Marrakech began as an outpost of a Saharan kingdom, became the capital of an empire that stretched up to the Pyrenees, and was ruled over by some of the most colourful and extraordinary people in the long history of Morocco. Its value lay in its location, on the crossroads of trans-Saharan trade routes linking mountain and plain, desert and coast.
The city’s history is not short of incident, nor of romance, bloodshed and brilliance. It seems to seep through every wall of every alley and hang over every tea-punctuated conversation.
Morocco’s Dynasties
Marrakech owes its unique character to its history. Although it sits on the northern side of the great barrier of the Atlas Mountains, it was created by people from the south. The Almoravids, a confederation of Berber tribes from the Sahara, were inspired and united by Ibn Yassin, a holy man from the Souss Valley (southeast of today’s Agadir), who preached a pure form of Islam. With him they declared a jihad (holy war) against the influence of the Andalusian Moors, who allowed alcohol to be drunk and men to take more than four wives. Their zeal carried them to victory beyond the Atlas, where, around 1070, they founded Marrakech.
Marrakech was originally the Almoravids’ northernmost settlement. But the Almoravid leader, Youssef ben Tachfine, had ambitions in the north. In 1075 he conquered the central city of Fez and within five years, he had control over most of what is now Morocco, effectively creating the first Moroccan state.
Master builder
Ali ben Youssef was one of the great early builders: in what is now Algeria he created the mosque of Tlemcen, and in Fez he built the central Karaouine Mosque. In his capital, Marrakech, he built the mosque and madrassa that bears his name. The carving in all the monuments was done by masters brought over from Andalusia.
Youssef ben Tachfine didn’t stop there. Ten years later he crossed the Straits to Spain, where the Catholics were claiming victories over the Andalusian Muslim princes. He was successful there too, and his son Ali ben Youssef, who succeeded him in 1107, inherited an empire that stretched from West Africa to the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic to Algeria. The Almoravids brought with them the technology necessary for surviving in the desert. In Marrakech, they built khettara, underground irrigation channels, to supply their new city with water from the Atlas Mountains.
The Almohad Princes
Although the Almoravids over-extended themselves, it is more likely that the dynasty fell because their reformist zeal began to wane. In their place rose another reformist Berber dynasty, from the Atlas Mountains, inspired by a preacher by the name of Ibn Toumert. Ibn Toumert’s targets were obvious: the Almoravids allowed their women to ride horses and had been increasingly corrupted by Andalusian ideas. The movement gathered momentum after the preacher’s death thanks to the military genius of his successors, particularly the third Almohad sultan, Yacoub el-Mansour.
Sultan Yacoub earned his title ‘el-Mansour’, the Victorious, for his exploits in Spain, where he defeated the Christians in 1195. He pushed east as far as Tripoli as well, and for the first time united the Maghreb under a single ruler, based in Marrakech.
He built across the empire, most notably constructing the Koutoubia in Marrakech, and beginning work on the Tour Hassan in Rabat – both of which served as models for the Giralda in Seville. The Bab Agnaou (the ornate gate into the Kasbah) is another reminder of the Almohads’ austerely beautiful taste in architecture.
The dynasty was doomed soon after Yacoub’s death. His successor, Mohammed en-Nasr, moved against the Christians in Spain, hoping to push them beyond the Pyrenees. His defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 was the start of a rapid decline: in less than half a century, the Almohads lost most of their Spanish territories, including Seville, and were then edged out of Algeria, Fez and eventually Morocco. With them went Marrakech’s prominence: the Merenid dynasty that succeeded them, and which ruled Morocco for three centuries, made Fez their capital.
The Saadians
For more than 500 years, Morocco had been ruled by Berber dynasties which had come from the south. But in the 16th century, as a result of increasing Portuguese control along the Atlantic coast, an Arab dynasty, the Saadians, rose to prominence in the Souss, building a base in Taroudant in the Souss Valley.
The defining moment for the dynasty came in 1578, when the youthful King Sebastian I of Portugal invaded Morocco, in order to support the claim of the deposed Saadian ruler Abu Abdallah Mohammed II against his uncle, Abd Al-Malik Saadi, and thereby reclaim Portugal’s coastal bases. The ensuing ‘Battle of the Three Kings’ at Ksar el-Kebir ended in the death of all three protagonists, and the decisive defeat of Portuguese forces.
The man who benefited from this was Ahmed el-Mansour, who became sultan in 1578.
The Golden One
They called Ahmed el-Mansour ‘Eddahbi’, the Golden, and with good reason, for he restored the country and Marrakech’s wealth and standing. Under Sultan Ahmed, the city once more became a glittering centre of patronage. He built a magnificent palace, Badi, ‘the Incomparable’, and its name was no exaggeration: no building in the region came close to it in grandeur. Elsewhere in the city, Ahmed’s monuments included the rebuilt Madrassa Ben Youssef and the Saadian Tombs, the compound where he and his dynasty were buried in tombs that match the magnificence of the finest Andalusian work .
But like many despots before and since, Ahmed failed to establish a clear successor and on his death in 1603, his descendants fought over the throne, weakening central rule so much that within just a few decades the empire had crumbled.
The Cruel Sultan
Moulay Ismail (1672–1727) was one of the more bloodthirsty characters of Moroccan history. With an army of 150,000 African mercenaries he drove the Portuguese out of their Atlantic strongholds, the Ottomans back to the current frontier with Algeria and the English out of Tangier. For Marrakech and the other imperial city, Fez, his reign was a disaster. Wanting to avoid the glorification of earlier dynasties, Moulay Ismail destroyed all traces of them and set about creating what he hoped would be the greatest of all Moroccan cities, Meknes, 60km (38 miles) from Fez. His palace complex, intended to rival Versailles (and today a Unesco World Heritage Site), was built using materials looted from Saadian palaces. It took Ismail’s workers 12 years to strip Marrakech’s Badi palace of all its treasures.
The Alaouites
As before in Morocco’s history, change came like a breath of hot wind from the south. While the Saadians fought among themselves, the Alaouites, a tribe who originated from the oases of the Tafilalt and claimed descent from the Prophet Mohammed, began to unite southern tribes around their base in Rissani, on the edge of the Sahara. It wasn’t until 1669, more than half a century after Ahmed’s death, that the Alaouite Sultan Moulay Rachid moved on Marrakech. Rachid held power for just three years before being killed in a palace coup. In contrast, his successor the tyrannical Moulay Ismail ruled for 54 years and laid the foundations of the dynasty that continues to rule Morocco today.
Ismail’s heirs were less successful, as his numerous sons (he is said to have fathered more than 1,000 children) disputed the throne for 30 years. Once again power fractured and the kingdom went into a long, slow decline throughout much of the 18th century. Marrakech went with it. Without stability, the trade routes no longer flourished.
But a succession of sultans exploited foreign interest and for more than a century played the British off against their rivals, the French and Spanish, for a stake in the nation’s commerce.
French Protectorate
The Moroccan sultans held out against European pressure for more than a century. But in 1912, the ruling sultan Moulay Hafid signed an accord, the Treaty of Fez, that effectively handed over sovereignty to France and made the country a French colony with its capital in Rabat.
Glaoui’s palaces
T’hami el-Glaoui grew immensely wealthy by controlling trade, both legal and illicit, in the High Atlas south of Marrakech. With some of the proceeds, he built palaces, among them a magnificent Kasbah in the mountains at Telouet and the Dar el-Bacha in Marrakech.
Marrakech had a central role to play in the story of French colonisation. French forces struggled to take control of the tribes in the south, where the landscape, climate and the nature of the tribal communities were impossible to subdue. With the outbreak of World War I, the French did not have the manpower to fight their way through the region. Instead, the French governor General Hubert Lyautey made a deal with the most powerful family in the High Atlas, the Glaoui, who collaborated with the French and imposed their rule.
Armed by the French and left to their own devices, the Glaoui brothers, Madani and T’hami, earned a reputation as ‘Lords of the High Atlas’. Their tribal base was in Telouet, but they ruled the mountains and the trade routes south of Marrakech and in 1912 T’hami el-Glaoui took the title of Pasha of Marrakech.
Until the period of French control, Marrakech was mostly confined within its walls, but the colonisers planned European districts – the Ville Nouvelle (New Town) – outside the walls, where the garden suburbs of Guéliz and Hivernage were laid out.
Independence
There was resistance to French rule from the moment it began, but the Moroccan independence movement became viable only after the French defeat by Germany in World War II. However, it wasn’t until the early 1950s, when the movement had such popular support that the French felt the need to exile the sultan (later king) Mohammed V to Madagascar, that the outcome became inevitable.
Mausoleum of Mohammed V in Rabat
Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications
In 1955, Mohammed V returned and in March the following year, choosing to concentrate their efforts on holding Algeria, the French (and soon afterwards the Spanish) recognised Moroccan independence. T’hami el-Glaoui, the Pasha of Marrakech died two months before independence but after switching his support to Mohammed V, who was crowned king and oversaw the creation of the modern state.
Hassan II and National Identity
Mohammed V’s eldest son, King Hassan II, who took the throne in 1961, dominated the country for the remainder of the 20th century. Although ostensibly a constitutional monarch, Hassan ruled the country with an iron and rigidly conservative fist. In 1975, he furthered Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara and encouraged 350,000 Moroccans to occupy the region in what has become known as the Marche Verte (Green March). This is an occupation that continues today and continues to be disputed. The latter decades of Hassan II’s rule – darkened by the imprisonment, torture and disappearances of opponents and dissidents – came to be known as the ‘Years of Lead’.
To the future
The 21st century has ushered in an era of modernism and change in Morocco, with greater freedoms and liberalism. There is a long way to go but it seems that the king, Mohammed VI, is willing to take his country in the right direction.
A New Era
When Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan was crowned Mohammed VI in July 1999 following his father’s death, Morocco entered into a new era. The new king was intent on forging pioneering reforms. Early on in his reign, he overhauled the Mudawana or family code, based on Islamic law, which would fundamentally change the lives of Moroccan women and, even more extraordinarily, established the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated abuses from his father’s reign. At the same time, Mohammed VI saw the need to establish closer ties with the west as well as increase foreign investment in Morocco, particularly noticeable in the tourist mecca of Marrakech, which has seen a boom in the building of tourist hotels and resorts. Mohammed VI remains a popular figure but his reign has not been above criticism – or without problems.
The shadow of Islamic fundamentalism reared its head in suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003 and in Marrakech in 2011; the issue of Western Sahara remains contentious and in spite of strong UN attempts to broker an agreement between both sides, the deadlock continues. In 2011 the Arab world was rocked by revolution and change and though Mohammed VI remains in power, his rule has been tested by protests, which to some extent he has heeded – amending the constitution and devolving more of his powers to the prime minister.
However, some reforms still remain on paper only – and the country has come under fire over its human rights record. In 2015, Amnesty International reported 170 cases of torture and maltreatment during 2011–2015. These can be only partly explained by the government’s heavy-handed tactics against local jihadists adopted since 2011 in a successful attempt to stifle the home-terrorist threat. The unresolved issue of the Western Sahara also weighs heavily on international relations – in 2015 it prompted the European Court of Justice to suspend an agricultural agreement between the EU and Morocco.