Rissani

Rissani lies in the Tafilalet in Errachidia province, Draa-Tafilalet region.¹ The urban municipality is now named Moulay Ali Cherif² and had 22,082 inhabitants in 2024.³

The town goes back to Sijilmassa. The city was founded in 757 or 758; its Berber name means roughly “place that lies above the waters”, and indeed its main part stood on a natural rise by the Ziz, outside the flood zone. The present irrigation network with its thirteen diversion weirs still largely follows the old one.⁴

For centuries Sijilmassa was where the caravans trading with the Sahel empires of Ghana and Mali set out and arrived.⁵ Gold from the south was redistributed here, and under the Almoravids the Sijilmassa mint was the most important in their empire.⁶

In 790 the city was given a wall and a Great Mosque. Almoravids, Almohads and Marinids continued to build; the Marinids rebuilt the Great Mosque with a minaret of fired brick. From the late 14th century the population spread out into ksour across the oasis, among them the Ksar Rissani, which was absorbed into the present town; in the 15th century urban life in Sijilmassa declined. In 1537 the Saadians took the city and had the mosque restored around 1548; in 1784 Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah renewed its roof.⁷

Since 23 November 2017 Sijilmassa has been on the national list of monuments, and the Ministry of Culture is planning a centre to protect and present the site.⁸ In 2024 and 2025 the national institute of archaeology (INSAP) uncovered a mosque of 2,620 square metres whose earliest phase goes back to the late 8th or early 9th century. Nearby were found a mould for casting gold coin blanks, with traces of gold, and a residential quarter from the Alaouite period with twelve courtyard houses from the 17th and 18th centuries.⁹

Sijilmassa is regarded as the cradle of the Alaouite dynasty, which reigns today.¹⁰ On the southern edge of Rissani lies the mausoleum of Moulay Ali Cherif; the town's souk is busiest on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.¹¹

The oases of the Tafilalet have been protected as a Ramsar site since 2005, covering 15,300 hectares of oases, small rivers, irrigation channels, marshes and the reservoir of the Hassan Addakhil dam; the area is part of a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and farming and sheep rearing shape the economy.¹² The Draa-Tafilalet region produces 76 per cent of Morocco's dates; 160,000 tonnes were expected nationwide for 2025/26.¹³ The nearby town of Erfoud hosts the international date fair SIDATTES.¹⁴