A Life in Ruins – Volubilis, Morocco

At the entrance to the site we paid the reasonable entry fee and then negotiated with a local guide who offered to give us a guided tour and a history of the city and when we were all satisfied with the price we set off along a dusty path towards the excavations and Hamid began his commentary

Volubilis was the Roman capital of the Province of Mauritania and was founded in the third century B.C., it became an important outpost of the Roman Empire and was graced with many fine buildings.  Extensive remains of these survive in the archaeological site, located in the middle of this fertile agricultural area.  The city continued to be occupied long after the Romans had gone and at some point converted to Islam and Volubilis was later briefly to become the capital of Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty, who is buried at nearby Moulay Idris.   It is now of course a UNESCO World Heritage Site, admitted to the list in 1997.

Volubilis was an important and versatile place, a garrison town which protected the far south western boundary of the Empire, an agricultural bread basket producing important crops like wheat and olives in the fertile valley to be transported across the Empire via Tangier to the North on the Mediterranean Sea and a city of rich noblemen who built themselves fine villas and a beautiful city in an enviable location.  Much better I imagine to be posted here than to the northern extremes of the Empire at Hadrian’s Wall.

Volubilis, it turns out, is the most important ancient archeological site in Morocco and Hassan took us into the old streets running north to south and through the foundations and walls of the houses that flanked them.  In many of them there were fine mosaics and I thought it a little surprising to find them here exposed to the elements and not having been removed to a museum nearby.  The houses were huge and with a bit of imagination it was almost possible to imagine what this place may have been like two thousand years ago.  It was interesting to walk around the old streets, wander through the corridors of the houses, along the main street of shops and imagine that in this very place there were soldiers marching, old Latin plays being performed in the theater, emperor worshippers in the temples, magistrates swaggering around importantly in togas, and slaves to do all of the dirty work.

 

 

After walking along the main street lined by the remains of grand columns and arches we arrived at the centre piece of the city, the triumphal arch which has been carefully pieced back together by French archeologists nearly a hundred years ago.  Next to the arch was the Forum, the centre of political life in the city and adjacent to that the ancient Basilica where the citizens came to worship their gods.

Hamid concluded the tour with an explanation of Roman life in this area and tried to speculate why the Romans suddenly abandoned Morocco but like many historians who have wrestled with this question before him could provide no answers.  He walked us back to the car park where Abdul was waiting and we paid the agreed fee and added a tip to thank him for an excellent tour.

Next we were due to drive to Moulay Idriss which nestled in the folds of the mountain and was gleaming white in the sunshine.  Abdul took us along a high level road so that we could get some pictures but we were unsure about this because the heavy rain last night had turned the road to mud and the sides of the mountain had been washed down over the asphalt.  It didn’t seem safe especially when he parked on a precipitous ledge and invited us out to get our photographs.

The problem with stopping we discovered was that it was inevitable that someone would quickly appear trying to sell us something. Uusually this was necklaces and jewellery but sometimes fossils, that were almost certainly fakes, and fascinating round chunks of coal with iron Pyrite crystals which they claimed were completely natural and collected from the mountains but in reality are manufactured in a workshop using a simple crystal solution.  Abdul kept an eye on things and although he allowed them to approach us he stepped in if their sales technique became too robust.

We were glad to leave the precarious hillside and back in the vehicle Abdul drove us into the city which has only one main road running through it and a web of alleyways disappearing into the maze behind it.  Today was flea market day and the road was crammed with people picking over the merchandise on the stalls including a lot of second hand clothing which looked as though it had found its way here via the weekly recycling collections back in the UK.  Abdul nosed his way through the crowds of people who were not especially inclined to give way and clearly thought they had priority to be there.

We didn’t stop in Moulay Idriss and although no one explained why I believe it is because non Muslims are not especially welcome in this pilgrimage city and certainly we saw no European travellers or tourists as we inched our way along the street and out the other side.  I sensed that even Abdul wasn’t too comfortable to be there with a car full of camera pointing Christian infidels and once through the crowds he quickly returned to the main road and pointed the taxi in the direction of Meknes to the south.

____________________________________

Related Articles:

Spartacus the Gladiator

Rome

The Roman City of Pompeii

The Roman City of Herculaneum

The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Aqueduct of Segovia

The Roman Buildings at Mérida

The Roman Ruins at Segóbriga

Diocletian’s Palace at Split

The Roman Buildings at Arles

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Morocco, The Mosques of Meknes

Reunited with our driver we left the main square and drove just a short way until we reached the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail, which interestingly (and without satisfactory explanation that I could find)  is one of only three Moroccan shrines that non-Muslims can visit.

The mausoleum was constructed during the reign of Moulay Ismail and since his death has been a point of reverence and a visit to his final resting place is believed to bring baraka, a sort of divine blessing but again I’m not sure if this included anyone or is restricted to Muslims.  Moulay Ismail was responsible for driving out the Spanish and British from Morocco, uniting the country and the establishment of the Alaouite ruling dynasty. His strict observance of orthodox Islamic ritual has also conferred a kind of salutary healing power on him and many Muslims visit the shrine in the hope of receiving health, well-being and good luck.

Moulay Ismaïl was an interesting character and by all accounts a man of excesses.  It is said that he personally killed over twenty-five thousand men but to compensate for this he is alleged to have fathered eight hundred and eighty-nine children and this is generally considered the record number of offspring for any one man throughout history that can actually be verified. It is estimated that to father that number of children Ismaïl would have had to have sex several times every day for sixty years so that must have been a real chore!  When he wasn’t slaughtering or shagging he was building himself  his new capital city at Meknès which took twelve years as he dismantled the Badii Palace in Marrakech and removed the treasures and relocated them in his preferred location.

Being unexpectedly allowed into this place we walked through a series of courts and chambers decorated in bright yellow tiles and spiralling stuccowork. Behind the courts is the sanctuary that holds the remains of Moulay Ismail and his family members and after we had taken off our shoes at the door we were invited into the mausoleum but not the Mosque.

After the mausoleum visit we went next to the Heri es Souani, the site of Moulay Ismail’s stables. We paid the reasonable entrance fee and were allocated a guide.  He asked if we understood French or English, we told him English and he looked at us with a face that said ‘That’s a shame because I do this tour in French’ and he set off on his commentary to our appropriately blank faces.  He took us through a remarkable system of high-vaulted chambers with a series storerooms and granaries. In the time of Moulay Ismail, these were used to hold provisions in a case of a drought or a siege and behind these chambers were the stables for seven-thousand horses.  That’s an awful lot of horses and an awful lot of equine shit to shovel so there were living quarters over the top for the hundreds of grooms and labourers that would have been required to support an operation such as this.

At the completion of the tour the guide said goodbye but rather like a barnacle on a rock stayed close by, we set to walk off but then suddenly he seemed to remember that he could speak a bit of English after all, he coughed an attract attention sort of cough, held out his hand and asked if we had forgotten something.  We had of course and we rifled our pockets for some loose change to give the man his deserved tip.

That was the end of our visit to Meknes and in the late afternoon Abdul steered the taxi out of the city and quickly joined a toll motorway that was straight and quick and soon we were back in the suburbs of Fez.  There were a lot of police check points to negotiate and Abdul explained that they were speed cops who were collecting tax revenues, much the same as in the UK but here they don’t have sneaky cameras to do the dirty work!  The checks didn’t seem to apply to Abdul who seemed to know all the police officers personally and he waved to them and smiled as they inevitably beckoned him through the bollards.

It was a sort of rush-hour in Fez and Abdul joined the lines of undisciplined traffic as he bullied his way through traffic lights and junctions, impatiently blowing his horn or flashing his lights at anyone that he considered was holding him up, which was pretty much everyone else out on the road this Saturday night.

He returned us safely to the Riad and we had a rest and a beer and Micky ill advisedly went out for a walk where he was accosted by a youth who insisted on taking him to a restaurant recommendation and told him that he would meet us again later to escort us there.  It seems that this is an important part of the Moroccan economy which works on introductions, tips, bribery and corruption as we had discovered the day before on Hamid’s walking tour of the Souks.  Actually Hamid had already recommended this very restaurant and was legitimately entitled to the 10% commission if we dined there and we had already decided that was what we would do.

We left the Riad and walked into the streets and Mick’s new pal was thankfully nowhere to be seen but along the way we attracted the attention of another local boy who, sniffing the 10% for himself, insisted that he was taking us to the restaurant that we were already going to anyway.  He was a nuisance and a pest and it could have become unpleasant because when Kim explained this to him and told him to go away he became indignant and threatening and told us not to tell him to go away when he was in his own country and we were only visitors.

It turned out to be a nice restaurant but the boy dropped by to say that he had brought us there and then Micky’s pal turned up claiming the same thing and suddenly there were three people after the 10%.  We explained to the restaurant staff that Hamid had made the recommendation and he should have the commission but Micky went outside to see the boys and although he didn’t own up to this I suspect he gave them a few dirhams just to go away.

 The meal was excellent and we enjoyed three courses of traditional food and to our amazement Sue demonstrated that the lunchtime plate clearing surprise was not a one-off phenomenon and she ate everything again and declared it delicious.  I began to worry that one of my favourite materials for my journals – Sue’s fussy eating – might be in jeopardy here in Morocco!  As we finished the meal and the wine there was some entertainment as the waiters joined a couple of traditional musicians in an impromptu singing and dancing routine which was excellent and we joined in and enjoyed it.

On the short walk back to the Riad, Micky’s pestering pal appeared out of the shadows of a doorway and complained that he had been cheated out of his commission by Abdul and he had made no money tonight.  We might have guessed that Abdul would be involved somewhere in this.  He accompanied us all the way back assuring us that he would keep us safe in a dangerous neighbourhood but we didn’t feel at all threatened so we ignored him and back at the Riad we rang the bell and when we were inside the heavy door was closed in his face and we certainly didn’t give him the tip he was hankering for.

Morocco, The Souks of Meknes

The journey from Moulay Idriss to the UNESCO World Heritage city Meknes took about thirty minutes and when we arrived in the city Abdul stopped first at a lay-by on the edge of the city with a panorama of the city.  The word panaroma makes it sound picturesque or interesting but I have to say that from here it didn’t look terribly exciting at all, just very similar to Fez with a jumble of off-white concrete box. buildings and a forest of satellite dishes and TV aerials.

Fortunately we didn’t stay long and Abdul drove us into the centre of the city and took us directly to the central square of the Medina, which, although much smaller reminded me straight away of Marrakech.  Abdul parked the taxi right outside the gates of the Royal Palace and I was concerned about that, but I needn’t have been because Abdul seemed to know a lot of people, probably even the guards and there was no problem.  He certainly knew the owner of the restaurant the ‘Terrasses Pavillion des Idrissides’ and before we knew very much about it we had been led to a terrace table overlooking the square by a couple of eager waiters.

Mindful of yesterday’s expensive lunch we examined the menu carefully before making our selections and then we enjoyed a simple meal at a far more agreeable price and it must have been good because Sue, who is a notoriously fussy eater, finished everything on her plate.

The main square was moderately busy but didn’t feel crowded and we walked past the snake charmers and the men with Barbary Apes all trying to sell photographs, fortune tellers and soothsayers and my favourite the tooth puller who would have provided dental surgery at a fraction of the cost of the National Health Service if we had been brave enough to allow him.  There were rows of market stalls selling fresh and dried fruits and others competing to sell a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and all around the square were cafés and restaurants with high level balconies where people were sitting and just enjoying the random entertainment.

A bit like Al Stewart in the ‘Year of the Cat’ we slipped into the souk and walked past carpet shops, elaborate lampshade shops, slipper shops, silver and pottery shops, shops selling leather, silks, ceramics, spices and pastries and our senses were under constant assault from the colourful sights, the rich aromas and the constant chatter and noise of the traders.  Occasionally a donkey and cart would send people scattering as new supplies were delivered and the shop owners were probably glad of this because the only place to go to get out of the way was inside the shop doorways where someone was waiting to pounce.

Threading our way through the heaving twisting lanes we elbowed our way through the crowds and nodded politely as we rejected invitations from all sides, trying all the time not to make eye contact and declining inducement to go inside the shops and look all the time trying hard to remember the way that we had walked so that we could get out again without getting lost.  We seemed to be the only tourists here so we weren’t too adventurous and soon we were back on the sunny street which led to another souk, this time the food market which, maybe because it was Saturday, was extremely busy.

There was large butchery section here and there was a smell of blood, offal and sawdust.  Whole goats hung from metal hooks, there were bull’s heads in various stages of being dismembered and sheep’s heads carelessly discarded and lying on the floor for anyone who wasn’t paying attention to trip over.  Along one of the internal lanes there were cages and cages of live chickens just waiting to be selected, purchased and killed.  The process was swift but brutal – the selection made and the price paid the butcher deftly cut the bird’s throat and shoved it unceremoniously into a plastic bucket, head first so that the blood would drain away.  The poor thing struggled for a short while but when it was dead and drained it was dunked first in boiling water and then freezing water and then plucked on a primitive but effective plucking machine.  Micky, a butcher himself, and Kim stopped to watch the macabre process but Christine, an animal lover, and Sue, a bit squeamish, walked on without stopping.  I went with Sue and Christine.

As we turned a corner there were herbalist shops with spices arranged in colourful pyramids and baskets of dried flower heads and quack remedies.  Kim went inside to look at the jars of colourful potions and perfumes and to enquire about the spices and the prices each time making a promise to return later.  I imagine that this is a promise that shopkeepers in Meknes hear hundreds of times every day and probably don’t take them too seriously but after a few minutes we did return to one of them and this probably took the owner by surprise.  We bought a few bags of spices and I began to worry about taking these little multi-coloured bags of suspicious looking powder through customs especially bearing in mind that Morocco has a reputation of being a big producer of illegal drugs.

Our heads full of the sights and sounds of the busy souk we pushed our way out through a main entrance and made our way again across the main square which was beginning to fill up and I imagined that it was going to be a big night in Meknes tonight.  We wouldn’t see this of course because now we had to find Abdul who had promised to take us to see the other important sites in the city.  We found him chatting to the restaurant owner – presumably negotiating his commission!

Morocco, Volubilis and Moulay Idriss

At the entrance to the site we paid the reasonable entry fee and then negotiated with a local guide who offered to give us a guided tour and a history of the city and when we were all satisfied with the price we set off along a dusty path towards the excavations and Hamid began his commentary

Volubilis was the Roman capital of the Province of Mauritania and was founded in the third century B.C., it became an important outpost of the Roman Empire and was graced with many fine buildings.  Extensive remains of these survive in the archaeological site, located in the middle of this fertile agricultural area.  The city continued to be occupied long after the Romans had gone and at some point converted to Islam and Volubilis was later briefly to become the capital of Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty, who is buried at nearby Moulay Idris.   It is now of course a UNESCO World Heritage Site, admitted to the list in 1997.

Volubilis was an important and versatile place, a garrison town which protected the far south western boundary of the Empire, an agricultural bread basket producing important crops like wheat and olives in the fertile valley to be transported across the Empire via Tangier to the North on the Mediterranean Sea and a city of rich noblemen who built themselves fine villas and a beautiful city in an enviable location.  Much better I imagine to be posted here than to the northern extremes of the Empire at Hadrian’s Wall.

Volubilis, it turns out, is the most important ancient archeological site in Morocco and Hassan took us into the old streets running north to south and through the foundations and walls of the houses that flanked them.  In many of them there were fine mosaics and I thought it a little surprising to find them here exposed to the elements and not having been removed to a museum nearby.  The houses were huge and with a bit of imagination it was almost possible to imagine what this place may have been like two thousand years ago.  It was interesting to walk around the old streets, wander through the corridors of the houses, along the main street of shops and imagine that in this very place there were soldiers marching, old Latin plays being performed in the theater, emperor worshippers in the temples, magistrates swaggering around importantly in togas, and slaves to do all of the dirty work.

 

 

After walking along the main street lined by the remains of grand columns and arches we arrived at the centre piece of the city, the triumphal arch which has been carefully pieced back together by French archeologists nearly a hundred years ago.  Next to the arch was the Forum, the centre of political life in the city and adjacent to that the ancient Basilica where the citizens came to worship their gods.

Hamid concluded the tour with an explanation of Roman life in this area and tried to speculate why the Romans suddenly abandoned Morocco but like many historians who have wrestled with this question before him could provide no answers.  He walked us back to the car park where Abdul was waiting and we paid the agreed fee and added a tip to thank him for an excellent tour.

Next we were due to drive to Moulay Idriss which nestled in the folds of the mountain and was gleaming white in the sunshine.  Abdul took us along a high level road so that we could get some pictures but we were unsure about this because the heavy rain last night had turned the road to mud and the sides of the mountain had been washed down over the asphalt.  It didn’t seem safe especially when he parked on a precipitous ledge and invited us out to get our photographs.

The problem with stopping we discovered was that it was inevitable that someone would quickly appear trying to sell us something. Uusually this was necklaces and jewellery but sometimes fossils, that were almost certainly fakes, and fascinating round chunks of coal with iron Pyrite crystals which they claimed were completely natural and collected from the mountains but in reality are manufactured in a workshop using a simple crystal solution.  Abdul kept an eye on things and although he allowed them to approach us he stepped in if their sales technique became too robust.

We were glad to leave the precarious hillside and back in the vehicle Abdul drove us into the city which has only one main road running through it and a web of alleyways disappearing into the maze behind it.  Today was flea market day and the road was crammed with people picking over the merchandise on the stalls including a lot of second hand clothing which looked as though it had found its way here via the weekly recycling collections back in the UK.  Abdul nosed his way through the crowds of people who were not especially inclined to give way and clearly thought they had priority to be there.

We didn’t stop in Moulay Idriss and although no one explained why I believe it is because non Muslims are not especially welcome in this pilgrimage city and certainly we saw no European travellers or tourists as we inched our way along the street and out the other side.  I sensed that even Abdul wasn’t too comfortable to be there with a car full of camera pointing Christian infidels and once through the crowds he quickly returned to the main road and pointed the taxi in the direction of Meknes to the south.

____________________________________

Related Articles:

Spartacus the Gladiator

Rome

The Roman City of Pompeii

The Roman City of Herculaneum

The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Aqueduct of Segovia

The Roman Buildings at Mérida

The Roman Ruins at Segóbriga

Diocletian’s Palace at Split

The Roman Buildings at Arles

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Morocco, Three Cities and a Day of Sightseeing

Considering the amount of rain that had fallen the previous evening and all through the night I wasn’t terribly optimistic when I woke next morning and went to check the weather as a basis for some important decision making about the day ahead but unexpectedly there had been a complete transformation and the sky was big and blue and the sun was shining again as I surveyed the view from the sun terrace at the top of the Riad.

I was glad about that and flushed with relief reported the good news to the others because we had arranged a trip out of Fez today which would take us to the Roman city of Volubilis, the Muslim Holy City of Moulay Idriss and the Royal City of Meknes.  Abdul was due to collect us at ten o’clock so with the weather looking good there was no need for any hasty rearrangements to the itinerary.  We were all up early so we had a leisurely breakfast and took our time over the excellent food before he arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule.

We left the city by the same gate as the previous day and headed west on the main highway towards Rabat competing for tarmac space with trucks, cars and donkeys and curious three wheeled pick-up trucks which wobbled dangerously about and hogged the middle of the road making it difficult to pass.  I suspect they didn’t do this to be difficult but out of necessity because they didn’t look terribly stable and quite unsuitable for driving too close to the verges on both sides of the road.   Soon we were leaving the urban area behind as we passed through suburbs and villages separated by plots of useless scrub land but then we took a turning north and soon entered the countryside.

The fields here were surprisingly green and fertile and we passed through olive groves being tended by men living in makeshift tents at the side of the road and then the alarmingly inconsistent road surface took us deep into the agricultural farmland where the colours of russet, cream and gold reminded me of the plains of La Mancha.  We passed shepherds tending their sheep and men on the high sides of the hills ploughing with donkeys but this traditional way of life appeared somewhat peripheral as the main fields in the lush valley had all the signs of modern commercial agriculture even though some of the tractors looked as though they really belonged in a museum.

Eventually the road started to twist and turn and we started to climb into the mountains of Zerhoun which reared up to our left overlooking the flat valley to our right and after forty kilometres or so we came in sight of a blue lake shimmering in the sunlight and reflecting the shadows of the clouds as they swept across the sky.  This was the Nzala el Oudaïa  and there was a perfect viewing place and Abdul stopped the taxi in a lay-by next to a handful of fruit stalls with owners selling local produce who seemed surprisingly uninterested in doing any business with us.

After a short break we carried on and the road continued to twist and turn as we passed shabby run-down roadside houses each with a recent harvest of olives outside the front door and then through the untidy town of Ouled Youssef which looked an unfriendly and unwelcoming sort of place where the quality of highway engineering came to a sudden and dramatic stop and we were glad that Abdul didn’t stop there.

I was completely disorientated now as the road threaded its way through the mountain passes heading in different directions with every hairpin bend.  The reason for this was that we were circumnavigating the mountain and eventually we reached the northern slopes and the road turned south and straightened with the mountain now to our left and the agricultural farm land to our right and to the west.

As we drove cloud began to increase, above us was a flotilla of white sails skipping across the sky as though taking part in a regatta but in the distance to the south there was a fleet of steel grey battleships and we were driving straight towards them and none of us had thought to bring our umbrellas.

Eventually we saw signs for the excavations of Volubilis and Abdul left the highway and followed a track towards the Roman City.  I’m not sure what I was really expecting but this took me by surprise rather like the moment we came across the Roman ruins of Segobriga in Spain in 2009 for even from the road it was clear that this place was much bigger than I was expecting. Luckily we hadn’t driven quite into the clouds so the weather remained perfect and the sky a reassuring blue and with the sun dodging between the clouds it was blissfully warm when we climbed out of the taxi to visit the ruins and the excavations.