Things rarely go according to plan and the next stage of the trip was one of those times. The trip from the hotel to Fez railway station all went well, but then went rapidly downhill when we were met by railway officials outside the station saying ‘Il n’y a pas de trains aujourd’hui ….‘. It seems that the torrential rain overnight had flooded the tracks and meant that nothing was running ….. Plan B …. We managed to switch the tickets (at no cost) to ones for the identical train the next day (the UK could really learn something from how easily they managed this!) and then booked an IBIS hotel room, right next door to the station, for the night. A quiet day ensued, though we did make it as far as the local shopping centre!
The next morning it was as if nothing had happened – all back to normal again. This trip was a long one – over seven hours – so we finally arrived in the hotel in Marrakesh around 5.30pm. The hotel had booked a taxi for us, but the taxis can rarely get anywhere near the medina, so the taxi then also books a porter with a trolley. The taxi then drops you close to the medina and the porter does the rest on foot. This is quite a challenge – particularly in Marrakesh – as the alleyways are very narrow and throng with people. More alarmingly, given the sea of people, is the mopeds hurtling through the alleyways, so it sometimes felt like you were taking your life in your hands going for stroll through the medina.
We now only had one day in Marrakesh. We had managed to cancel the walking tour we had booked, so we started the day with a walk down to Café Clock. There we had booked a calligraphy workshop. The master calligrapher taking it spoke only Arabic, so one of the café staff translated for us.
It was a fascinating morning. He took us through the history of the various styles of calligraphy. It seems that it started with a script called Kufic. This was originally used scribing on stone (and sometimes metal). The name comes about because it was first developed in the city of Kufa, modern-day Iraq. It is one of the oldest scripts used in Arabic and Islamic calligraphy, though has not been static and has gone through various changes in an attempt to perfect it. Various other styles then developed over time, many of them regional; Naskh, Thuluth, Nasta’liq and Diwani (this came about in the Ottoman period and so is more associated with Turkey).
This was far beyond us though and we started just doing dots. The pens were a piece of bamboo and are known as qalam. The nib was created by sharpening the bamboo with that well know traditional Islamic tool – the Stanley knife. The ink we used was made by the Master Calligrapher who makes all his own inks and papers. The purpose of the dots we did were to add to some letters but particularly to give the size of each element or section of the letter, though some letters have dots added as well. In total there are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet – we learnt how to do two. We did then learn how to do our names and he did a present for us of two names.
After the workshop we went for a wander around town. We started with a walk down to the Saadian tombs, but they were closed for lunch – who knew tombs closed for lunch. So, instead, we wandered over to have a look at the Koutoubia mosque tower and then on to the El Bahia Palace. This is a mid to late 19th-century palace begun by Si Musa, grand vizier under the Alawi sultan Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman, in the 1860s. His son Si Ba Ahmed ibn Musa, grand vizier of Sultan Moulay Abdelaziz, then built it up further between 1894 and 1900. It is made up of around 150 rooms mostly arranged around riads.
A riad is is a type of garden courtyard usually associated with house and palace architecture in the Maghreb and al-Andalus. It is normally a rectangular garden divided into four quadrants by two paved paths which intersect in the middle and this focal point will usually be marked by a fountain or something similar. The hotels in Fez and Marrakech were both called Riad …. as they followed this architectural style.
The El Bahia Palace was notable particularly for its its painted wood ceilings, along with sculpted stucco and zellij tilework – all incredibly intricate and detailed.
From the Bahia Palace we head back to our own Riad for a short break in the sun (we at last have some sun – albeit not for very long!) and then on to the Secret Garden. This is a palace dating from the second half of the 16th century when the Saadian Sultan Abd-Allah decided to build a monumental complex in the Mouassine area of town. This included a mosque, fountain, library, hammam and various other buildings including the Riad where the garden now stands. However, much of this was then destroyed in the late 17th century but with a renaissance in the middle of the 19th century, it started to come return to its former glory. Since then its prominence has ebbed and flowed until it fell into a state of disrepair. It wasn’t until 2013 that it was restored as Le Jardin Secret. Elements of the hammam and riad are still visible, but it is now best known as a garden with two elements – the Islamic Garden and the Exotic Garden. The irrigation system merited a whole presentation on its own with complex plumbing (probably far better than its modern counterparts!) drawing the water from the Atlas Mountains and all around the various ponds and fountains in the gardens.
The final stop for the day was the Mouassine Museum. This is a 16th century house which has now opened as a museum of music. We had already booked tickets for the soiree, so got there early to have a look round the museum first. The rooms were split according to the type of instrument and the people who used them. So we learnt about idiophones (sound produced by vibration), membranophones (sound produced by vibrations of a stretched membrane), chordophones (sound produced by vibration of a string) and aerophones (sound produced by vibration of air). This was all followed by an excellent concert with two people – one playing an oud (chordophone) and one playing a drum (membranophone). Halfway through they switched – a very entertaining evening.