Marrakech - Jemaa el Fna and around Travel Guides | Marrakech | Sub Regions | Marrakech - Jemaa el Fna and around

Beating heart of Marrakech, the sprawling ‘square’ of Jemaâ el Fna is both the city’s greatest tourist draw and still a genuine social hub for the Marrakchis. On a médina map, Jemaâ el Fna, aka ‘la Place’ figures as an irregular space in the middle of the médina. It is far more. Each hour of the day has its own character. In the morning, things are quiet – the area looks like nothing so much as an empty car park. By midday, the street entertainers are in action and camcorders are whirring. By mid-afternoon, the square is full of people hawking talents and goods, bystanders gawping, walking, talking and arguing. Activity ends late at night when barbecue stalls and the last musician have packed up. Jemaâ el Fna is particularly memorable during Ramadan when the day’s fast ends. But whatever the time of day or year, you will return to ‘la Place’ again and again, responding to its magnetic pull, to mingle with the crowd or watch the jostle from the terraces of the Café de France or the Café Argana. Nearby, dominating Marrakech’s skyline looms the towering minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque, another important focal point and landmark. Running into Jemaâ el Fna from the southwest is the pedestrian Rue Bab Agnaou, packed in the early evening with strollers. And off the north side of the square is the small Place Bab Fteuh. Its old merchant hostels will delight junk fanatics.

Sights

Open 24 hours, liveliest from 1600-2100, later in summer.

‘Jemaâ el Fna is not what it was’, old Marrakchis moan. Back before Independence, ‘la Place’ was ankle-deep in dust in summer and a sea of mud after the winter rains. The idea was even mooted that the area should be used as building land. Until the late 1980s, the city bus station was on the Jemaâ, a chaos of ramshackle charabancs and Mercedes taxis. Things have been cleaned up a lot since then. In 1994, for the GATT meeting, the tarmac spreaders were brought in and the juice barrows and barbecue stands got numbers. The dust is a thing of the past – careering vélomoteurs are more of a problem. And there are dark rumours of a mini-mall complex on the Riad Zitoun side.

Take time to wander round ‘la Place’. Amateur apothecaries spread out their herbs and unguents on sacking, offering advice on problems of fertility and virility, possibly alarm-clocks, miscellanous CDs and the odd mummified reptile; there are snake charmers and monkey tamers, watersellers and wildly grinning gnaoua musicians with giant metal castanets, all too ready for photographers. Sheltering from the sun under their umbrellas, the fortune tellers and public scribes await their clients.

In the evening, the crowd changes again, a mix of students and people pausing on the way home from work, smart tourists strolling to exclusive patio restaurants in the médina, and backpackers ready for hot tagine or harira soup at one of the foodstalls. You may see Ouled el Moussa tumblers or a storyteller enthralling the crowd. Sometimes there are boxers and almost always groups of musicians. After much effort to extract a few dirhams from the crowd, an acoustic band will get some Amazigh dancing. More moving are the groups performing songs by the activist groups popular in the 1970s, Jil Jilala and Nass el Ghiwane. (Every Moroccan knows a song or two by these bands.) There may be nakkachat, women with syringes full of henna, ready to pipe a design onto your hands, as if they were decorating a cake. Modern innovations include a fairground game of ‘hook the ring over the coke bottle’, while a lad with a dumb-bell improvised from two old millstones will let you do some exercises for a dirham or two. You may find an astrologist-soothsayer tracing out his diagram of the future on the tarmac with a scrubby piece of chalk. A modern variation on the traditional halka or storyteller’s circle touches harsh social reality: local people listen to a true tale told with dignity by the relatives of a victim of poverty or injustice. And should you need an aphrodisiac, there are stalls with tea urns selling cinnamon and ginseng tea and little dishes of black, powdery slilou, a spicy sweet paste.

Remember: watch your wallet and have change handy for entertainers and orange juice. There shouldn’t be any hassle as the plain-clothes Brigade Touristique is watching, and penalties for bothering visitors are severe.

The mosque is only open to Muslims.

As the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, so the 65-metre high minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque is to Marrakech. Visible from afar, it is the landmark which was to be the focal point for urban planner Henri Prost when he laid out the modern neighbourhood of Guéliz. Unlike many mosques in Morocco’s old cities, it is readily approachable, being surrounded by an esplanade and rose gardens. The name Koutoubia derives from the Arabic kutoub (books) and means the ‘Booksellers’ Mosque’. No doubt the noble business of selling manuscripts was conducted in a souk close to the mosque.

Unusually, the Koutoubia is a double mosque, both parts dating from the reign of the second Almohad ruler, Abd el Moumen (1130-63). Standing on the esplanade facing the minaret, the ruins of the first Koutoubia are behind railings to your right (first excavated in the late 1940s, and re-explored recently). The bases of the prayer hall’s columns, and the cisterns under the courtyard, are clearly visible. The ground plan of the second Koutoubia, still standing, is the same as that of the ruined one (17 naves). (The Almohad mosque at Tin Mal, visitable for non-Muslims, has a similar plan.)

So why, back in the 12th century, did the Almohads go to the trouble of building not one but two mosques? Why bother destroying the Almoravid mosque? The site of the mosque is itself historic, having been originally occupied by a late 11th-century kasbah, the Almoravid Dar el Hajar (lit. ’House of Stone’). The victorious Almohads destroyed much of the Almoravid city they found. In 1147 they built a large mosque, close to the Dar el Hajar fortress. This they had to do, as no Almohad would pray in a building put up by the heretic Almoravids. Unfortunately, the orientation of the new Almohad mosque was not quite right – the focal point in a mosque, indicated by the mihrab, or prayer niche, should be in the direction of Mecca. The solution was to build a second mosque – the present Koutoubia – even though the faithful at prayer can correct this directional problem themselves, under the direction of the imam.

Thus two mosques existed for some time side by side, the first probably functioning as a sort of annexe (and given Almohad religious fervour, congregations were no doubt large). Today, the bricked-up spaces on the northwest wall of the Koutoubia Mosque indicate the doors which connected them. However, the total complex was perhaps excessive in size and the older structure eventually fell into ruin.

The existing Koutoubia Mosque was built by Abd el Moumen in 1162. The minaret, an impressive feat of engineering in its day, was to influence subsequent buildings in Morocco. It culminates in a ribbed dome topped with three golden orbs, allegedly made from the melted down jewellery of Sultan Yacoub el Mansour’s wife, in penance for her having eaten three grapes during Ramadan.

A vast structure for its day, the Koutoubia is held to be the high point of Almohad art, a cathedral-mosque of classic simplicity. It is here that the innovations of Hispano-Moorish art – stalactite cupolas, painted wooden ceilings – reach perfection. There are perspectives of horseshoe arches, no doubt an aid to contemplation. (Although the prayer hall is off limits to the non-Muslim visitor, an idea of what it is like can be gained at the Tin Mal mosque in the High Atlas.) The unique minbar (preacher’s chair) can be seen in the Badi Palace and is all decoration and variety, a sharp contrast to the austerity of the prayer hall. Ultimately, the Koutoubia is striking because it is the work of one ruler, Abd el Moumen. Comparable buildings in western Islam – the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra – were built over a couple of centuries. West of the Koutoubia is a splendid rose garden from where you will get the best views of the minaret. Pass through here on your way to take a squint at the legendary Hotel Mamounia.

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