O’Meara...
different morphology, and so forth.
Space prevents the enumeration of each stage’s defining characteris-
tics (supposing this even could be done fully, given the incomplete
evidence for the pre-traditional stages), but with reference to Moroc-
can history it seems clear that the earliest phase was rudimentary:
fortified townships built by the warring Idrisid dynasty (789-949) in
their efforts to colonize and Islamicize the western Maghrib.^4 And
although all subsequent stages were complicit to some degree in this
hegemonic program, what we find today in a traditional medina such
as those in Fez and Marrakech is evidently a far cry from these basic, essentially militarist beginnings — with at least
one important exception. At the heart of each stage stood or still stands a Friday mosque (jami’), also known as the
“cathedral” mosque. In other words, the centripetal organization of the traditional Moroccan medina, whereby both
economic activities and domestic residences were, broadly speaking, arranged in ascending order of religious and mon-
etary value respectively, from periphery to center, likely has been followed from the start.^5 Certainly, with regard to the
orthodox doctrines of Islam current at any one period, as one headed inside a medina of whatever stage, so one headed
towards a moral center, if not the moral (and also economic) center.
This sense of journeying towards something of exalted value allows
me to venture the following: It might prove productive for compara-
tive scholarship^6 to revive informally the notion of the traditional Mo-
roccan medina as a labyrinth (as stated above, we cannot be certain
of the earlier stages’ streetscapes), provided we do not simultaneously
revive the pejorative connotations of disorder, irrationality, and civic
incompetence which the notion frequently had in Orientalist litera-
ture.^7 Guillermo del Toro, the director of the 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth,
expresses well much of the meaning I intend here by the word: “[A] labyrinth is essentially a place of transit, an ethical,
moral transit to one inevitable centre.”^8 Missing only from this definition is the fact that once at this center, transit com-
- For a clear exposition of this period in Moroccan history, see Michael Brett, “The Islamisation of Morocco: From the Arabs
to the Almoravids,” Morocco: Journal of the Society for Moroccan Studies, No. 2 (1992), pp. 60-1. - For further discussion of the traditional medina’s centripetal structure, what André Raymond calls radio-concentricity, see
André Raymond, “Urban Life and Middle Eastern Cities: The Traditional Arab City,” in Youssef M. Choueiri, ed., A Companion
to the History of the Middle East (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 214-17. - As outlined, for example, in Lindsay Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison.
Vol. 2: A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities (Cambridge: Harvard CSWR, 2000). - The notion also holds true for a number of non-Moroccan, traditional medinas. See, for example, Roberto Berardi, “The
Spatial Organization of Tunis Medina and other Arab-Muslim Cities in North Africa and the Near East,” in Salma K. Jayyusi
et al., eds., The City in the Islamic World, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 1, 282, and 292-3. - Cited in Mark Kermode, “Girl Interrupted,” Sight & Sound 12 (December 2006), http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/
feature/49337/. For a different usage of the term, see the author’s Space and Muslim Urban Life: At the Limits of the Labyrinth
Figure 2: Fez, Ra’s Aluyun neighborhood
Figure 3: Fez, Oued Chorfa neighborhood