Almoravid red city still anchors imperial Morocco
Marrakesh, Morocco’s fourth-largest city and an imperial capital of the Marrakesh-Safi region, sits west of Atlas foothills. Abu Bakr ibn Umar founded it about 1070 as Almoravid capital; Ali ibn Yusuf’s red walls of 1122–1123 still colour the brand. The medina is UNESCO-listed around Jemaa el-Fnaa.
Almoravid planning fixed street logic for centuries of dynasties that followed. Souks, the Kutubiyya Mosque, and packed vendor lanes make the fortified old city a living market as much as a museum.
It is Morocco's most visited city, served by Menara Airport and a railway line to Casablanca and the north, and home to Cadi Ayyad University. The name's meaning is debated: one reading takes it from Berber amur n akuc, Land of God. Until about the early twentieth century the whole country was often called the Kingdom of Marrakesh, and Persian and Urdu still use Marrakesh as the name for Morocco.
Berber farmers lived here from Neolithic times, leaving many stone tools. Its founder, Abu Bakr ibn Umar, was a second cousin of the Almoravid king Yusuf ibn Tashfin. The Almoravids, a reforming Berber dynasty, ruled from the edge of Senegal to central Spain and built the first mosques and a fortified palace, the Ksar al-Hajjar. In 1125 the preacher Ibn Tumart settled at Tin Mal in the mountains to the south and launched the Almohad movement against them, casting himself as the mahdi.
After the death of Yusuf II in 1224, Almohad sheikhs and rival claimants fought over the city, which changed hands by force several times. In the early sixteenth century it became Morocco's capital again, first as seat of the Hintata emirs and then under two Saadian rulers, Ahmad al-Mansur and Abdallah al-Ghalib, whose wealth brought the city a new golden age.
Source: Marrakesh
