The Andalusian Gardens and the Jewellery Museum

The Oudaya was one of Moulay Ismael's smaller palaces.(He who built at Meknes to rival Versailles.) He subdued the pirate Republic in Sale and took over the Rabat Kasbah to keep them subdued. It was garrisoned by Sahari warriors who accepted military service in lieu of paying taxes. 
There is a nice garden courtyard, replanted by the French as the "Andalusian Gardens" and the palace itself is now a jewellery museum. This is a little confusing as there are a lot of non-jewellery items in various books labelled as belonging to the  "Oudaya Museum Rabat" which were presumably there in a previous incarnation. They now appear to be physically in the Archaeological Museum although they are still labelled as belonging to the Oudaya. 
The Archaeological Museum itself is probably the best 80p you'll spend to visit a museum anywhere. It is very small but has some outstanding Bronzes and some greek-style stone carvings from the roman period to say nothing of a couple of neolithic skeletons. Sadly they do not allow you to take pictures. 

The Semaphore Station

 Once through the gate narrow attractive streets with blue paint reminiscent of Greece lead you down to the 17C platforme built as a semaphore station.

 It has panoramic views over the estuary and across to Sale on the north bank of the Bouregreg.

 One of the streets had a shop selling women's pottery. In the towns men made pottery industrially and usually glazed. In the country women made pottery, unglazed and low-fired although decorated with simple coloured patterns.

There is a sandbank at the mouth of the river and the wreckers used to entice merchant ships in (the local pirate ships and fishing boats were shallow-keeled) so that the grounded on the sandbank within range of the cannon from the Kasbah forts.

Kasbah Ouadaya

Rabat is named after the ribit or fortified monastery built there in the 11C to defend against expected Norman attacks which did not materialise. Now all that is left of the ribit are a few  archaeological remains.

The later Kasbah was built on the same site,a raised promontary controlling both the sea approaches and the entrance to the Bouregreg river. In 1195 Yacoub el Mansour inserted a great monumental gate into the walls. It is really impressive Almohad architecture with darj w ktarf patterning.

North to Rabat

We're just back from a trip to Rabat. To get there take the motorway and keep going after Marrakesh. I've always found that central plain all very boring, flat and endless. Apparently nobody much lived there until the last century; It needs irrigation to farm and so people chose  to live in defensible site in the hills. It seemed like spring though. They'd had a lot of rain the week before and the verges and pasture had lots of flowers. There was a particularly striking orange one growing in the grazing ares. As these are dotted between crops and so from a distance you'd see a field of bright orange the way you see a bright yellow field of rape in Britain.

 The grazing was for cows as well as sheep which answers my question as to where the milk comes from. you never see cows near Taroudant.  

When you get to Rabat the city has some nice Art Deco building from the Protectorate.

Rabat Ville Station

The Telephone Company

Parliament Building

There was a small demo outside the Parliament, only a dozen or so people standing in a circle. The noise they made chanting/singing was impressive. It would not have been allowed in London.

The Koranic Schools and the Watchers

Before coming up north on a road trip and therefore not blogging I posted  a blog "The Koranic Schools". The next day I had 336 views which is about 300 more than usual. All were on Linux, (most views are on Windows or Android), were from Morocco, the UK and USA, and were distributed between all the blog posts. It's not as though my recipe for banana muffins had suddenly gone viral. Had the term "Koranic School" emanating from Morocco tripped an Edward Snowden programme?  Presumably, if so,the hits were entirely electronic as it would only take a human half a dozen posts to realise this blog is written by an old woman interested in plants, needlepoint and tourism. But if it was the watchers why did they leave Linux footprints all over me? I thought the purpose of the watchers was not to let you know you were watched. I'm getting old, modern life is confusing.

The Koranic Schools

I have previously reported the progress, or lack of it on the new mosque on the road to the bridge. Work stalled and the roof tiles which were nearly finished fell off and had to be replaced. My informant tells me that the problem was corruption in the Ministry of Religion and someone making off with the funds, but that informant believes all Ministers and their  gofers are corrupt. Anyway work was resumed and the project is nearly finished. I expect it will be in use when we return in the autumn. 

It is not just a mosque but a residential school complex devoted to Koranic Studies. Since the post arab spring election of a government with a mildly Islamic agenda (I don't use Islamist as that word has been hi-jacked by the western press to suggest connections to terrorism and something bad) there seems to be an increased investment in such schemes as the rebuilding of the Tamagroute zaouia illustrates. This development is very attractive and there are palm trees being planted outside so it's quite something.

Nevertheless nobody can quite understand why there is the equally attractive development about a km away opposite the taxi rank.

 This is also a new mosque (although it does not appear to have a mineret) and residential Koranic School. We don't understand why two institutions are necessary and, if capacity is the difficulty, why they didn't just make one bigger. My friends, whilst actively practising muslims, do not circulate in the higher echalons of the the faithful so perhaps there is to be some difference of interpretation in the teaching, or perhaps there are two schools to segregate the student population by sex. No-one has yet been able to tell me.

Greening up Nicely

Whilst the new park on our side of the walls awaits planting that on the other side planted a couple of years ago is greening up nicely. There's work been done there too, yet another football pitch but with new parking spaces.

The basketball court is being used by some teenagers, basketball being one of the sports taught in High School.

 I am just thinking it's a shame all this seems aimed at young men and women are missing out (although the local women's football team is much more successful than the men's) when we come across a group of girl's playing the same skipping games we (well not really "we", I never  could skip, I was thrown out of Brownies for not being able to skip backwards when I couldn't even skip forwards, so, more, my contemporaries) played at school. Still if I had designed it, rather than quite so many football pitches, I may have had a couple of tennis courts and some of those concrete table tennis tables they have in french campsites. Also you could have one of those torture routes they have in some parks were you jog a bit and get to a bar and do chin ups and then jog a bit more and do step ups etc Obviously this something I would never have done at any time in my life but if you are into it a circuit of the town walls would be an awesome setting for circuit training. Just the 5km jog is probably enough for most people and that's really doable now on a flat paved surface. I won't be joining in. 
The planting round the sculpture park is doing really well and their hibiscus hedges are much better than ours and in flower. They are denser and do not have the holes that ours has because they were much more ruthless with the pruning in the first two or three years. Still, it's too late for us to go back and be ruthless. 

I wonder what the snowbirds make of it all. They are out in force by the prefecture.