Since Idris I (743-791) did not have the time to complete the foundation of the city of Fes, which began in the area of the current Andalusian quarter in 789, two years before being assassinated on the orders of the Abbasids of Baghdad, it was his son Idris II (791-828) who completed this foundation a few years later. Idris II is considered the first monarch of the city.
The city was then divided into two cores on opposite banks of the Fes River (Oued Fes): the Andalusian quarter (with its mosque) and the Kairouanese quarter (with the Al-Quaraouiine mosque).
It would only be unified nearly three centuries later by the Almoravids.
Nicknamed “The Florence of Africa” and the first site in Morocco to be classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site (1981), Fes is the mother city of the Kingdom of Morocco and one of the most prestigious cities of Islam. It has preserved its medieval structures and its high walls, pierced with holes to allow humidity to escape during heavy rains.
The heart of the city, completed by the Idrisids in the 9th century, has remained subdivided into the two historical quarters: the Andalusian to the East and the Kairouanese to the West. The two quarters were united behind a single enclosure in the 11th century by the Almoravid Sultan Youssef Ben Tachfine.
Today, the medina is entirely pedestrian. It comprises about 10,000 streets, generally very narrow, which are, for practical reasons, car-free and sometimes even motorcycle-free due to the frequent stairs. Cycling is also difficult for the same reasons. Donkeys and horses therefore take over, just as they did at the time of its foundation…
The medina is a labyrinth of nearly a thousand dead ends and is undoubtedly the largest, oldest, and most authentic of the Medinas in Morocco and North Africa. With Baghdad and Damascus partially destroyed, Fes remains the only one of the great mythical cities of the Arab world to have remained virtually intact for 12 centuries.
As early as the 13th century, when few cities in Africa could boast such scale, there were no fewer than 120,000 houses and 176 mosques…
“Fes el-Bali” is not only the most prestigious of the ancient capitals of the kingdom but remains, in the minds of all Moroccans, their spiritual, intellectual, and cultural capital, toward which so many merchants, soldiers, travelers, pilgrims, scholars, mystics, exiles, and refugees have flocked for centuries!
