Arab-Islamic Morocco: twelve centuries of mosques, madrasas and cities

Arab armies reached Morocco in the late 7th century and Islam spread among the Amazigh in the decades after. In 788 Idris I founded the first Moroccan Muslim state, and his son Idris II built Fes. Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Saadians and Alaouites followed, each leaving their cities and monuments.

Al-Qarawiyyin in Fes is a mosque and one of the oldest centres of learning in the world still teaching. By tradition it was founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, a woman from Kairouan. That date and story come from a chronicle written five centuries later, which historians treat with caution; some see the story as a pious legend, and an inscription points to work under an Idrisid prince around 877. What is sure is a 9th-century mosque that became a great centre of learning, and a university in the modern sense much later. Guinness World Records calls it the oldest existing, continually operating educational institution. The mosque is closed to non-Muslims, but its doors and courtyard can be glimpsed from the lanes.

The madrasas were the colleges where students lived and learned: Bou Inania (1350s) and al-Attarine in Fes, Ben Youssef in Marrakech. Their courtyards, cedar, carved plaster and zellige are open to visitors and are the best place to see this art up close.

The Koutoubia minaret in Marrakech (Almohad, completed by about 1195, probably under Yaqub al-Mansur) set the pattern for the Giralda of Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat. The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, finished in 1993 on the edge of the Atlantic, is the best-known mosque in Morocco open to non-Muslim visitors, on guided tours outside prayer times; most mosques are for Muslims only.