Marrakech, The Badii Palace and the Bahia Palace

At breakfast Margaret told us that she had a bad stomach as well so we tried to identify the possible source. We were certain that it wasn’t the food at the Riad so we discounted that and we had all had the same to eat at the roadside grill and the Djemma el Fna food market so that seemed to rule those out as well so the finger of suspicion was beginning to point to the lunch at Setti-Fatma where Margaret and I had shared food off of one plate and Kim and Mike off another so it seemed that we might have copped for a dodgy kebab in the Atlas mountains.

Breakfast was served inside the Riad this morning because the terrace was still closed in anticipation of bad weather and even though we tried to convince ourselves that there were emerging patches of blue it was very overcast this morning. It had rained in the night but now it was dry so after breakfast we had agreed to be collectively optimistic and leave the umbrellas behind and we set off for another day on the streets of Marrakech.

To begin with we walked back to Bab Agnaou and along a street which led to a long road, Rue Asset el Maach, with mostly local shops and little stores selling food and household items each with a single door and a gloomy interior with boxes and tins stacked from ceiling to floor to make use of all of the available space. As we turned a corner there were herbalist shops with spices arranged in colourful pyramids and baskets of dried flower heads and quack remedies. Margaret and Kim went inside to look at the jars of colourful potions and perfumes and to enquire about a massage but there wasn’t time this morning so they promised they would return later. I imagine that this is a promise that shopkeepers in Marrakech hear hundreds of times every day and probably don’t take them too seriously.

The site that we were heading for was the Badii Palace and for such a big place the entrance was tucked into a narrow lane which we only found after asking several times for directions. The Palace is in ruins now but reputedly took armies of labourers and craftsmen twenty-five years to build and when it was completed it was said to be amongst the most magnificent palaces ever constructed with walls and ceilings encrusted with gold and precious jewels and in the middle a massive pool with an island flanked by four sunken gardens. Sadly the magnificent building survived for barely a hundred years before the Saadian dynasty was overthrown and replaced by the Alouites and the conquering Sultan, Moulay Ismail, came along and stripped the place bare at about the same time as he was sealing up the Saadian Tombs.

Moulay Ismaïl was an interesting character and by all accounts a man of excesses. It is said that he personally killed over twenty-five thousand men but to make up for this he is alleged to have fathered eight hundred and eighty-nine children. This is widely considered the record number of offspring for any man throughout history that can actually be verified. It is estimated that to father that number of children Ismaïl would have had to have sex with an average of 1.2 women every day for sixty years so that must have been a real chore! When he wasn’t slaughtering or shagging he was building himself a new capital city at Meknès in the north of Morocco and it took twelve years to dismantle the Badii Palace and remove the treasures and relocate them and all that is left now are the stripped red mud bricks.

It was easy to imagine how grand this place must have been when it was first completed and we wandered around the extensive gardens where the Sultan and his courtiers would have enjoyed the lavish surroundings and a life of opulence. We walked the walls and climbed the one remaining tower where there was a good view of the site and the city outside it which we shared with the only remaining inhabitants of the palace today – the storks that had built their untidy nests at regular intervals along the top of the walls.

After the Badii Palace we returned to the busy streets and walked the short distance to the Bahia Palace which was built just over a hundred years ago by a grand vizier of the city. The place was much smaller than the Badii Palace and with scores of other visitors felt more crowded as we walked through a succession of immaculately tiled rooms with sculptured stucco and carved cedar wood decoration and outside private courtyards that were once the home of the vizier and his four wives. By all accounts this too was a place of grand excesses and the ruling Sultan, Abdel Aziz, was so jealous of the riches of the Bahia that when the vizier died he had the palace stripped and looted.

Marrakech, The Kasbah and the Saadian Tombs

Next on our unprepared itinerary was the Kasbah which was an area of the city close to our hotel so we walked back along the Rue Sidi Mamoun which although busy seemed quiet and relaxing compared with the traffic in the centre and crossing the road here presented no real difficulties whatsoever. Passing through the Bab Agnaou, the best preserved gate of the entire city we entered the Kasbah, one of the oldest parts of the old city.

We were looking for the Saadian Tombs which the guidebook said shouldn’t be missed but could be difficult to find. First of all we discovered that it was completely right on the second point and after we had walked around the outside of the Kasbah Mosque we missed the entrance and took an unnecessary detour into some back streets and lanes which took us nowhere in particular.

After all the walking we were feeling hungry now so while we consulted the guide book maps we found a café with pavement tables and had a bottle of water (a bottle of water!) and a chicken kebab snack that was cooked on a grill on the pavement which tasted good even though it was complimented by exhaust fumes and the smell of horse manure from a carriage parked up close by. The helpful waiter showed us on the map where we would find the tombs so after we had finished eating we paid up, left a tip and moved on.

The reason that we missed the site was that the entrance is squeezed in between the back of the Mosque and a narrow row of kiosks and having found it we paid our 10 dirham entrance fee and walked through a very narrow alley in between two tall buildings where there was barely room to pass the visitors that were coming out.

The Saadian Tombs were sealed up in the sixteenth century by a jealous ruler, Moulay Ismail, who resented the wealth of his predecessor, Ahmed al Mansour, and who set about dismantling anything he had built or acquired. So successfully was it hidden away that it wasn’t rediscovered until the 1920’s when an inquisitive French administrator overcome with curiosity opened up the entrance and found this treasure hidden away from public view half in ruins and completely forgotten. It would be nice to think that there may still be treasures like this just hidden away somewhere but I suppose with modern mapping techniques like Google Earth this is most unlikely.

There has been a lot of restoration at the site and the two main mausoleums have been returned to their original state when they were built five hundred years ago to contain Mansour’s own tomb. The graves of over a hundred Saadian princes and royal household members are scattered around the garden and the courtyard most with gravestones brilliantly tiled and elaborately inscribed. It was only a small site and it didn’t take long to complete the visit even though we had to compete with several large tour groups to see everything there was to see.

We had been walking now almost continuously for six hours so it was time to return to the Riad for a rest before going out again in the evening. This had been a long six hours without a glass of beer but one of the best things about the Nafis was that it had a bar of sorts so Mike and I were able to enjoy a local brew called Spéciale Flag on the terrace while Kim and Margaret rested. The alcohol conundrum perplexed us but we had no answer to the apparent contradiction inherent in a country brewing beer and making wine but not being able to sell it or drink it.