Meknes

Meknes lies on the Saïss plain between the Middle Atlas and the Zerhoun massif.¹ In the 2024 census the municipality had 551,503 inhabitants and the prefecture of Meknes 942,945.² In the national overview of the Haut-Commissariat au Plan the city appears with around 562,000 inhabitants.³

The Almoravids founded Meknes in 1061 as a fortified base; the name goes back to the Berber tribe of the Meknassa.⁴ According to the ICOMOS evaluation the settlement was at first called Tagrart, “garrison”, and grew up around the Nejjarine Mosque, where markets for weapons, woodwork and metalwork developed. Under the Almohads the city was enlarged; an inscription records the extension of the Great Mosque under Muhammad an-Nasir (1199–1213), and water from the Tagma spring supplied fountains, baths and mosques.⁵

The Marinids (1269–1374) brought the suburbs within the city. Sultan Abu Yusuf (1269–1286) had a kasbah built outside the old town, of which only the mosque survives, as well as the first of the three madrasas that Meknes received under the Marinids.⁶

Moulay Ismail made Meknes his capital and had a royal city laid out in the Hispano-Moorish style; it is regarded as the first great building project of the Alaouite dynasty.⁷ According to Archnet this kasbah is more than four times the size of the medina. Three concentric rings of walls enclose it, the outer one 9 to 12 metres high, and within lay the palaces of Dar al-Kebira, Dar al-Madrasa and Ksar al-Mhanncha.⁸ UNESCO gives heights of up to 15 metres for the city walls.⁹

The royal city included stables, extensive granaries and water basins.¹⁰ The Sahrij Souani basin measures 148.75 by 319 metres and is at most 1.20 metres deep; it was originally filled by ten water wheels in the neighbouring building.¹¹ A large Andalusian garden between the palaces was irrigated from the Agdal basin.¹²

The main entrance to the royal city was Bab Mansour on el-Hedim square. Moulay Ismail commissioned the gate, and it was completed in 1732 under his son Moulay Abdallah.¹³ The brick structure is almost 30 metres wide; a horseshoe arch with a span of about 6.5 metres is flanked by two square bastions with marble columns, and decorative panels in green and white cover the façade.¹⁴

The mausoleum of Moulay Ismail lies south of the Dar al-Kebira palace area, on the site of the tomb of a local saint, Sidi Abd al-Rahman al-Majdhub. Archnet dates the building to 1703; Moulay Ismail's son Ahmad ad-Dhahabi had it altered.¹⁵ Three connected burial chambers follow the model of the Saadian Tombs in Marrakesh; the central one, with twelve columns, holds the sultan's tomb, and green-glazed pyramidal roofs cover all three.¹⁶

UNESCO inscribed the Historic City of Meknes on the World Heritage List in 1996 under criterion iv. According to its description, behind the walls with their nine monumental gates stand 25 mosques, ten hammams, palaces, granaries, remains of fondouks and houses from the Almoravid, Marinid and Alaouite periods.¹⁷ Individual buildings have been protected as monuments since 1913, and since a vizierial order of 1922 building projects in the old town have required a permit.¹⁸

Dar Jamaï is a town palace from 1882 that belonged to Mohamed Ben Larbi Jamaï, grand vizier to Sultan Moulay Hassan I; in 1920 it was listed as a monument and set up as a museum. After several years of restoration the Fondation nationale des musées opened the house on 23 March 2022 as the first national museum of music, with more than a hundred instruments from Amazigh, Andalusian, Judeo-Moroccan, Hassani and popular traditions.¹⁹

Volubilis, at the foot of Jbel Zerhoun, belongs to the prefecture of Meknes: founded in the 3rd century BC as a Mauretanian capital, it later became an outpost of the Roman Empire and briefly the capital of Idris I. The 42-hectare archaeological site has been a World Heritage site since 1997, and the neighbouring town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun holds the tomb of the dynasty's founder.²⁰ Since 2006 Meknes has hosted the SIAM agricultural fair, whose 19th edition is scheduled for 19 to 27 April 2027²¹; on the A2 motorway the city has the Meknès-Ouest and Meknès-Est junctions.²²