16 DAYS IN MOROCCO, Part 1: Guest Post by Tom and Susan Weisner

Chechaouen, "The Blue City", Morocco

Our friends Tom and Susan Weisner went on a 16 day tour of Morocco in June 2019 and have kindly agreed to share a few of their wonderful photos and memories of the trip. This is Part 1. Part 2 will post next week.

Our trip to Morocco was part of a group tour organized by Reed College, where Tom was a student in the 1960s. There were fifteen in our group, including Paul Silverstein, an anthropologist who teaches at Reed and who does fieldwork in Morocco. We had a great Moroccan guide too!

Rabat, Capital of Morocco

Palace near Rabat.

Morocco is a kingdom with some parliamentary government. This is the palace near Rabat. There are other palaces as well.

Rabat fort and inner city at night.

The tomb of Mohammad VI (former king) is in Rabat. Rabat has a huge market in old city walls with narrow streets.

Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco

Susan and Tom at the mosque in Casablanca.

King Hassan II built the second largest mosque in the world in Casablanca (Mecca is #1). It is marble, vast, on the Atlantic coast. Non-Muslims can only enter as part of an official tour.

Typical Moroccan dish.

A beautiful restaurant.

We enjoyed wonderful food! Tajines! (Tajine dishes are slow-cooked savory stews, typically made with sliced meat, poultry or fish together with vegetables or fruit.)

Synagogue

Hundreds of thousands of Jews once lived in Morocco, but most left during and after WWII, going to Israel, Europe and elsewhere. Morocco does not recognize Israel, but the Israeli passport is recognized since so many from the diaspora do sometimes return. We saw a number of museums and synagogues that are protected. Morocco is about the only Muslim Middle East country that has religious pluralism in the constitution.

Catholic church in Casablanca

There are thousands of black sub-Saharan African immigrants arriving in Morocco, trying to get to Europe. Many are Christian. This is a Catholic Church in Casablanca for them. A very rare sight.

Romans in Morocco: Volubilis, Ancient Roman City near Meknes

Roman ruin with mosaic floor.

The Romans, of course, settled all of North Africa including Morocco. We visited Volubilis near the city of Meknes, for example, an entire former Roman city with over 40K inhabitants.Volubilis is a World Heritage site.

Ancient Roman Empire included northern portions of Morocco.

Morocco is in the lower left corner of this map in red.

Tangiers

American National Historic Landmark in Tangiers.

A landmark to the American legation is inside the Medina, or interior market in Tangiers. It was the first American government office outside the US. It is also the site of a Paul Bowles museum.

View of Tangiers

Morocco gained independence from France in 1956 and Rabat became the new capital. replacing Tangiers as the capital city. You can see Tangiers city in white in the distance from our beautiful hotel on the Mediterranean. Spain is faintly visible on the far horizon just a few miles away across the Strait of Gibralter.

Chechaouen

Chefchaouen is a city in Morocco that's famous for its blue hue. While it was founded in 1471, it didn't get its distinctive color until 1492, when it received an influx of Jews escaping the Spanish inquisition, who brought a tradition of painting buildings blue.

Chechaouen, the Blue City, is between Tangiers and Meknes.  Beautiful! We saw many stalls and shops as we walked through the narrow alleys everywhere. Lunch and tea there.

Market stall in Chechaouen.

Purses, shoes and more!

Part 2 of 16 DAYS IN MOROCCO will post next week.

MOROCCO: Marrakech, Fes and Rabat, Guest Post by Kathryn Mohrman

Marrakech has a number of spice shops in the medina (the old quarter). These blue canisters were more elaborate than the enticements of most of the shops.

My friend, Kathryn Mohrman, is a professor at Arizona State University; she travels widely for her job as director of several projects with partner universities in China and Vietnam. She recently visited Morocco traveling to Marrakech, Fes, and Rabat and has graciously agreed to share some of her experiences. Kathryn is an avid and talented photographer and is exhibiting her photos during February and March 2013 in the Vault Gallery of the library of Arizona State University’s downtown campus in Phoenix. I have known Kathryn since we were students together at Grinnell College in Iowa. Here are her impressions of her trip.

All the old cities in Morocco that I visited were enclosed by tall thick walls, punctuated by gates at key intervals. This gate in Meknes, a former royal capital near Fes, is typical in scale and elaborate decoration.

The year 2012 was special because my job at Arizona State University took me to some interesting places.  One exciting adventure was my participation in the International Women’s Forum conference in Rabat, Morocco in May. I met fascinating women from all over the world and learned more about the Arab Spring, the theme of the conference. We also had a chance to go to the royal palace for a reception hosted by Princess Lalla Salma, wife of King Mohammed VI.

One evening I discovered a lantern vendor on Djemaa el-Fna. The candles twinkled through the perforations in the brass lanterns, making a lovely pattern of light and shadow on the pavement and the people passing by.

I took advantage of being in Morocco to visit Marrakech and Fes—stayed in the medina in each place and absorbed the sights and sounds and flavors of North Africa. The shops in the medina sold basic spices such as cinnamon or mint, but each shop had its own special blend of dozens of spices for mixing with fish or vegetables.  My strongest memory is sitting on the rooftop terrace of my inn and hearing the sunset call to prayer coming from all directions as each mosque broadcast the time to its neighborhood.  King Mohammed has responded to the Arab Spring protests with a series of reforms, including a new constitution, that move in the right direction, although not as far or as fast as some would like.

In the medina of Fes, groups of women and groups of men get together (separately) to chat about everything from the weather to the absurdities of the tourists. Many women of all ages wear headscarves, even though Morocco is more relaxed about religious practices than some other Muslim countries. A surprising number of both women and men also wear caftans, perhaps for comfort, perhaps to keep their western-style clothes clean underneath.

The center of old Marrakech is Djemaa el-Fna, a huge plaza filled with tea vendors, snake charmers, trinket vendors, traditional musicians and dancers. In the evening, mobile restaurants move in, many of them serving grilled skewers of meats and vegetables. I ate at the stalls with the largest numbers of local people. Cheap and delicious!

In the 1920s, artist Jacques Marjorelle created a modernist garden of sunny yellow, cobalt blue, and cool green, later purchased by Yves Saint Laurent. A city park today, the garden is an oasis of trees, flowers, and structures in a busy section of Marrakech.

Left:  Blue doorway in the garden created by Jacques Marjorelle.