| | Overview (Source: Frommers) |
Fes is the spiritual heart of Morocco and is the most ancient, and indeed the greatest, of the country's imperial cities. It's one of the undisputed highlights of any visit to Morocco. Within the walls of its medina, Fes el Bali (Old Fes), lies the world's largest intact medieval city. More than 9,500 narrow streets and dim alleyways wind endlessly up and down, around and around, crammed with people, music, noise, and smells. Whether arriving from within Morocco or elsewhere, nothing can prepare you for this assault on the senses. Fes means different things to different people. To some, it is a center of the decorative arts, world famous for its leather and metalwork and the skill of its master craftsmen, or maâlem. Others may see it as the home of the Kairouine Mosque, the second largest in North Africa and neighbor of the oldest university in the world. For others still, Fes conjures up an image of the quintessential fabled Arab city from a time when traveling merchants from the Middle East traded with nomads from the Sahara and Berbers from the mountains. It was in the year 786, 150 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, that one of his descendants set foot in Morocco. Idriss Ben Abdallah Ben Hassan Ben Ali was destined to become Moulay Idriss, patron saint of Morocco and founder of Fes. Blamed for a failed rebellion against the Arabian Abbaysids, he had fled Baghdad and come to el-Maghreb el-Aksa of the Muslim world. Idriss settled in the Roman ci
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