Fez is the spiritual heart and deepest soul of Morocco, the city where time seems to have stopped in the Middle Ages. Its medina, Fes el-Bali, is the largest car-free urban area on the planet and the largest and best-preserved medieval medina in the world: a dizzying labyrinth of thousands of alleys, lanes and passageways crammed with souks, mosques, madrasas, fondouks, hammams and artisan workshops, where life goes on almost as it did centuries ago, with donkeys carrying goods through alleys too narrow for a car.
Here is the Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 and considered the oldest university in operation in the world, according to UNESCO and Guinness. Here leather is still worked in the Chouara tanneries with the same medieval techniques and dye vats, a sight as fascinating as it is smelly. And here are some of the absolute gems of Moroccan art: the Bou Inania and Al-Attarine madrasas, marvels of zellige, stucco and carved cedar, and the blue gate of Bab Boujloud, the threshold to this lost world.
This guide covers the essentials of Fez with a practical, honest eye, because Fez is as overwhelming as it is challenging. You're going to get lost in the medina (accept it and enjoy it), and you're going to deal with HAGGLING in the souk and with FAKE GUIDES, who are especially persistent in Fez. These boys and men offer to guide you, tell you 'that street is closed' to steer you elsewhere or take you 'by chance' to the tanneries and shops where they earn a commission. With the right information and a bit of patience, Fez is one of the most intense and authentic travel experiences in the world.
Fez was founded at the end of the 8th century (between 789 and 808) by Idris I and Idris II, of the Idrisid dynasty, the first Muslim dynasty of Morocco, and soon became its capital. Its population grew with two great waves of refugees: Andalusian families from Cordoba and Arab families from Kairouan (Tunisia). They gave their names to two quarters and to the Qarawiyyin mosque-university, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, a woman from a Kairouan family. Fez established itself as the great religious, intellectual and commercial centre of the Maghreb. It enjoyed its golden age under the Marinid dynasty (13th-15th centuries), which built Fes el-Jdid ('new Fez') and the great madrasas. It was the capital of Morocco at various times, until the French protectorate moved the capital to Rabat in 1912. Its medina has been a World Heritage Site since 1981. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The axis of Moroccan power: Casablanca, the economic metropolis of the colonial era; Rabat, the quiet capital on the Atlantic; Meknes, the Versailles of Moulay Ismail; Fez, the spiritual capital and its thousand-year-old medina; and Volubilis, the Roman city among the olive groves.
Read the history of Casablanca and the imperial cities (Fez, Meknes, Rabat) →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Fez is the oldest of Morocco's imperial cities and, in a way, the cradle of the country as a Muslim state. Its founding is credited to the Idrisid dynasty, the first Muslim dynasty in Morocco. Idris I was a sharif (a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad) who had fled persecution by the Abbasids in the East. He settled in the region and founded a first settlement around the year 789. His son, Idris II, developed the city on the opposite bank of the Fez River around 808-809. He made it the capital of his kingdom and gave it a mosque, walls and markets. Fez was born tied to the very origins of Islamic Morocco.
Fez grew rapidly thanks to two great waves of immigrants who arrived in the 9th century and shaped its character for good. The first were some eight hundred Andalusi families from Córdoba, expelled after a revolt, who settled on one bank of the river and founded the Andalusian quarter (Adwat al-Andalus). The second were Arab families from Kairouan, in present-day Tunisia and one of the great centres of Islam, who settled on the opposite bank and founded the Kairouani quarter (Adwat al-Qarawiyyin). Both communities brought their learning, their crafts and their culture. From their blending came the refined, learned, craft-rich Fez that would become famous across the Islamic world.
The city's most illustrious institution dates from that Kairouani period: the Qarawiyyin mosque-university.
In 859, a woman named Fatima al-Fihri, daughter of a wealthy merchant from the Kairouani community, used her inheritance to build a mosque for her quarter. Over time that mosque, the Qarawiyyin (al-Qarawiyyin), became one of the largest in the Maghreb and, above all, a leading centre of higher learning. UNESCO and Guinness World Records recognise it as the oldest university in the world still operating, with more than 1,160 years of uninterrupted activity. It is one of the great symbols of how science and culture belonged to the medieval Islamic world. Together with its Andalusi and Kairouani roots, it makes Fez a unique place in the history of education.
The Qarawiyyin taught the Quran and Islamic law, but also grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and geography. Its library gathered thousands of precious manuscripts. Major figures passed through Fez and its university or studied there. They include the great historian Ibn Khaldun, often called the father of sociology, the geographer al-Idrisi and the Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides, who lived in the city for a time. For centuries Fez was a cultural bridge between al-Andalus, the Maghreb and the Islamic East.
Under the Berber dynasties of the Almoravids (11th century) and the Almohads (12th century), who ruled an empire on both sides of the Strait, Fez became firmly established as one of the great cities of the Maghreb. It did, however, share the spotlight with Marrakech, the capital of the south. The city kept growing in population, mosques, fondouks and workshops, strengthening its role as a major commercial and religious centre.
Fez reached its greatest splendour under the Marinid (or Banu Marin) dynasty, which ruled Morocco from the 13th to the 15th century and chose Fez as the capital of its empire. The Marinids turned the city into a dazzling centre of power, art and culture. Their mark still defines much of the monumental face of Fez today.
In 1276, the Marinids founded a new royal city next to the old one: Fes el-Jdid ('New Fez'). It held the royal palace, barracks and gardens, and later the Jewish quarter, or mellah. The mellah is one of the oldest in Morocco, and a large Jewish community lived there under the sultan's protection. Meanwhile, in old Fes el-Bali, the Marinid sultans gave the city its architectural jewels: the great madrasas, or Quranic schools. The Bou Inania, the Al-Attarine and the Es-Sahrij are true marvels of zellige, carved stucco and cedar wood, and they housed and taught the students of the Qarawiyyin.
At that time Fez was one of the most populous, learned and wealthy cities in the world. It was buzzing with scholars, merchants and craftspeople, with thousands of workshops, hundreds of mosques and a brilliant intellectual life. In that era its medina took on essentially the shape and size it keeps today. That is why it is now the best-preserved medieval medina on the planet.
The Marinids declined and were followed by the Wattasids. After that, Fez went through centuries of ups and downs under the Saadian dynasty, which moved power to Marrakech in the 16th century, and then the Alaouite dynasty, which still reigns in Morocco. Under the Alaouites, Fez served at several points as the capital or a royal residence. It kept its standing as the country's religious and intellectual capital and as the home of thriving trade and crafts. The sultans restored and expanded its monuments, and the city remained the cultural heart of Morocco.
In the early 20th century, Fez was the setting for a turning point in the country's history. Here, on 30 March 1912, Sultan Moulay Hafid signed the Treaty of Fez with France. It established the French protectorate over most of Morocco, with a northern and a southern zone under Spanish protectorate. The signing immediately sparked a violent uprising in the city, known as the 'bloody days of Fez', which was harshly put down.
The new colonial authority was led by the resident-general, Lyautey. One of its first decisions was to move Morocco's administrative capital from Fez to Rabat, on the coast, which was safer and better connected. Fez thus lost its role as political capital and has never regained it. Even so, it kept its prestige as the country's spiritual, cultural and craft capital fully intact. The French did respect the historic medina and built a new European-style city next to it (the Ville Nouvelle).
After Morocco's independence in 1956, Fez remained one of the country's great cities and, above all, the guardian of its most traditional soul. In 1981, UNESCO declared the medina of Fes el-Bali a World Heritage Site. It recognised the medina as an outstanding example of a medieval Arab-Muslim city and as the most complete and best-preserved medina in the Islamic world. Since then, with support from national and international programmes, work has gone into restoring its monuments, fondouks and houses. Work has also gone into preserving its traditional crafts, which are still alive: the tanners of Chouara, the potters of Fez blue, the weavers, the coppersmiths and the wood and metal artisans.
Today Fez is a city of more than a million people. It combines that medieval medina with a modern city, a university, industry and contemporary life. The medina is the largest car-free urban area in the world, a living organism where tens of thousands of people still live, work and trade as they did centuries ago. The Jewish community played a major part in the city's history but almost disappeared with the emigrations of the 20th century. The mellah and its synagogues keep its memory alive.
Fez offers travellers the most intense, authentic and demanding experience in Morocco. Here you plunge into a medieval city that is neither a stage set nor a museum, but a living, pulsing reality. You can get lost in its nine thousand alleys and hear the call to prayer from dozens of muezzins at sunset from the Marinid tombs. You can breathe in the smell of leather and spices and take in the extraordinary beauty of its madrasas. Doing so gives you a glimpse, like nowhere else, into the deep, thousand-year-old heart of Morocco.
