Africa & Middle East > Morocco > Northern Morocco > Fez > Articles > Fez: The Imperial Beehive

Bab Boujeloud is the main gateway into Old Fez. Tiled blue on the outside and green facing inward, it could represent the two facets in the character of the ‘Fassi’ people. The blue - the colour of Islam - declares the city’s faith and reasserts its status as one of the pillars of the Arab world. The green - the traditional colour of Fez itself - reflects and reinforces the city’s own deeply engraved identity.

Bab Boujeloud is an appropriate introduction to what UNESCO has recognised as one of the largest and most important living medieval cities in the world. Seemingly insulated from the 21st century by its massive turreted walls, Fez el Bali (Old Fez) owes very little to the march of time.

The blare of horns that echoes through the French-built Ville Nouvelle is replaced here with warning cries - “Barek! Barek!” - as chains of diminutive donkeys scythe through the crowd, with cargos of yellow-died skins for the souk of the slipper-makers, or aging packhorses struggle to fulfil a contract for a house removal. There are an estimated 4,000 horses, mules and donkeys working in the medina and, apart from the recycled shreds of Dunlop car-tyres that provide some sort of traction on the greasy cobbles, their working conditions have changed little in a millennium.

Half a million people live in the complex web of alleyways, tunnels, corridors and stairways that link together palaces, mosques, souks and homes in a mile-long shambles that totally defies orientation. ‘There are few cities that so resemble a beehive,’ wrote the normally intrepid Eric Newby - ‘and, like a real beehive, once the sun is up and the air becomes warm, the closer you get the more danger there is of being stung.’

A few years ago Fez had a bad reputation as a hotbed for hustlers, pickpockets, conmen and some of the most voracious ‘false guides’ in North Africa. But the Brigade Touristique of the Moroccan police force has been at work to ensure that, while the great Moroccan cities will always remain an adventure, most visits are now stress-free.

Apart from a few backpacker hangouts around Boujeloud there was, until recently, little possibility for travellers of finding good lodgings in the old medina…and, in any case, the inscrutable cedar doors that line the alleys give little clue to the havens of peace and tranquillity that often lie behind them.

Now there are more than thirty fully-restored riads (noble palaces) operating as hotels in Fez el Bali. With their sunny roof-terraces, shady patios and exotic furnishings, they can provide everything from simple, homely comfort to the sort of luxury that is designed to make you feel like one of the central characters in 1001 Nights. In the tropical garden-patio that is said to be the defining characteristic of a real riad, amid swaying palms and singing birds, it is sometimes difficult to remember that just beyond the front door the bustling, bantering, bargaining life of the old city is going on in much the same way that it has for the last thousand years.

The riads are also great sources of information and can recommend knowledgeable and trustworthy guides for that first tentative foray into the ancient underworld. You can also hire guides through the tourist office or take up one of the countless offers that will no doubt come your way as you begin to navigate tentatively into the lanes. Although it is unfair to assume that all unofficial guides are hustlers the cost of a glass of mint tea and a half-hour chat should be enough to allow you decide if a guide is genuine.

Small boys tout for business: “Little guide, little price,” they squeak as they tag along at your elbow. You know you can’t pay them to skip classes…and yet you feel bad when you don’t.

All guides will be adept at taking you to the main ‘sights’ and the best will be able to offer a real insight into Fassi life but there is no substitute for a day or two simply wandering aimlessly - usually hopelessly lost. The real fascination of this timeless city lies not in great monuments or museums but in the simple, indefatigable everyday life that makes it a living museum.

Starting from Bab Boujeloud there two main arteries that lead - eventually - to the centre of this imperial beehive. You follow Talaa Kebira into the shadows of a rush-roofed tunnel and past long rows of identical wooden stalls, selling everything from televisions, babouche slippers, carpets and carvings, to second-hand belly-dancing knickers (the ideal souvenir?).

At intervals archways appear in the walls of the alleyway to reveal a sequence of temptingly sunlit courtyards. These are the ancient fondouks (caravanserais) where camel trains from as far away as Timbuktu and Sudan once rested and traded their exotic cargoes of salt, spices, gold dust or slaves. One of these fondouks - easily missed through a low, crumbling arch - is where wool is prepared for weaving the city’s prized kilim carpets. Inside the sun-cracked walls, greeted by austere hooded figures and breathing the cloying smell of raw wool, there is only the occasional shred of plastic to break the illusion that you have stepped into the Middle Ages.

Nobody minds if you walk in and have a look around and the odours and sounds of Fez’s many decaying fondouks are among the most entrancing experiences in Morocco.

The flow of the crowd sweeps you onward through a souk dealing only in pottery, then a tailor’s souk and a dyer’s souk, draped with scarlet bales of thread, glowing like neon where the sun slices through the rush-roofing. There are other souks where salt and fish, cedar-wood, chickens, rabbits, spices and, not so long ago, slaves leant their own recognisable odour to the atmosphere. The resonant clanging of the metal-worker’s souk is almost ghostly as it filters through this section of the medina but you stop noticing it amidst the spicy tang of the perfumer’s souk that lies further on.

You will be well and truly lost by now but don’t put too much faith in the old Fassi adage that says ‘all roads lead to the Kairaouine Mosque.’ This mosque is the spiritual heart of Old Fez and one of the world’s first universities. Like layers of moss on an ancient tree, the surrounding buildings so camouflage it that even this, the second largest mosque in Morocco (with room for twenty thousand worshippers), does not provide a prominent landmark.

A Moroccan wanderer once let me into the secret of how the Fassis navigate in unknown quarters of the city: they follow the looping cables through the spaghetti junctions of the electrical system, recognising specific junction boxes and following connections that lead them back to the outer walls. It seems as likely as any other explanation.

For the outsider a keen sense of smell is often the only substitute for an understanding of this Fassi ‘map of the underground.’ On a hot afternoon the stench of the pigeon dung that is used as leather-softener guides you infallibly through the lower medina towards the famous tanneries. Viewed from the rooftop bazaars that surround it, the tanneries - swarming with workers who are themselves perpetually dyed with indigo, poppy, mint, antimony and saffron - are the honeycombs at the centre of this ‘beehive.’

You can happily pass the afternoon on the rooftops, drinking the ubiquitous mint tea and watching workers laying out the saffron-coloured sheepskins that will be used to make babouches. Unless you are downwind on a hot afternoon (when the smell can be unbearable) time passes quickly up here and soon the sun begins to sink onto rooftops that begin to look more and more like some romantic cubist watercolour.

Darkness swoops quickly into the medina and the alleys empty with a curfew-like rapidity. The stalls begin to close and with them go the landmarks that you thought you could rely on. You’ve already turned back out of several chilly dead-end alleys, and you’ve been craning your neck in vain for a patch of red sky that will allow you to guess direction. Finally you recognise a green-tiled fountain and realise that you have stumbled back onto Talaa Kebira. With relief you scurry back towards Bab Boujeloud and the 20th century.

The near panic of an outsider seeking to extricate himself from the ten thousand alleyways in which he has become entangled is likely to ignite in the Fassi’s a faint glow of pride. “This is why the French built their own city outside the walls,” they tell you. “They were afraid to live in ours.”

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