Tanneries and Tiles: Touring Fes’ Traditional Past and Present

By Annie Jones

We started the day with a delicious breakfast in the hotel that I slept through. Our classroom for our morning briefing with Professor Rabinovitch was a rooftop terrace with a 360-degree view of the city and the Atlas Mountains. With this backdrop, Professor Rabinovitch tracked how Fes changed as dynasties came and went, and how the relationship between Muslims and Jews in the city evolved. Like in all relationships, there were oscillations of peace and conflict. A theme throughout the course has been that non-religious factors influence the treatment of religious minorities—as Jews amassed more political and economic power when Fes was the administrative center of Morocco, poorer Muslims persecuted Jews as a form of rebellion against the government in the 15th century.

After class, we hopped on the bus, which we’ve become very well acquainted with over the past few days. Our local guide, Said, directed us to the king’s palace in Fes, where we learned about the King’s political role in Morocco and some architectural history. The palace, covered in colorful zelige tile, featured angular geometric patterns inherited from Moorish design.

Next, we walked to the old Jewish quarter, or mellah, to learn more about how Jews and Christians first came to Morocco. Judaism was the first monotheistic religion to reach Morocco after Jews fled the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Roman rule introduced Christianity to Morocco in the 40s CE, but it was seen as the religion of an oppressor and was not widely adopted. Finally, in the 680s CE, Arab invaders introduced Islam to the indigenous Amazigh people.

After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews left Morocco. The mellah in Fes is no longer a Jewish neighborhood due to mass emigration of Jews throughout the 20th century. The neighborhood used to be semi-self-governing, with locally appointed rabbis presiding over religious law. Now, the decaying buildings are only inhabited by poorer Muslims and Amazigh peoples, Said said.

As we walked through the neighborhood, Said again called us back to the Andalusian influence: houses in the mellah have balconies over the street, which were introduced by Spanish Jews fleeing the inquisition. Historically, Muslim neighborhoods never have balconies, he said, because it wouldn’t have been appropriate for women to be seen in the public sphere of the street while they were in the private space of their home. We’ve found similar cultural relics that represent past inhabitants across Morocco, such as jewelry stores in the space where Jewish silversmiths once worked or Roman ruins on the edges of cities.

It was particularly interesting to see empty slots carved into doorways that once held mezuzahs, which are tiny scrolls with excerpts from the Torah. On those same doorways are now decorative wooden pieces with five knobs representing the five pillars of Islam. Should we see this as evidence of one religious population supplanting another that had little choice but to flee their homeland, or as a symbol of mixed Moroccan heritage that Moroccans continue to honor, even after Jews left willingly to what they felt was their real homeland? It’s a question we’ve been grappling with in different iterations since we arrived.

After our walking tour, Said joined us on the bus for a trip to the top of a hill. On the way, he gave us some more history of the city while I was playing with a balloon left over from a classmate’s birthday. I learned that the old section of Fes is the largest car-free city zone in the world. If you’re frustrated with the traffic in Boston, maybe stop by the Old Medina here (a downside is that emergency services struggle to quickly carry all of their equipment into the medina; Said told us that they sometimes have to use donkeys).

We made it to the top for another view of the city, where Said pointed out important buildings and Professor Rabinovitch made us all freeze so he could take a panorama. A little girl blew us a kiss as we walked back to the bus.

We also stopped at a cooperative producing ceramics, we learned about traditional zelige tile, which artisans hand-make by breaking tile into tiny, precise geometric shapes with sharp hammers. We’ve been learning about different industries in Morocco to help us understand how Moroccans perceive and promote their own culture, such as what symbols artisans choose to feature and why specific traditional industries have survived.

We’ve learned that many industries are proud of the mixed religious and ethnic heritages that influenced their art, and that was certainly true for the cooperative. We saw dishes in the shape of the Hand of Fatima, menorahs, and plates covered in Amazigh symbols.

Later, we walked through a new section of the medina and enjoyed Said’s commentary on the shops—as an example, we watched a man grind camel meat while Said explained that camel is less popular in cities, but that you shouldn’t have much trouble finding it in a burger. 

Besides food, I’ve noticed that medinas in each city we’ve visited are filled with touristy trinkets, and I’ll often see the exact same magnet or bag or keychain in dozens of stalls. Said said that the medina used to be full of artisans selling handmade goods, and he showed us the stall of the last woodworker on a street that used to be full of them. The woodworker is old and stubborn, he said, and soon the street will be like all the others named after a traditional craft that has disappeared from the medina.

After lunch was the activity I had most been looking forward to: a tour of a leather tannery. A football field‘s worth of vats held dyes and acids to treat raw leather, which was dazzling to see and not so pleasant to smell. We learned that the acids include cow urine and bird droppings for their natural acidity. Thankfully, an employee gave us mint to hold against our noses.

One cultural difference I might never get used to is bargaining. I have yet to see a price tag in Morocco; a vendor comes up with whatever price they think you’ll pay, and you negotiate from there. I once watched an episode of Pawnstars where two people bargained just by saying progressively closer numbers, and I remember thinking that they could have put a little more effort into the script. But at the tannery, that’s pretty much how the bargaining worked. An employee came up to me while I was holding a bag, put his arm around my shoulders, and threw numbers at me until I convinced him that I didn’t want to buy it. 

Back at the hotel, I took a much-needed nap before dinner. We ate lamb tagine at a family’s home while a drummer played gnawa music, a genre created by sub-Saharan Africans enslaved in Morocco. Said had told us that Moroccans were finally starting to talk about the history of slavery in their country, and hearing an evolution of slave music played for the entertainment of tourists reminded me of something Professor Lefkovitz has told us many times: the story of history continually changes, and we have to engage with a variety of narratives about the same history if we want to understand it.

If I had to pin down today’s theme, it might be the relationship between old and new Morocco. We saw many traditional crafting techniques that are still thriving, but they have become dependent on tourism and must compete with the cheaper imported goods sold in bulk the medina. We learned about the rich legacy of Fes’ Jewish population, but we couldn’t ignore the immense cultural loss from mass Jewish emigration in the 1950s. Our courses have been all about trying to understand how Morocco remembers its own history, and I’m excited to take what I’ve learned today with me through the rest of our travels.

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