming and food processing — olives and olive oil, cereals, fruit and wine — together with textiles, a military presence that dates from the protectorate, the regional administration and Moulay Ismail University. Tourism matters but brings fewer visitors than Fès, and many people commute or migrate there, to Casablanca or abroad for work. Youth unemployment is a persistent problem, as across urban Morocco.

Days begin early with the markets and the bread ovens, slow in the heat of the afternoon, and pick up again in the evening, when families walk on Place el-Hedim, around the Agdal Basin and along the avenues of Hamria. Friday means couscous at home after the midday prayer. Water is a growing worry: years of poor rainfall have hit the farms of the Saïss plain hard and restrictions on irrigation and public fountains have followed.

Meknes eats much as the rest of northern Morocco does, with a stronger accent on what the plain produces. Olives are the emblem — green, black, cracked, cured with lemon or harissa and piled in the covered market — and the local oil goes into almost everything. Tagines of lamb with prunes and almonds, chicken with preserved lemon and olives, and Friday couscous steamed over a vegetable broth are the standards of the home kitchen.

Street food is best around Place el-Hedim, where stalls sell harira, the tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, bowls of babbouche or snail broth drunk for its peppery liquor, grilled kefta and merguez, fried sardines, and sfenj, ring doughnuts fried to order in the morning. Pastry shops make chebakia, sesame and honey dough folded into flowers, and kaab el ghzal, the almond-filled crescents called gazelle horns. Camel meat is sold from a few specialist butchers in the medina.

Mint tea, poured from height into small glasses, punctuates the day, and freshly squeezed orange juice is sold from carts. Meknes sits at the heart of Morocco's wine country, with vineyards under the Guerrouane and Beni M'Tir names producing reds, rosés and the pale vin gris; it is served in licensed restaurants and hotels rather than openly.