Marrakech & the High Atlas

The Haouz plain and the High Atlas were Amazigh lands long before cities rose here. Around 1070 the Almoravids, Saharan Sanhaja tribesmen, founded Marrakech as their capital, giving their name to a country that Europeans long called "Morocco" after the city. Their successors the Almohads began in the High Atlas village of Tinmel, where the reformer Ibn Tumart set up his movement, and after taking Marrakech in 1147 built the Koutoubia mosque. The Saadian dynasty made Marrakech its capital again in the 16th century, building the El Badi palace, the Saadian Tombs and the Ben Youssef medersa.

On the coast, the Carthaginian navigator Hanno set up a trading post at Mogador, and Juba II of Mauretania later made purple dye there. The Portuguese fortified Safi in the early 16th century, and in the 1760s Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah built a new, planned port at Essaouira, whose Jewish merchants handled much of Morocco's foreign trade in the 19th century. North-east, the Tadla plain around Béni Mellal and the Zayane country of Khénifra were long frontier lands between the sultan and the Amazigh tribes.

Under the French protectorate, the "lords of the Atlas" — above all Thami El Glaoui, pasha of Marrakech — ruled the south on France's behalf; the Zayane tribes of Khénifra resisted conquest until the early 1920s after defeating a French column at El Herri in 1914. The French also opened the phosphate mines at Khouribga, still among the richest in the world. Since the 1990s Marrakech has become a global tourist destination, and on 8 September 2023 an earthquake centred in Al Haouz province killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed many mountain villages, including damage to Tinmel's mosque.

Marrakech is the great meeting point of Arab city culture and the Amazigh south. Jemaa el-Fna, recognised by UNESCO as a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage, gathers storytellers, Gnawa musicians, acrobats and herbalists each evening, and the medina's souks are organised by craft — dyers, leatherworkers, metalworkers, carpet sellers. The city's red walls give it its nickname, the Red City.

In the High Atlas, villages speak Amazigh languages, Tashelhit in the west, and life follows the terraces, irrigation channels and communal granaries of the mountains. Collective dances with frame drums, such as the ahwach of the western Atlas and the ahidous, accompany weddings and harvests, and the Aït Bouguemez and other valleys keep traditional adobe houses.

Essaouira is a different world: a town of whitewashed houses and blue shutters, of Gnawa brotherhoods descended from West Africans brought across the Sahara, whose music is celebrated at the Gnaoua World Music Festival each June; of craftsmen who work the fragrant wood of the thuya tree; and of a long Jewish history, commemorated at the restored Bayt Dakira house of memory. Safi is known across Morocco for its pottery, made on the hill of potters above the medina. Across the region, moussems honouring saints draw pilgrims and fairs.

Marrakech-Safi has around five million people and Béni Mellal-Khénifra about two and a half million. Marrakech, with around a million, dominates; Safi has about 350,000, Béni Mellal and Khouribga around 200,000 each, and Essaouira, Khénifra, Kelaat Sraghna and Fquih Ben Salah are smaller.

Tourism is Marrakech's main industry, along with construction, crafts and a growing role as a conference and film-making centre; the medina's riads, many foreign-owned, have changed its neighbourhoods. Safi is a sardine port and a site of phosphate processing, and Khouribga and Youssoufia are mining towns. The Tadla plain grows sugar beet, citrus and olives, and the Fquih Ben Salah area is known for heavy emigration to Italy and Spain.

In the mountains, families live from barley, walnuts, apples and flocks, supplemented by trekking and guesthouse work around Imlil and in the Ourika. Recovery from the 2023 earthquake, with many families still waiting for rebuilt homes, and water shortages across the plains are pressing issues.

Marrakech's own dish is tanjia, beef or lamb cooked for hours with preserved lemon, cumin and garlic in a clay urn left in the ashes of a hammam furnace — traditionally a bachelors' meal. The city's evening stalls sell harira, snail broth, sheep's heads, merguez and grilled kebabs, and mechoui, whole lamb slow-roasted in an earthen oven, is a feast dish.

In the mountain villages, meals are simpler: barley couscous, tagines of vegetables and mutton, flat breads baked on stone, walnuts and honey. Amlou, a spread of ground almonds and argan oil sweetened with honey, is eaten with bread at breakfast, and argan oil itself is pressed by cooperatives in Essaouira province.

On the coast, Essaouira's harbour grills sardines, sea bream and prawns chosen from the day's catch, and Safi is one of Morocco's main sardine ports. The Béni Mellal area is known for its oranges and olive oil. Mint tea, often infused with wormwood (chiba) in winter, is drunk everywhere.

Marrakech's medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, centres on Jemaa el-Fna and the Koutoubia minaret, with the Bahia Palace, the ruined El Badi palace, the Saadian Tombs, the Ben Youssef medersa, the tanneries and the souks within its walls. Outside them lie the Menara and Agdal gardens, the Majorelle Garden and the Yves Saint Laurent museum.

South of the city the High Atlas rises within an hour's drive. The Ourika valley leads to Setti Fatma, the last village on its road, and the ski station of Oukaïmeden lies nearby; the Asni road leads to Imlil, the base for Mount Toubkal, at 4,167 metres the highest peak in North Africa, climbed in two days via a mountain refuge in Toubkal National Park. Further west, the Tizi n'Test road passes the mosque of Tinmel, and Lalla Takerkoust lake and the stony Agafay plateau lie closer to Marrakech.

On the coast, Essaouira has its ramparts and sea bastion, its harbour and a long beach favoured by windsurfers and kitesurfers, and Safi has its Portuguese sea castle and potters' quarter. North-east, Azilal province holds the Ouzoud falls, the Bin el Ouidane reservoir and the Aït Bouguemez valley, while the Béni Mellal foothills offer the Aïn Asserdoun spring and its kasbah above the city, and the lakes and cedar forests of Khénifra National Park lie further on.