Sale; the Merinid Medersa

The medersa in Sale is small but an absolute treat. It was built by Sultan Aboul Hassan in 1333. The ground floor which is beautifully decorated with  Q'ranic inscriptions

 was used not only for teaching and prayer but as a court and the (windowless) cells above for the students to live in.

 It is next to the Grand Mosque and therefore at the high point of the Sale outcrop.

Casa Deco

Casablanca didn't  really exist until the Protectorate. There was a little fishing port there and Morocco's main port was Tangier. The French developed it as an Atlantic port away from the Spanish enclaves. They did this just in the 20s and 30s so it was just the right time for the beginnings of Art Deco. Avenue Mohammed V is a pedestrianised street lined with low-rise buildings in both classic art deco and the earlier local style known as Mauriesque. New York/Chicago it's not, more Miami beach or Napier; not a special trip destination but a very pleasant amble down Mohammed V and round the nearby streets. Unlike Miami Beach and Napier few of the buildings are restored and one has to go round with your head back as ground level has often had modern shopfronts put in whilst the upper floors are pretty pristine.

  

Hassan II Mosque

We took a day trip by train to Casablanca from Rabat. The big attraction is the Hassan II Mosque. It was built in 6 years by craftsmen working a 24 hour shift system and is the biggest in Africa. It can accomodate 20,000 men for prayers and 5,000 women in the gallery.

  The cost is thought to be in excess of £800 million. It is said that a third of this was from the old king's own money but then he was a ruling monarch so it's not really clear which was his money and the state's. The rest was raised by "voluntary" contributions from ordinary people all over Morocco although our friend says that there was a good injection of Saudi money as well.

The site is spectacular jutting into the sea and the scale overwhelming. To me it is very bling and rather like a modern 5star hotel. Inside it does not have the rhythm I have come to expect from mosques because they did not want to install air-conditioning which would have been noisy and so they have an opening roof to allow for ventilation. This means that the central area is free of pillars and the feeling is more of a basilica.

 They have 200 people permanently employed cleaning it and to pay for them they open it up to non-muslims for 3 tours a day, the only mosque other than the ruined Tin Mal a non-muslim can  visit in Morocco.

Postscript
You may recall that after the Koranic Schools post I had Linux visitors from USA, UK, and Morocco.After this post I've have Linux visitors again but from Russia.

Sale, Pirates and Crusoe

Sale lies on the north bank of the mouth of the Bouregreg river opposite Rabat ,of which it is now mainly a suburb. But Sale was a thriving city when Rabat was a nothing much village. It was notorious as the base of the Barbary Coast pirates the originators of the "White Slave Trade", (as opposed to "the Slave Trade"?!). At one time the Rue des Conseilles in Rabat, now the main souk, once populated by the consuls of various european states whose sole occupation was to find out which of their countrymen were in captivity in Sale and to ransom them before they could be sold on. One dutch consul was so good at rescuing his clients he was driven out.
The main corsairs were andalusian refugees and in the 17C they established their own state, the Republic of the Bouregreg, plundering european vessels returning from West Africa and South America but also making raids on european ports including Plymouth and the Irish coast. They caused similar consternation as the somali pirates of the noughties. They eventually surrendered to Moulay Rashid but impromptu piracy continued until 1829 when Austria lost patience over the loss of a ship and shelled both Sale and Rabat into a backwater until the French made it the capitol under the Protectorate.
The whole encaptured the popular european imagination and Defoe had Crusoe captured by pirates and brought to Sale where he describes him entering by the Bab Lamrissa. Built in 1261 by the architect Mohammed Ibn Haj Ichbili it was 30m high and open to the river to allow boat to pass into the harbour. Now it is stranded next to the tram station.

The Chellah Storks

What makes the Chellah truly magical in the spring are the storks and egrets.

There are 79 breeding pairs of white storks. They nest on the mosque minaret, the walls of the medersa , and the trees around the santuary and spring. They swoop about and I have seen nothing remotely comparable apart from the Qutb Mintar south of Dehli although the birds there were eagles. The egrets flock and are harder to photograph.

It was a little disconcerting and creepy that the storks made a rapid slightly hollow knocking noise with their bills whilst roosting. The sound was identical to that attributed to Triffids in the 1960s BBC adaptation which was repeated before Xmas, so you would be siting in brilliant sunshine watching the birds and at peace with the world and the sound of  hunting vegetation would disturb you and be repeated round the site.