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History
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The original date of Marrakesh's
foundation
is disputed, though it was certainly close to the onset of
Almoravid
rule - around 1062-70 - and must have taken the initial form of a camp and market with a
ksour
, or fortified town gradually developing round it.
The city's founder (as that of the Almoravid dynasty) was Youssef Ben Tachfine , a restless military leader who conquered northern Morocco within two years and then, turning his attention towards Spain, defeated the Christian kings, to bring Andalucia under Moroccan rule. Tachfine maintained both Fes and Marrakesh as bases for his empire, but under his son, the pious Ali Ben Youssef , Marrakesh became very much the dominant centre. Craftsmen and architects from Cordoba worked on the new city: palaces, baths and mosques were built; underground channels, known as khettara , were built to provide water for the town and the growing palmery; and, in 1126-27, the first seven-kilometre circuit of walls was raised, replacing an earlier stockade of thorn bushes. These, many times rebuilt, are essentially the city's present walls - made of tabia , the red mud of the plains, mixed and strengthened with lime. Of the rest of the Almoravid's building works, there remains hardly a trace. The dynasty that replaced them - the orthodox and reforming Almohads - sacked the city for three days after taking possession of it in 1147. Once again, though, Marrakesh was adopted as the empire's pre-eminent capital, its domain stretching as far as Tripolitania (modern Libya) in the wake of phenomenal early conquests. With the accession to the throne in 1184 of Yacoub El Mansour , the third Almohad sultan, the city entered its greatest period. Under this prolific builder, kissarias were constructed for the sale and storage of Italian and oriental cloth, a new kasbah was begun, and a succession of poets and scholars arrived at the court - among them Ibn Rochd, aka Averroes , the most distinguished of Arabic medieval philosophers, who was born in Cordoba (1126) and died in Marrakesh (1198). Mansour's reign also saw the construction of the great Koutoubia Mosque and minaret. It is astonishing to think that this whole period of Almoravid and Almohad rule - so crucial to the rise of both the city and the nation - lasted barely two centuries. By the 1220s, the empire was beginning to fragment amid a series of factional civil wars, and Marrakesh fell into the familiar pattern of pillage, ruination and rebuilding. It revived for a time to form the basis of an independent Merenid kingdom (1374-86) but overall it gave way to Fes until the emergence of the Saadians in the early sixteenth century. Taking Marrakesh, then devastated by famine, in 1521, and Fes in 1546, the Saadians provided a last burst of imperial splendour. Their first sultans regained the Atlantic coast, which had been extensively colonized by the Portuguese; Ahmed El Mansour , the great figure of the dynasty, defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of the Three Kings and led a conquest of Timbuktu, seizing control of the most lucrative caravan routes in Africa. The El Badi Palace - Marrakesh's largest and greatest building project - was constructed from the proceeds of this new wealth, though it again fell victim to dynastic rivalry and, apart from its mausoleum (the Saadian Tombs ), was reduced to ruins by Moulay Ismail , the second, but first effective, sultan of the Alaouite dynasty, who preferred Meknes to Marrakesh. Subsequent history under the Alaouites - the dynasty perpetuated today by King Mohammed VI - is largely undistinguished. Marrakesh remained an imperial capital, and the need to maintain a southern base against the tribes ensured the regular, alternating residence of its sultans. But from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, it shrank back from its medieval walls and lost much of its former trade. The Encyclopaedia Britannica recorded in 1875 that "the wall, 25 or 30 feet high and relieved by square towers at intervals of 360 feet, is so dilapidated that foot-passengers, and in places even horsemen, can find their way in and out through the breaches. Open spaces of great extent are numerous enough within the walls, but for the most part they are defaced by mounds of rubbish and putrid refuse." During the last decades prior to the Protectorate, the city's fortunes revived somewhat as it enjoyed a return to favour with the Shereefian court. Moulay Hassan (1873-94) and Moulay Abd El Aziz (1894-1908) both ran their governments from here in a bizarre closing epoch of the old ways, accompanied by a final bout of frantic palace building. On the arrival of the French , Marrakesh gave rise to a short-lived pretender, the religious leader El Hiba, and for most of the colonial period it was run as a virtual fiefdom of its pasha, T'hami El Glaoui - the most powerful, autocratic and extraordinary character of his age.
Since
independence
, the city has undergone considerable change, with rural emigration from the Atlas and beyond, new methods of cultivation on the Haouz plain and the development of a sizeable tourist industry. The impressive
Palais des Congres
, opened in 1989, has given Marrakesh international prestige, hosting national and international events. All of these factors combine to make Marrakesh Morocco's best-known city and, after Casablanca, the country's largest trading base and population centre - over 1,425,000 at the last estimate. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Morocco,
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