Mirrored on the opposite river bank is Rabat Medina, and being a slightly intimidating complex maze of alleys and lanes, we indulged in a guided tour. The Rabat instance is joined with the Kasbah of the Udayas, which is a more seriously fortified section of the town placed at the actual river mouth.
Rabat kasbahs & medinas
The sand-coloured citadel grows out of the sea and coast, castellations along some wall tops, flat roofed buildings towering high above others, corners marked with towers.
The keep’s outline was clearly set more by the geography than any military symmetry, while some sections feature clearly defined square forts planted into the walls. Beneath some ramparts canons are deployed in arched openings. Inside the sandy walls, a jumble of bright white buildings bulge across the hill, without any in particular standing out – save for the minaret of the Mosque al Kasbah, tan stone once again and placed directly in the centre of the sprawl.
Some elements are European colonial upgrades, added to defend the river entrance.
The Kasbah and medinas are more than historic curiosities – they continue to house residents as they always have. Most streets are narrow and not open to vehicles, while blocks of buildings tend to form unbroken walls. Houses are typically terraced in a same-but-different fashion, walled up on the outside but bent around interior and private enclosed courtyards. Foreign embassies even house their diplomatic staff here, close as it is to their capital city workplace tower blocks.
The narrow streets are pathways of rough grey cobblestone, walled in by two or three stories of textured plaster which is uniformly painted in a two-tone colour scheme: azure up to a few meters, and white skyward. The reason for the blue paint and its ubiquity does not enjoy a consensus, although several bemusing explanations will be proffered on the asking such as a story about how mosquitos dislike the colour.
The Udayas is a popular tourist site, and many local hustlers cluster around the entrance gates. Complaints about hawkers and aggressive sales pitches are common. Inside, happy school kids ran past our guide and with their teacher were happy to pose for photos – no objections to the camera, as is actually very often an issue in public with older generations and especially women.
Outside the kasbah and adjacent the medina lies the vast Chouhada cemetery. The scale is remarkable; it’s no exaggeration to say the land occupied is almost as large as the medina itself – in the longest dimension hundreds upon hundreds of graves run for almost a kilometre. These gently undulating fields of headstones are all identically aligned with regard to Mecca, countless thousands surrounded by their own walls but mostly situated outside the medina and kasbah fortifications.
Notably, the cemeteries enjoy the cities’ best seaside real estate directly adjacent the Atlantic beach, except for the main road that runs between. On the beach, a surf club and several restaurants get on with life.
On the other side of the river, within sight of the kasbah, the situation is mirrored outside the Salé medina.
A large cemetery nestles the shoulder of the medina, wrapping around the land at the river entrance, with the best view of the Rabat medina opposite, the river, and the coast all the way north and south.
Various small mosques cluster around the cemeteries. Back further up the river, the remains of what would have been a more majestic mosque complex are spread around the base of the Hassan Tower. Designed at the time to be the world’s largest minaret at 86 m (260′) high, workers managed to get to about half that height in the space of four years when the Caliph died in the year 1199 and construction was halted. The surrounding mosque, also immense in scale, was also only just begun, and hundreds of pointless columns remain lined up in ranks inside remnants of freestanding walls. When we visited, the tower itself was being renovated as modern workers try to slow down degradation of the 800 year old sandstone half-building.
At the rear gate, a practised ritual continues: mounted guards in red ceremonial dress, standing at attention – more so when seeing a camera – under the shade of modern canopies.
There is a changing of the guard periodically.
A mosque with prayer hall, minor in comparison to the medieval design, nevertheless functions on site. The entrance was heavily guarded by zealous religious security at prayer time, while carpets were being deployed outdoors. The building is ornately decorated with impressive sliding doors: heavy, intricately patterned, and gold plated.
