Kasbah

The Old town in Tangiers is the walled Medina, and the soul of the city is supposedly the Kasbah, built on the site of the original Roman settlement in the North western quarter.
We decide that rather than walk through the Medina we would walk around the walls roughly following the coastline past the fishing fleet docks.

There is a pedestrian pathway climbing up above the Port de Peche and eventually leading to a gate in the old walls known as the Bab Bhar.

Its a fair climb but the views are worth it, we had intended to visit the museum of the Kasbah. but having turned right after entering the Kasbah we had to resort to employing some very helpful children to direct us through the winding passages to the museum entrance which turned out to have been about 100 metres from the Bab Bhar, so it goes.....

For future reference if you look down and see a pebbled diamond shape in the pavement you are on the tourist track. The museum is housed in a former Sultans palace and is close by the Mosque with its distinctive octagonal minaret.

We paid the children and our entrance fee, both very modest and spent the next couple of hours looking around the Museu de Archeolagique. It was at least cool , for which we were thankful.

The central courtyard is a beautiful tiled and pillared space from which  (from right to left) several rooms hold exhibits dating from Neolithic times to the 19th century seven rooms in all. The courtyard tilework is known as "zellij", and is not unsurprisingly, familiar

The two rooms at either end of the courtyard are similar and both have a beautiful carved door and upon entering fabulous filigree decoration and a quite stunning ceiling, for which a mirror is thoughtfully provided to see the full effect.

Photographs really dont do it justice as the delicate 3d effect really has to be seen in situ.

It is marvellous, Islamic art and artisanship at its very best. My photo below illustrates the mirror rather than the ceiling but I include it for curiosity value.

In this day and age when Islam has such a bad press it is easy to forget that for almost a millennium it was a shining beacon of art and learning, maths and science, philosophy and literature.

Traveling through the Iberian peninsula we were used to the " Moorish " influence, but here was the real thing. The decoration, chrysanthemum patterns and other geometric constructions, avoiding representation of living things which is not permissible under Islam.

It has a delicacy and wonderful symmetry which is very aesthetically pleasing, of course like any religious dogma exceptions often prove the rule and in a corner of the room dedicated to the Portuguese invasion and occupation we found representations of Manuelline influence with the twisted rope border and even the Lancashire rose, representing the house of Lancaster.

As we made our way to the garden courtyard, a haven of peace, as it was meant to be by its original architects, I was pondering how the tenets of Islam and indeed Christianity had been perverted by politics, how much had each borrowed from the other, and how similar those basic ideas were.

In the midst of a peaceful garden we came across a Napoleonic canon

Possibly a 12 pounder, it seemed incongruous to come across it in this peaceful haven, but then again this part of the world was used to incorporating foreign ideas as well as conflict.

It had always been on the edge of the Muslim world and just outside the western one.

After occupying the Iberian peninsular for nearly six hundred years the Moors were forced to retreat back to North Africa. The legacy of subsequent events remains in the language and the Imperial "N"
engraved on the cannons barrel. Morocco gained independence from France the year before I was born in 1956.

The history certainly runs deep here, thousands of years of interaction and commerce, but the basic order of things remains.

Further on in the Museum we came across a room containing a beautiful mosaic depicting "The Voyage of Venus", which had been moved from the ancient town of Volubillis in the Atlas mountains. It is best viewed from the gallery above.

There are several brilliant maps that attempt to explain the movement of peoples and goods in the ancient world. Something I think we tend to underestimate in the modern day and age.
Trade routes were established from east Africa to Greenland.

An older reproduction map seems to be utterly wrong in its representation of the world until you turn it the right way up. Mecca is in the centre and south is at the top.  In the photo below Lynnes head is obscuring Spain.

The artifacts in the museum are fascinating and its just a small pity that the information could not include an English translation.

The Voyage of Venus is indeed a magnificent Mosaic especially when seen from above.

There are also representations of tombs, some in the walls of the palace, and others...….

From archeological digs in various parts of the hinterland.

There are also exhibits that explain the huge cultural influence, Roman, Greek, and indeed our own U.K. has had on Morocco.

The exhibitions are fascinating, it would be easy to spend an afternoon in  the cool spaces.

However we needed to move on, past the famous octagonal minaret of the Mosque and into the winding narrow streets of the Kasbah.

I imagine that because it is a more tourist oriented quarter it is not as frenetic, dirty and noisy as the rest of the medina. The few shops are tucked away and if you know where to look there are even signposts showing the tourist pathways.

The lack of crowds encourages a slower pace and we lingered awhile, bumping into our child guides again as we explored the narrow streets.

If you ignore the powerlines and satellite dishes you could very well be in another century. Some of the buildings remind you of paintings by Matisse, because the small shops have postcards showing the same view painted by the French master who spent some time here.

We wandered to the main gate at the North western corner of the walled quarter, the Bab el Kasbah. There we found a delightful open air cafe under a shady tree and had some mint tea.

Mint tea usually involves a bit of a wait as it takes time to prepare, if you are in no hurry this is not a problem as you can sit and watch the world go by. It is a little oasis of peace before we plunged back into the sensory overload of the medina.