Fez

"...the populace closes in again, so quickly and densely that it seems impossible it could ever have been parted, and negro water-carriers, muffled women, beggars streaming with sores, sinewy and greasy "saints," Soudanese sorcerers hung with amulets made of sardine-boxes and hares'-feet, long-lashed boys of the Chleuh in clean embroidered caftans, Jews in black robes and skull-caps, university students carrying their prayer-carpets, bangled and spangled black women, scrofulous children with gazelle eyes and mangy skulls, and blind men tapping along with linked arms and howling out verses of the Koran, surge together in a mass drawn by irresistible suction to the point where the bazaars converge..."

Excerpt from: Wharton, Edith. “In Morocco” (1920)

You learn to escape to the edges of the city's madness - onto the rooftops and outside the city walls to get a more balanced view of this huge, blaring, brilliant place. Fez is every bit as frantic as Marrakesh, although I suspect this has always been the case- tourism is just one of its business concerns. Fez caters overwhelmingly to its own people.

There are peaceful spots - the dazzling archways of the Batha Palace...

with its Andalusian garden full of Seville orange trees...

...the Jnane S'bile park with its lake and towering palms...

...the ancient waterwheel on the rippling Oued Fez...

...the terrace of the mysterious clock tower which looks out over the pretty, green minerat of the Bou Inania mosque.

Its medersa (Koranic school) ...

 

...contains beautifully crafted grills, wooden corbels, intricately worked doors and impressive zelij tile work.

Edith Wharton's descriptions of the crowds are typical of her time - resorting to exoticism and stereotype to describe Morocco's various social groups. Her descriptions make me smirk, however, as they do manage to capture the actual madness and colour of the crowds. There are a fascinating array of people, wired and wonderful things to see.

 

And exquisite workmanship to be observed on almost every street corner...

And as always, more irresistible, feline photographic subjects. A mother and baby make use of a makeshift bed of old zippers, and off cuts outside a tailor's shop...

 

 

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Volubilis (and Moulay Idriss)

“Volubilis (called by the Arabs the Castle of the Pharaohs) is the only considerable Roman colony so far discovered in Morocco. It stands on the extreme ledge of a high plateau backed by the mountains of the Zerhoun. Below the plateau, the land drops down precipitately to a narrow river-valley green with orchards and gardens, and in the neck of the valley, where the hills meet again, the conical white town of Moulay Idriss, the Sacred City of Morocco, rises sharply against a wooded background.”

Excerpt From: Wharton, Edith. “In Morocco.” (1920)

I was glad my own impressions of Volubilis did not differ greatly to those of Edith who travelled here in 1917.

Nowadays Moulay Idriss, which faces the Roman ruins up the valley, looks a good deal less pristine than it once did. From a distance, however, the city which only granted entrance to non-Muslims in the 1920s, is picturesque.

It is hard to believe that at Moulay Idriss Wharton witnessed the bloody religious dance of the Hamadcha Sufi sect. I am unsure if the dances are as frenzied as they were back then but Moulay Idriss hardly seems an outpost of Moslem zealotry. It has lots of pizza shops and men hanging around in smokey cafes, satellite dishes adorning its roof tops, chi-chi tourist guest houses and a regular public bus service running on the hour to Meknes.

Wharton describes the gruesome spectacle...

“the dancers hacked in their own skulls and breasts with hatchets and sharpened stones. The dance was a blood-rite, a great sacrificial symbol, in which blood flowed so freely that all the rocking feet were splashed with it.”

Excerpt From: Wharton, Edith. “In Morocco.”

Volubilis by contrast is a stunning and easy to get to by grand taxi. It cost us about $5 each way.

Thankfully all of the recent Europeans holiday makers have vanished now that the new year has passed and we largely had the ruins to ourselves.

We visited the Archaeological Museum in Rabat a couple of days ago to see the Roman bronzes which had been taken there from Volubilis for "protection".

The only security on show was a lazy attendant who spent the whole time gas bagging with a female toilet attendant. The CCTV cameras were out of order and I took photos to my heart's content. There seem to be no alarms, no surveillance at all and we were the only visitors walking the museum halls which has a number of emergency exits to the street. Such a place would be a professional art thief's dream.

When we get to the House of the Ephebus, which must have once been an impressive mansion on the main road into the city, I remember the bronze of the youth found there and housed in Rabat.

There are other impressive bronzes and Edith Wharton mentions one in her book worth quoting - the "sloughi" - or African hunting dog. Here is a photo I managed to take...

Apart from the hound, Wharton notes the fabulous Triumphal Arch on the Decumanus Maximus (main way) and fragments of the "bascilica" which my guide book tells me was most likely a courthouse (see the first photo).

“Little remains to Volubilis in the way of important monuments: only the fragments of a basilica, part of an arch of triumph erected in honour of Caracalla, and the fallen columns and architraves which strew the path of Rome across the world. But its site is magnificent; and as the excavation of the ruins was interrupted by the war it is possible that subsequent search may bring forth other treasures comparable to the beautiful bronze sloughi (the African hound) which is now its principal possession.”

Excerpt From: Wharton, Edith. “In Morocco.”

Wharton is wrong, however, about there being little of importance remaining at Volubilis itself.

There are several beautiful mosaics which may not have been unearthed at the time of her visit.

We were alarmed by the way the mosaics have been left open to the elements. Some are naturally showing signs of degradation.

The most impressive is that to be found in The House of Orpheus which shows the God playing his lyre to subdue a range of African animals, amongst them elephants, monkeys, leopards, tigers, rhinos, ostriches, ibex and bears.

I read most African animals in North Africa disappeared in the space of about two hundred years after the Romans settled. Apart from exporting top notch olive oil to the imperial capital, Volubilis also supplied Rome with tens of thousands of wild animals for slaughter in the colloseum.

Gladitorial spectacles as well as the slaughter of animals and Christians, was as popular in Africa it was in Rome.

This small ceramic piece from the site (c. 3 AD) depicts a gladiator.

There are several other mosaics at Volubilis worth noting. Heracles performs his twelve labours. This is no great work of art. Perhaps the almost comical depictions suggest something about provincial tastes of less refined Romans at the time who paid to have this stuff adorning their homes?

Here is Heracles bashing an Amazon ...

But then there are some very refined and exceptional pieces.

At the so called House of Venus we came across the Goddess, Diana Bathing...

I was surprised by what Volubilis had to offer, thinking that the ruins would be little more than rubble. It was a long day, a rewarding day, and coming back to another night of this ...

...I really can't complain about any of the aches and pains that result from such efforts, can I?

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Edith Wharton's "Morocco" ...and Mine

"Passing under the gate of Chella, with its richly carved corbels and lofty crenellated towers, one feels one's self thus completely reabsorbed into the past...Below the gate the ground slopes away, bare and blazing, to a hollow where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and fragments of arch and vaulting reveal the outline of a ruined mosque."

Above: The citadel of Chella in Rabat (2014) ...photographed by me today.

In 1920 Edith Wharton, the American author of The Age of Innocence, toured Morocco on the invitation of General Hubert Lyautey. France was keen to promote a benign image of its activities in its overseas "Protectorate" at the time and politically conservative Wharton, a self professed "French Imperialist", was keen to be of service.

My other antiquated travel guide during this journey is Life in Morocco and Glimpses Beyond (1905) by Budgett Meakin. The whole last section of his book is a dedicated attack on the French. The idea of a protectorate, warns Meakin, a good deal more sceptical of European motives than Wharton, would have grim repercussions for Moroccans. And he was right.

Unlike other North African and Arab nations, Morocco had proudly managed to maintain independence from foreign powers throughout the 19th century. In 1912, the Treaty of Fez was signed, effectively dividing Morocco into a French and Spanish protectorate.

It took Moroccans until 1956 to regain their independence from France with a significant loss of life and decades of ensuing economic and social dislocation that French and Spanish domination had created.

Today Spain continues its occupation of Moroccan territory in its "enclaves" of Ceuta and Melilla.

Above: Wharton's itinerary, from "Morocco" (1920)

Wharton's travel loge is nonetheless fascinating. It has personally been a valuable textual and visual touch stone for comparing what has changed and what has stayed the same in the last ninety-four years.

In the next few posts I will compare some of what Wharton wrote and saw in 1917 with my own observations and photos of the same locations in Rabat, Meknes and Fez.

Above: The citadel of Chella in Rabat (1917) ...from Wharton's "Morocco"

After my own experience of a vehicle breakdown in the desert - well, minor radiator leak- I was amused to read a similar event taking place at the beginning of Wharton's journey to Rabat, where we are today. 

I agree with Edith, a "mishap" early in a journey helps develop a certain kind of "fatalism" necessary to successful travel.

"The chauffeur turns the crank, but there is no responding quiver. Something has gone wrong; we can't move, and it is not much comfort to remember that, if we could, we should not know where to go. At least we should be cooler in motion than sitting still under the blinding sky.

Such an adventure initiates one at the outset into the stern facts of desert motoring. Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediaeval adventurer. If one lose one's way in Morocco, civilization vanishes as though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn.

It is a good thing to begin with such a mishap, not only because it develops the fatalism necessary to the enjoyment of Africa, but because it lets one at once into the mysterious heart of the country, a country so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the cities."

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