Fès, Meknès & the Middle Atlas

Long before Fès, the Saïss plain was the edge of Roman Africa. Volubilis, a Mauretanian town that grew under Rome into the chief city of the province's interior, prospered on olive oil and grain, and was still inhabited after the Romans withdrew. In the late 8th century Idris I, a descendant of the Prophet fleeing the Abbasids, arrived there, won the support of local Amazigh tribes and founded the first Muslim dynasty in Morocco; his tomb at Moulay Idriss, a few kilometres from the ruins, became a major place of pilgrimage.

Idris I founded Fès in 789 and his son Idris II enlarged it; refugees from Córdoba and Kairouan settled its two banks, and in 857 or 859 Fatima al-Fihri founded the Qarawiyyin mosque, which grew into a centre of learning. Under the Marinids in the 13th and 14th centuries Fès was the capital of Morocco, and the dynasty built Fès el-Jdid, the royal city beside the old medina, and the carved medersas that still stand. Sultan Moulay Ismail, who reigned from 1672 to 1727, made Meknès his capital instead, raising walls, gates, palaces and huge granaries and stables.

The Treaty of Fez establishing the French protectorate was signed in the city in 1912 and was followed by a violent uprising there; the French then moved the capital to Rabat. Fès kept its prestige as the seat of old merchant families and scholars who shaped the nationalist movement, while the French built new towns beside the medinas and the hill station of Ifrane in the Middle Atlas. After independence, many wealthy Fassi families moved to Casablanca and Rabat, and the Fès medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has since been the focus of long restoration programmes.

Fès has long seen itself as Morocco's cultural capital. The Fassi bourgeoisie, many with Andalusian roots, is known for a refined dialect, an elaborate cuisine, and a tradition of scholarship tied to the Qarawiyyin; for centuries the city's families supplied the kingdom with judges, merchants and ministers. Its crafts are the most famous in the country: tanning and leatherwork, zellige tilework, carved cedar and plaster, brass, and the cobalt-blue Fès pottery. The Fès Festival of World Sacred Music, founded in 1994, brings Sufi, Christian, Jewish and other devotional music to the city, usually in early June.

Religion runs deep here. Moulay Idriss draws a large annual moussem, and the tombs of Idris II in Fès and of Moulay Ismail in Meknès are places of pilgrimage. Sufi brotherhoods, notably the Tijaniyya, whose founder is buried in Fès, have followers far into West Africa. Meknès is also home to the Aissawa brotherhood, whose founder's shrine is in the city.

The Middle Atlas is Amazigh country, where Tamazight is spoken and Amazigh tribes kept flocks on the high pastures. Sefrou, once home to a large Jewish community, holds a cherry festival each June, and weaving, carpets and the ahidous group dance survive in the mountain villages.

Fès-Meknès has over four million people. Fès, with over a million, is one of Morocco's largest cities, and its medina, closed to cars, runs on donkeys, handcarts and small workshops. Meknès has around 550,000 people, Taza around 150,000, and Sefrou, El Hajeb, Azrou and Ifrane are smaller towns.

The Saïss plain is one of Morocco's richest farming areas, producing olives, cereals, fruit and wine grapes, and Meknès is known for its olive-oil industry. Fès lives on crafts, trade, universities and tourism, but has struggled to find new industry and has high unemployment, and many young people leave for Casablanca, Tangier or abroad. Ifrane is home to Al Akhawayn University, an English-language university opened in 1995, and the Middle Atlas villages depend on livestock, apples and forestry.

Friday couscous, the evening walk along the boulevards of the Ville Nouvelle, the call to prayer from hundreds of minarets in the medina and summer escapes to Ifrane set the rhythm of life.

Fès is considered one of the homes of Moroccan haute cuisine. Its signature dish is pastilla (bastilla), the layered pie of pigeon or chicken, eggs and almonds in thin warqa pastry, dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Fassi kitchens are also known for khlii, strips of beef dried and preserved in fat and spices, and for tagines of lamb with quince or prunes and chicken with preserved lemon.

The medina's street food includes harira, bowls of bissara, snail broth and sandwiches of grilled kefta, and its pastry shops sell chebakia, flower-shaped fried dough in honey and sesame, and kaab el ghzal, the crescent-shaped almond biscuits known as gazelle horns. Sefrou's cherries, the region's olives and Middle Atlas apples fill the markets in season, and trout from the mountain lakes and rivers appears on menus around Ifrane and Azrou.

The Meknès area has been a centre of wine-making since Roman times, with the Guerrouane appellation and several estates producing red, rosé and grey wines (vin gris).

Fès el-Bali, the medina, is a maze of lanes behind gates such as the blue-tiled Bab Bou Jeloud. Its sights include the Qarawiyyin mosque, the Bou Inania and Al-Attarine medersas with their carved cedar and zellige, the Nejjarine fountain and woodwork museum, and the Chouara tannery, seen from surrounding leather-shop terraces. Fès el-Jdid holds the gilded gates of the Royal Palace and the old Jewish quarter, the Mellah, while the Marinid tombs on the northern hill give the classic view over the medina.

Meknès, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is entered by Bab Mansour on the Place el-Hedim, and its sights include the mausoleum of Moulay Ismail and the vast granaries and stables of Moulay Ismail. North of the city, Volubilis has mosaic floors, the Capitol, the basilica and the triumphal arch of Caracalla, while the whitewashed town of Moulay Idriss rises on two hills nearby.

To the south the Middle Atlas begins. Ifrane, a resort of pitched roofs and parks with a stone lion as its emblem, lies within Ifrane National Park, whose cedar forests around Azrou shelter troops of Barbary macaques and whose lakes include Dayet Aoua. Sefrou and the cave houses of Bhalil lie south-east of Fès, the hot springs of Moulay Yacoub to its west, and near Taza, Tazekka National Park has forested peaks and the deep Friouato cave.