On our last night in Marrakech, we decided to treat ourselves and head to Cafe Arabe. We had walked past the restaurant every day on our way to the Jemaa, and after our last full day which was spent relaxing around a pool, we thought we’d finally pay the place a visit, and we definitely saved the best til last.
Looking for a change up from traditional Moroccan cuisine? One of the only restaurants without a questionable lead up, this restaurant is located directly on one of the main roads of the Marrakech Medina. Whether you choose to dine on the ground floor in the courtyard or up above on the terrace, Cafe Arabe offers a modern Moroccan space.
The building housing Cafe Arabe used to be a ‘Foundouk’ or merchant’s inn, where tradesman would stay when visiting the Souks. You can choose to sit in the pretty walled courtyard, or the roof terrace with it’s amazing views of the city and watch the sun set.
A traditional riad courtyard in Marrakech.
The Historical Roots of Marrakech
The history of Marrakesh, a city in southern Morocco, stretches back nearly a thousand years. Founded c. 1070 by the Almoravids as the capital of their empire, Marrakesh went on to also serve as the imperial capital of the Almohad Caliphate from 1147. The Marinids, who captured Marrakesh in 1269, relocated the capital to Fez, leaving Marrakesh as a regional capital of the south. During this period, it often broke off in rebellion into a semi-autonomous state. Marrakesh was captured by the Saadian sharifs in 1525, and resumed its status as imperial capital for a unified Morocco after they captured Fez in 1549.
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Marrakesh reached its epic grandeur under the Saadians, who greatly embellished the city. The Alawi sharifs captured Marrakesh in 1669. In the course of its history, Marrakesh achieved periods of great splendor, interrupted by repeated political struggles, military disorders, famine, plagues and a couple of sacks. Much of it was rebuilt in the 19th century. It was conquered by French troops in 1912, and became part of the French protectorate of Morocco.
Throughout its history, Marrakesh has maintained a keen rivalry with Fez as the leading city in Morocco, and the country often fragmented politically into two halves, with Fez the capital of the north and Marrakesh the capital of the south.
Before the advent of the Almoravids in the mid-11th century, the region was ruled by the Maghrawa from the city of Aghmat (which had served as a regional capital of southern Morocco since Idrisid times.) The Almoravids conquered Aghmat in 1058, bringing their dominance over southern Morocco. However, the Almoravid emir Abu Bakr ibn Umar soon decided Aghmat was overcrowded and unsuitable as their capital.
Being originally Sanhaja Lamtuna tribesmen from the Sahara Desert, the Almoravids searched for a new location in the region that was more consonant with their customary lifestyle. After consultation with allied local Masmuda tribes, it was finally decided that the Almoravids would set up their new base on neutral territory, between the Bani Haylana and the Bani Hazmira tribes. The Almoravids rode out of Aghmat and pitched their desert tents on the west bank of the small Issil river, which marked the boundary between them. The location was open and barren, it had "no living thing except gazelles and ostriches and nothing growing except lotus trees and colocynths". A few kilometres to the north was the Tensift River, to the south the vast sloping plain of Haouz, pastureland suitable for their great herds. About a day's ride to the west was the fertile Nfis river valley, which would serve as the city's breadbasket.
There is a dispute about the exact foundation date: chroniclers Ibn Abi Zar and Ibn Khaldun give it as c. 1061-62 while Ibn Idhari asserts that it was founded in 1070. A probable reconciliation is that Marrakesh started in the 1060s, when Abu Bakr and the Almoravid chieftains first pitched their tents there, and that it remained a desert-style military encampment until the first stone building, the Qasr al-Hajar ("castle of stone", the Almoravid treasury and armory fort), was erected in May, 1070.
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In early 1071, Abu Bakr was recalled to the Sahara to put down a rebellion, and it was his cousin (and eventual successor) Yusuf ibn Tashfin who erected the city's first brick mosque. More buildings were erected soon afterwards, mud-brick houses gradually replacing the tents.
Sultan Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashfin laid the first bridge across the Tensift River to connect Marrakesh to northern Morocco, but the city's life was tied to and oriented towards the south. The High Atlas range south of the city was and has always been of vital concern to Marrakesh and a great determinant of its fate.
Inimical control of the Atlas mountain passes could sever Marrakesh's communications with the Sous and Draa valleys, and seal off access to the Sahara Desert and the lucrative trans-Saharan trade in salt and gold with sub-Saharan Africa (al-sudan), upon which much of its early fortunes rested.
Marrakesh served as the capital of the vast Almoravid empire, which stretched over all of Morocco, western Algeria and southern Spain (al-Andalus). Because of the barrenness of its surroundings, Marrakesh remained merely a political and administrative capital under the Almoravids, never quite displacing bustling Aghmat, just thirty kilometres away, as a commercial or scholarly center.
This began to change under the Almoravid emir Ali ibn Yusuf (r.1106-1142) ("Ben Youssef"), who launched a construction program to give Marrakesh a grander feel. Ali ibn Yusuf erected a new magnificent palace, along Andalusian design, on the western side of the city, connected by a corridor to the old Qasr al-Hajar armory. More importantly, he introduced a new system of waterworks, via cisterns and khettaras (gravity-driven underground canals) designed by his engineer Abd Allah ibn Yunus al-Muhandis, that could supply the entire city with plenty of water and thus support a larger urban population.
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Ibn Yusuf also built several monumental ablution fountains and a grand new mosque, the Masjid al-Siqaya (the first Ben Youssef Mosque), the largest mosque built in the Almoravid empire. The new mosque and the surrounding markets (souqs), were set to form the center of urban life.
The new construction boom and availability of water began to finally attract merchants and craftsmen from elsewhere, gradually turning Marrakesh into a real city. The first to arrive were the tanners, arguably Marrakesh's most famous industry. Intellectual life was more tentative.
Curiously, Marrakesh was originally unenclosed, and the first walls were erected only in the 1120s. Heeding the advice of Abu Walid Ibn Rushd (grandfather of Averroes), Ali invested 70,000 gold dinars into bolstering the city's fortifications as Ibn Tumart and the Almohad movement became more influential. 6 metres (20 ft) tall, with twelve gates and numerous towers, the walls were finished just on time for the first attack on the city by the Almohads.
The Almohads were a new religious movement erected by preacher and self-proclaimed Mahdi Ibn Tumart among the highland Masmuda of the High Atlas. They descended from the mountains in early 1130 and besieged newly fortified Marrakesh for over a month, until they were defeated by the Almoravids in the great Battle of al-Buhayra (al-buhayra means 'lake', referring to the irrigatated orchard gardens east of the city, where the battle took place).
Nonetheless, the Almoravid victory was short-lived, and the Almohads would reorganize and capture the rest of Morocco, eventually returning to take the final piece, Marrakesh, in 1146.
After an eleven-month siege, and a series of inconclusive battles outside the city, in April 1147, the Almohads scaled the walls with ladders, opening the gates of Bab Dukkala and Bab Aylan, seizing the city and hunting down the last Almoravid emir in his palace.
The Almohad Caliph Abd al-Mu'min refused to enter the city because (he claimed) the mosques were oriented incorrectly. Although the Almohads maintained their spiritual capital at Tinmel, in the High Atlas, they made Marrakesh the new administrative capital of their empire, and erected much monumental architecture.
On top of ruins of the Almoravid palace to the west, Abd al-Mu'min erected the (first) Koutoubia Mosque, although he promptly had it torn down shortly after its completion c. 1157 because of an orientation error. The second Koutoubia mosque was probably finished by his son Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur c. 1195, with a grandiose and elaborately adorned minaret that dominated the city's skyline.
Al-Mansur also built the fortified citadel, the Kasbah (qasba), just south of the city (medina) of Marrakesh, with the Bab Agnaou gate connecting them. The Kasbah would serve as the government center of Marrakesh for centuries to come, enclosing the royal palaces, harems, treasuries, armories and barracks.
Much of the Almohad architecture in Marrakesh had counterparts in the cities of Seville (which the Almohads chose as their regional capital in al-Andalus) and Rabat (which they raised from scratch). Artisans who worked on these edifices were drawn from both sides of the straits, and follow similar designs and decorative themes.
It was during Almoravid and Almohad times that Morocco received its name in foreign sources. The death of Yusuf II in 1224 began a period of instability. Marrakesh became the stronghold of the Almohad tribal sheikhs and the ahl ad-dar (descendants of Ibn Tumart), who sought to claw power back from the ruling Almohad family (the descendants of Abd al-Mu'min, who had their power base in Seville).
Marrakesh was taken, lost and retaken by force multiple times by a stream of caliphs and pretenders. Among the notable events was the brutal seizure of Marrakesh by the Sevillan caliph Abd al-Wahid II al-Ma'mun in 1226, which was followed up by a massacre of the Almohad tribal sheikhs and their families and a public denunciation of Ibn Tumart's doctrines by the caliph from the pulpit of the Kasbah mosque.
After al-Ma'mun's death in 1232, his widow tried to install her son, acquiring the support of the Almohad army chiefs and Spanish mercenaries with the promise to hand Marrakesh over to them for the sack.
The internal Almohad struggle led to the loss of al-Andalus to Christian Reconquista attacks, and the rise of a new dynasty, the Marinids in northeast Morocco. A Zenata clan originating from Ifriqiya, the Marinids arrived in Taza in the 1210s. The Marinids ascended by sponsoring different Almohad pretenders against each other, while gradually accumulating power and conquering the north for themselves.
The Marinid emir Abu Yusuf Yaqub laid his first siege of Marrakesh in 1262, but it failed. He thereupon struck a deal with Abu Dabbus, the cousin of the Almohad caliph, to conquer it for them. Abu Dabbus captured Marrakesh in 1266, but refused to hand it over to the Marinids, forcing Abu Yusuf Yaqub to come down and lay siege to it himself.
The Marinids decided against moving their court to Marrakesh and instead established their capital at Fez in the north. Toppled from its high perch, Marrakesh ceased to be an imperial capital, and thereafter served merely as a regional capital of the south.
Marrakesh did not accept its eclipse gracefully, and repeatedly lent itself as a base for rebellions against the Marinid rulers in Fez. The harbinger was the great 1279 revolt of the Sufyanid Arabs who had recently arrived in the region, which was crushed with difficulty by the Marrakesh governor, Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Muhalli, a Marinid client chieftain.
The Marinids subsequently used Marrakesh as a training ground for the heirs to the throne, to hone their governing skills. The use of the title khalifa ("successor") to denote the office of the governor of Marrakesh, came into usage as a result. But the grandeur of the old imperial capital repeatedly encouraged the young princes to aim higher.
Abu Inan's own son and heir, al-Mu'tamid ruled Marrakesh practically independently - or, more accurately, Marrakesh was effectively ruled by Amir ibn Muhammad al-Hintati, the high chief of the Hintata of the High Atlas (one of the old Almohad Masmuda tribes). Al-Hintati dominated the surrounding region, brought the Marinid heir in Marrakesh under his thumb, and arranged a modus vivendi with the sultan Abu Inan.
Al-Hintati remained master of the south after the death of Abi Inan in 1358, when the Marinid state fell into chaos, and the power was fought over between a series of palace viziers in Fez.
Chaos returned after the death of Abd al-Aziz I in 1372. The Marinid empire was effectively partitioned in 1374 between Abu al-Abbas ibn Abi Salim in Fez and his cousin Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Ifellusen in Marrakesh.
In 1415, the Christian Kingdom of Portugal launched a surprise attack and seized Ceuta, the first of a series of incursions by expansionary Portugal into Morocco that would mark much of the next century.
Although effectively independent under Hintata emirs, Marrakesh is known to have participated in campaigns led by the sultans of Fez against the Portuguese invaders at Ceuta (1419) and Tangier (1437). Following the failure to recover Ceuta, the Marinid emir was assassinated in 1420 and Morocco fragmented again.
Sufism had arrived in the Maghreb and local Sufi marabouts arose to fill the vacuum of declining Marinid central power. At least two main branches of Sufi maraboutism can be identified:- the Shadhiliyya (strong in Marrakesh, the Sous, the Rif and Tlemcen), was more radical and oppositional to the established Marinid-Wattasid authorities, while the Qadiriyya (influential in Fez, Touat, Algiers and Bougie) was more moderate and cooperative.
Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli ("Sidi Ben Slimane"), a Sufi Shadhili imam from the Sous, catapulted to prominence in the mid-15th century. Being a sharif (i.e.
In 1458, Marinid emir Abd al-Haqq II finally cleared out his powerful Wattasid viziers, who had dominated the palace of Fez for nearly forty years. The Hintata chiefs of Marrakesh promptly broke off into open revolt and the country took a decided turn towards the Sufi marabouts. It is reported that al-Jazuli, at the head of 13,000 followers from the Sous, crossed over the Atlas and established Sufi zawiya all over the country, a score of them in Marrakesh alone.
The assassination of Imam al-Jazuli in 1465 by Marinid agents led to an uprising in Fez which finally brought the Marinid sultanate to an ignominious end. A new wave of anarchy followed.
The Portuguese availed themselves of the fragmentation to increase their encroachments on Morocco territory, not only in the north (e.g. in Asilah and Tangier, 1471), but also seizing more southerly enclaves, along the Atlantic coast of Morocco, directly threatening the putative kingdom of Marrakesh. The Portuguese established themselves in Agadir (Santa Cruz no Cabo do Gué) in 1505, Souira Guedima (Aguz) in 1507 and Safi (Safim), in 1508. They subsequently seized Azemmour (Azamor) in 1513 and erected a new fortress nearby at Mazagan (Magazão, now al-Jadida) in 1514. From Safi and Azemmour, the Portuguese cultivated the al...
A Culinary Experience
Unfortunately, because we had not made reservations in advance, we were not able to dine on the terrace. As we sat beneath an orange tree in the courtyard, surrounded by walls of Majorelle blue and candle lit tables, we ordered a bottle of Merlot from Meknès. Behind us was a colorful salon reserved for a larger group of people, perfect for a night out on the town.
The menu offered both Italian and Moroccan meals, but being in Morocco we opted for the Moroccan food. We were a bit skeptical about giving the Italian meals a try, but decided we would opt for an Italian appetizer to give it a go. When traveling, we are always skeptical about trying foods that the country does not specialize in (aka Sushi, Italian, American etc.). We’ve already tasted the best of the best in each of these countries and know that no other country can replicate their cuisine. However, we were shocked by how amazing the Burrata turned out to be. It was creamy and super fresh, probably made that very same day! That made us curious to know if their main entrées such as Pasta were equally as good.
The Cous Cous was much larger than I had expected. If we had known we would not have ordered the appetizer! It was delicious. The chicken was well-cooked and hidden underneath the fine Cous Cous and layers of eggplant, carrots, potatoes and squash. I wish we had more space in our stomachs to order dessert..but we were super full.
We were hoping we would have time to run up to the terrace for a quick night cap, but were super tired from our long drive to Marrakech.
He went for Tagine Mech Mech, which was lamb, sweet apricots and nuts. The portion sizes were ridiculously big. The service is fantastic, and the only downside was the provided in the combination of a TV and the football. To be expected really!
And we finished it with the customary ‘Moroccan Whiskey’. Love love love! ❤️
Cafe Arabe is a must stop restaurant for both pre-drinks or dinner.
A delicious tagine, a staple of Moroccan cuisine.
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