24 hours in Meknes

For those of us who live in Ifrane, Meknes too often is nothing more than a place we go to get things done – to buy groceries, to go to the doctor, to go to the train station, etc. T and I realized recently that, while we had been to Meknes dozens of times, we had never really "done" Meknes. This realization coincided with a rather lazy desire to get out of Ifrane without actually, you know, going anywhere.

The perfect solution, we realized, was to spend a night in Meknes, specifically in the medina.


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Meknes is known – at least according to the people I've talked to – for just a few things. It seems to be most known for being near Volubilis, for being near many (if not most) of Morocco's vineyards, and for not being Fez (which I've written about previously, including here and here). But the city does have an interesting history that is inextricably tied to Moulay Ismail. He was Sultan from 1672 to 1727, and like many "great" leaders', his legacy seems to be a complex one. As the Rough Guide to Morocco puts it, "Ismail's achievements were matched by his tyrannies." Under his rule, Morocco was united (in a way) "for the first time in five centuries" (Rough Guide again). He was responsible for a great deal of construction throughout the country, particularly in Meknes, which was his beloved capital city. Although Moulay Ismail was reportedly responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people, there is a mausoleum dedicated to him in Meknes, and the Rough Guide reports that it is still common for people to go there seeking blessings.

We were able to easily walk to the (admittedly few) sights from our riad in the medina. We spent a little time in the Musée Dar Jamaï, and it was worth the 20 dirhams just to wander around the huge riad that houses the museum's cultural artifacts. We also took a little time to enjoy the spectacle of Place Lahdim, which you might think of as Meknes's own miniature and endearing version of Marrakesh's Djemaa el Fna. (I will say I steered clear of the snake charmers after reading in Lonely Planet that they sew the snakes' mouths shut, causing a great deal of pain and early death for the snakes.)

We also took the time (and spent another 20 dirhams) to visit the place known as the Prison of Christian Slaves. The Rough Guide describes this as a "vast series of subterranean vaults." Due to their vastness and darkness, the vaults are difficult to portray in pictures.

This is a picture of the ground above the vaults, which I took to try to give you a sense of how large the underground space is.

This is one of the light and ventilation holes seen from above…

… and this is one seen from below, in the vaults.

Part of me was disappointed – and another part relieved – that electric lights supplemented the natural lighting of the vaults.

Does seeing this red door make you want to paint it black?

 While I read in the Rough Guide – and have been told by other people – that these vaults were probably for storage of food or other nonhuman stuff rather than for storage of Christian slaves, T and I both agreed it was quite easy to imagine the space being used as a prison.

We spent the rest of our time in Meknes doing the usual things – eating meals, wandering around searching for acceptable places at which to eat our meals, walking around the medina, etc. I'll admit I didn't find Meknes to be particularly photogenic, and I only feel a little bad about that because this could have been a good opportunity for me to share pictures of a typical medina and its people.

One thing I was thinking about as we walked through the medina, particularly on Saturday evening before dinner, was the difficulty of explaining Moroccan shopping to people who are used to grocery stores and Walmarts. Here is the best explanation I came up with: first, imagine all of the stuff sold at a typical Super Walmart (all the stuff, including everything in the pharmacy, grocery section, etc.) combined with all of the stuff sold in a small  town's worth of garage sales. Imagine all of this stuff taken outside and divided amongst dozens of individual vendors. Imagine that some of it is divided by category (such as shoes), and some of it is divided randomly. Some vendors set up their wares on little carts, and others are laying things out on newspaper or plastic on the ground along the street. Now fill this space with a huge crowd, maybe the kind of crowd you might see at a Walmart the morning after Thanksgiving day, or the kind of crowd that could become a mosh pit (remember those?).

That's sort of what it's like.

I should also mention that spending the night in a medina is an interesting experience in itself. We found a riad on a peaceful and quiet street. Any time you call a location in the medina "quiet," however, you must discount the noise created by the call to prayer, which occurs several times a day.

Generally, I find the call to prayer to be quite beautiful, and hearing it makes me feel like I'm really in Morocco. However, because there are so many mosques so close to each other in most medinas, the early morning prayer (which this morning occurred at about 5 a.m.) always, always wakes me up. And the muezzin at the mosque nearest our riad seemed especially devoted to his role. I generally commend devotion, but in his case, and at 5 a.m., devotion manifested itself in what I thought of at the time (i.e. 5 a.m.) as a needlessly drawn out call to prayer preceded by a ridiculously drawn out song.

Yes, at the time I was a bit annoyed, but even now, only 12 hours later, it is fading into a fond memory.

Our verdict on Meknes? While I had a few of my (apparently inevitable) get-me-out-of-this-bleeping-country moments, by the time we were waiting for our grand taxi back to Ifrane around noon today, I was feeling good about my short weekend away. It was a beautiful day in Meknes – quite a bit warmer than Ifrane – and for the most part people had been friendly and welcoming. Twenty four hours felt like just the right amount of time to spend exploring the Meknes medina. I had a nice time away but was ready to come home. That always feels just right.