It was the hottest summer of my life. I arrived in Fes after a five-hour train journey from Casablanca. At just nineteen years old, I hadn’t really seen the world before, not in the way I was about to. I left the States with the intention of pursuing a grasp of Arabic and learning the fundamental sacred sciences through an immersive experience. I already had many preconceived assumptions about North Africa, based on stories told by American scholars, books like The Road to Mecca, as well as films like The Battle of Algiers, and, for some odd reason, Indiana Jones.
I had minimal money, and no idea what any of the presumptive language of the so-called traditionalist class meant. I did not know much about ṭarīqas, zāwiyas, awrād, or the like. Heck, for someone who would go on to graduate from al-Qarawiyyīn, I don’t think I even knew what the Qarawiyyīn was. What was apparent, from my vantage point, was that going from the West to the East was essentially time-travelling through a wormhole to the past. I was both correct and incorrect.
Arriving in Fes al-Bali
I jumped into a taxi and headed to the old city, Fes al-Bali. As the taxi passed through its historic gates, the driver stopped and gave me walking directions for where I needed to go. The old city is the largest “no-car zone” in the world, and boy, is it a maze.
Ibn ʿArabī and others maintain that smell and sound are the immediate senses that precede sight and touch. The metaphysical nature of smell is the first discernment the soul makes, followed by sound. The heart finds calm, excitement, or disturbance depending on the first impression made by both senses.
The first thing I smelled, well, I couldn’t even tell you. It was an amalgamation of the scent of fresh vervain, donkey, incense, henna, and meat. What a punch to the nose that was.
Then came a cacophony of sounds: the rhythmic beat of artisans hammering copper, the din of elite-level negotiating by women in the marketplace, and the first monotone Mālikī adhān I had heard, emanating from a speaker that clearly hadn’t been updated since the seventies. Crowds of people greeting one another in darija added another layer: “Bslama sidi!” “Akhoya! Shnu jbti? Kul shi mizyan?” “Allah yaḥfḍak, sidi!” “Ṣallu ʿala-n-Nabī!”
I had never heard so many Qur’ānic prayers and invocations upon the Messenger of God ﷺ used so casually in the space of a minute. And it wasn’t unnatural, it was awfully familiar, as if the soul was being greeted instead of the body.
Sound and scent prepared the way for the sight of the scene that lay before me; men in jellabas, looking like Jedis, narrow cobblestoned paths of a labyrinthine city, and – walls. Walls that were intricately decorated with geometric patterns by the hands of artisans whose names we will never know, but whose brilliance garnished an entire city. These walls had character and seemed to whisper that something of import lay just beyond them.
The Arabic word for wall is sūr, just a hair’s breadth from the word sūrah, meaning chapter in the Qur’an. The proximity has not been lost on commentators; the function of a chapter is akin to the function of a wall; they delineate and protect what lies within. But that ‘protection’ had an added layer; a sūrah delineates and protects more than words, it protects meaning. And an old city wall, delineates and protects more than the people within, it protects the spirits.
This protection comes not only in the form of walls of brick and mortar, but from the human ‘walls’ that protect the city. The Prophet ﷺ is reported to have said, in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-Imāra, “The people of the West will not cease to be manifest upon the truth until the Hour comes.”
While there is a difference of opinion as to what this means, al-Qurṭubī preserves a wording of the Hadith that explicitly names the Maghreb – and this reading was widely adopted in the Muslim West — the land of the Moors, ranging from Algeria all the way to modern-day Mauritania, with Fes as its intellectual capital.
Mawlāy Idrīs II and the Founding of Fes
The sentiment reflected in these words was apparent to me the moment I visited the founder of Fes, Mawlāy Idrīs II. The father of Mawlāy Idrīs was a fourth-generation descendant of the Messenger of God ﷺ and the founder of the Idrīsid Sharīfian Dynasty. Idrīs ibn ʿAbdullāh, usually referred to as Mawlāy Idrīs I, fled from the Battle of Fakhkh in 786, where the ʿAlid rising under his kinsman al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī was crushed by the Abbasids. Mawlāy Idrīs and his brother Yahya were the children of Abdullah al-Kamil, son of Hasan al-Muthana, son of Hasan ibn Ali, son of Lady Fatima and Imam Ali, may God send peace and blessings upon all of them. Yahya decided to flee to Daylam and start an uprising against the Abbasids, eventually leading him to Baghdad where he met his demise in prison.
Mawlāy Idrīs, on the other hand, fled west with his companion, Rashid, a freed slave. Rashid was one of Idrīs’ tutors, teaching him the Qurʾān, grammar, poetry – and even blacksmithing. He pretended to be Idrīs’ master to help conceal his identity from assassins send by the Abbasids, who saw his lineage as a threat to their power. Idrīs sought refuge in various lands such as Nubia, Ifrīqiya, and Qayrawan, and in 788 settled at the foot of Jabal Zarhūn, in the ancient Roman city of Volubilis.
This land was not a stranger to Islam. A century of Muslim rule had passed, but faith sat lightly on the Maghreb, and much of it answered to Khārijite states. What Idrīs offered was the house of the Prophet ﷺ, and the indigenous Awrāba received him as such. Within three years he held the allegiance of the tribes. His wife was with child when he died. Many accounts accuse an agent of the Abbasid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd of poisoning him.
His son, Mawlāy Idrīs al-Azhar, took his throne and turned east to the city we now know as Fes from fa’s, the pickaxe, as tradition holds. Mawlāy Idrīs I was a pioneer, someone who carried a hunted branch of the Ḥasanī house to safety.
Not only did he survive, he planned to thrive. Mawlāy Idrīs II set in motion what would become the intellectual capital of the Muslim West. He turned to his Lord and made the following supplication:
O Allah, You know that I did not intend by building this city ostentation or boasting, nor reputation nor arrogance. I intended only that You be worshipped in it, that Your Book be recited in it, and that Your ḥudūd, the ordinances of Your dīn and the Sunna of Your Prophet be established in it for as long as You leave the world standing. O Allah, grant its dwellers and settlers success in good and help them to it; spare them the burden of their enemies; pour out provision upon them; and sheathe away from them the sword of fitna, discord and hypocrisy. You have power over all things.
Mawlāy Idrīs al-Azhar
This wasn’t simply a duʿā, it was a vision; a vision that became a reality. This city produced scholars and drew into its orbit the likes of Darrās b. Ismāʿīl al-Fāsī, Qāḍī Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī, Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Ibn ʿĀshir, Ibn Ājurrūm, Ibn ʿAjība, Ibn Mashīsh, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī, al-Darqāwī, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥabīb, and many more. The Qarawiyyīn, the ʿAṭṭārīn madrasa, and the many dūr al-Qurʾān (Houses of Quran) were established. Calligraphy and art thrived. The māristān of Sīdī Frej healed the sick and gave space to those looking for wellness. The poetry and song of the malḥūn (Moroccan poetry) and the Andalusī nūba (traditional North African song), outlived the courts that made them. And the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt of Imām al-Jazūlī planted the love of the Prophet ﷺ in hearts across the world.
A Spiritual Inheritance
I walked in the labyrinth of the old city, following the chanting of God’s names, until it led me to an old zawiya. Inside, devotees sat in remembrance in a circle that – I would eventually learn – was first established by Imam Jazuli himself, forming a continuous spiritual spring that has been inherited by committed individuals for centuries since without skipping a beat. The harmonious, rhythmic recitation, the seating formation, and even the iconic mint and vervain tea have remained the same.
I entered the circle – that virtually bends time and space – and a dimension that recognises the spiritual gravitational pull, where the mind finally learns to rest and the heart submits.
I saw a community that honours its past and carries a baton that was handed to them (even if it’s only given to a handful of people), who know their worth, remember where they came from, but more importantly, what made them great.
People still visit the qutb, or spiritual pole, of Morocco, Mawlāy Abdesalam ibn Mashish, on the peak of Jabal Alam. He was the teacher of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī who was his sole student. I walked up the mountain and came upon the very place where the master and student met. Imam Shādhilī, already a bonafide scholar, met his teacher — unbeknownst to him — while making wudu in a well, where his mind received a new opening. That well is visited to this very day, preserving that practice.
I smelled the spring blossom of the mountains, where bees seem to be guiding you to something. I walked to the cave where ibn Mashish would seclude himself and visited his resting place, where a tree grew from his chest.
No matter where a Moroccan is on the spectrum of spiritual practice, this heritage stays with them. It is part of who they are, and it is honoured – because these noble hearts are the reason they are honoured. As Abu Madyan says “What delight is there in life other than the companionship of the fuqara. They are the sultans, lords, and princes.”
What Fes Asks of its Guests
Djeli Mamadou Kouyaté the 15th century Malian scholar says, “the world is a very old place, the future springs forth from the past.”
To look at these old cities – that are shrouded with the spirit and tears of the gnostics – simply as relics of the past, or places of recreation (where you eat couscous followed by a hamam experience) is to deny them an owed adab of curiosity.
Inversely, arriving with the goal of having a “spiritual experience” is also a vain and incomplete intention. I urge us to reflect on the words my teacher Shaykh Idris al Fassi al Fihir, the vice president of the Qarawiyyin, shared upon my graduation: “Antum Juz’in minal Maghreb”, “you are a piece of the Maghreb.”
For the children of immigrants who are not exposed to the legacy of Islamic institutions in the West, and for converts whose experience differs again, this statement carries a particular weight that urges us to reconcile our Islam with who we are, while also encouraging us to enrich our intellectual inheritance by discovering our spiritual one. This undertaking cannot be completed by simply learning a new language, a set of rules frozen in time, or even a culture.
The Maghreb’s spiritual heritage, and the individuals who partake in its inheritance give you something greater than just inspiration; they give you responsibility. God asks, “Have they not traveled through the earth and observed how was the end of those before them?” (Qur’ān 35:44).
To enter these sacred precincts and their cities is a privilege that leaves its scent upon you. It stays with you. But these places do not just hand themselves over, they ask for something in return. The benefit you reap is not a commodity to be appropriated or sold, but rather a debt to be repaid in kind.
We come as guests – that is the whole of our standing here. You will see scholars who move your mind, sages who turn your heart, and bakers who show you ihsan – as long as you come as a guest, ready to be honoured by whatever the host decides to serve you. You may be taught patience in ways that make you uncomfortable, or be spiritually revitalised in a way that doesn’t appeal to your familiarity. What is given is responsibility, not simply inspiration and wonder.
A sincere intention brought the prayer of Mawlāy Idrīs to fruition. He asked nothing for himself: not reputation, not wealth, nor power. This shedding of the self is what is asked from guests that walk through the gates of Fes, to add to the sincerity of what its founder whispered to His Lord while raising the walled city. A shared intention.
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