Exploring the Fes Medina Souks

Fes is one of Morocco’s four Imperial cities (homes of royalty).  It’s an ancient city, founded in the 8th century, and it still has a large Medina (old city).  Of places I’ve visited, the Medina in Fes is unique in that there are no roads — only lanes and alleys which wind their way through a maze of old buildings.  The Fes Medina is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Medina has a number of markets (souks), and our walk through it took us through a number of them.   We were moving at a pretty good pace, so I didn’t catch the names of  most of them.  Fortunately we had a professional guide leading us and introducing us to many of the vendors who are his neighbors and friends.  Not only was our guide an expert at navigating the maze, he actually lives in the Medina.   Walking the markets of Fes was unlike any other market I’ve ever visited.  Crowded, busy, dark and so very narrow, as you can see from these photos.  It’s as close as I’ve ever come to having an authentic medieval shopping experience.

There’s much more to the Medina than shopping — mosques, schools and universities, fine restaurants, and so on, but today’s post will focus on the markets we wandered through.  The markets are grouped by the type of goods they sell.  For example, meat, shoes, clothing, etc.  Each area focuses on specific goods.

Most of the activity we saw was by the vendors selling fresh food — especially meat.

A very interesting shop was that of a camel butcher — the only one in the entire medina.  His signage featured two camels heads hanging from hooks.  Camel meat is supposed to be very tasty and is not cheap, but we never tried any so I’m not sure if that’s true.

There were also produce vendors selling fruit and vegetables from farms in the nearby Middle Atlas mountains.

Spices were easily found….

…as were a variety of fruit beverages.  Being a Muslim country, wine and alcohol sales are extremely limited and frowned upon.

We passed several women baking trid—a thin pastry baked over a rounded clay pot (called an egg).

One of the most interesting and colorful parts of the souks was the area where wool and silk are died.

A very memorable and kind man was the shop owner of a knife shop.  He still had an old fashioned grinding stone with which he sharpened things.