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There are so many lane ways, most are not marked on maps so essentailly you get beautifully lost in the glorious maze that is Marrakech.
The streets are crowded (but you can not take photos of the locals) mopeds and bicycles race past you. We also spotted a wizard!
Taken from the northern end of the Avenue des consuls, just before it meets the Route des Oudayas. Facing north-northwestward.
My exploration of Morocco’s architecturally and historically fascinating capital was undertaken with a couple of shipmates during a port visit to Casablanca. We decided to eschew the usual canned bus tours offered to our crew. Instead we somehow managed to engage the services of a very helpful and accommodating taxi driver willing to make the 174 km / 108 mi trip to Rabat and back. I can’t remember how many dirhams or US dollars he charged, but I do recall that his rate was remarkably low and within the budget of generally impecunious junior officers.
I say that the driver was accommodating because he patiently put up with my various stops along the way to investigate roadcuts and river mouths as we headed up the Atlantic coast. I knew absolutely nothing about the geology of Morocco, but was determined to learn at least a little something. The photos I took in those spots may be presented in a separate album later on.
As I have since discovered, Morocco has a tremendous amount of geology to revel in. Both Casablanca and Rabat are situated in the structural domain known as the Meseta, with its western portion separated from the eastern by the Middle Atlas range. The Meseta is a region with a basement of Paleozoic rocks, some of which have been exploited since ancient times for building stone.
Back in the good old days of Pangaea this locale would have been adjacent to where I much later lived in New Hampshire. There my home was actually situated on an accreted Ordovician island arc. But if I’d been there 260 Ma before present, I could have taken a quick trip eastward into northwestern Africa. Assuming, that is, that some sabertoothed gorgonopsian didn’t get me first.
The mighty citadel pictured above is the Kasbah of the Udayas. Its northern part dates back to the 12th century AD, but its southern section, closer to the camera, was added in the 18th. Its state preservation was not particularly good when I visited in 1976, but I note much restoration has been done since. For one thing, there are now lofty fan palms gracing the walkway up to the Bab Oudaya, the great arched entrance at the top of the ramp.
Within the confines of the Kasbah one finds a number of locally derived building materials, but much of the exterior was constructed of the Salé Calcarenite. Here its tendency to weather from its original light-brown tint to something richer and more golden is apparent. As are its areas of white efflorescence deposits—halite or gypsum or both.
Calcarenites often make attractive candidates for architectural uses. The most widely employed dimension stone in the US, the Salem Limestone, is one. So is the rock that makes up the glorious assemblage of Doric temples in Agrigento, Sicily.
A carbonate rock but a rather odd one, calcarenite is composed of sand-sized grains—often broken-up bits of fossils—glued together more or less securely with the mineral calcite. Geology-challenged architectural historians often mistake it for sandstone. Regardless of how it’s identified or misidentified, though, it’s usually very workable and easy to cut, shape, and carve.
The Salé Calcarenite was quarried north of here, just across the mouth of the tidal river known as the Bou Regreg. Dating from the Pliocene epoch to the current, Quaternary period, this rock was taken from a large complex of fossil-dune ridges that run parallel to the Atlantic shoreline.
Fortunately the Salé stone has inspired a good deal of investigative zeal from Moroccan geologists and their European colleagues. In posts of this album to come, I’ll review some of their own descriptions of its properties, and I’ll also touch upon another selection, the Devonian-period Oued Akrech Marble, also used in Rabat by local architects.
My own quarrying activities so far have been conducted primarily in the following productive bedrock:
- Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (ONHYM). “Structural Domains of Morocco.” Accessed August 1, 2025. mining.onhym.com/en/structural-domains.
- Asebriy, Lahcen, Taj-Eddine Cherkaoui, Iz-Eddine El Amrani El Hassani, Roberto Franchi, Francesco Guerrera, Manuel Martín-Martín, Claudia Patamìa, Giuliana Raffaelli, Pedro Robles Marin, Julian Tejera De Leon. “Deterioration Processes on Archaeological Sites of Chellah and Oudayas (World Cultural Heritage, Rabat, Morocco): Restoration Test and Recommendations.” Bollettino della Societa Geologica Italiana: February 2009.
- Hraita, Mohammed, Younes El Rhaffari, Abderrahim Samaouali, Yves Géraud, Mohamed Boukalouch. “Petrophysical, Petrographical and Mineralogical Characterization of Calcarenite Rock Used for Monumental Building in Morocco.” Romanian Journal of Materials 2014, 44 (4), 365 – 374.
- El Azhari, Hamid, and Iz-Eddine El Amrani El Hassani. “Effect of the Number and Orientation of Fractures on the P-Wave Velocity Diminution: Application on the Building Stones of the Rabat Area (Morocco).” Geomaterials, 2013:3, 71-81.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Architectural Geology of Rabat album.
Somewhere nearby is the Al-Karaouine Mosque, one of the most iconic, most historical mosques in all of Africa. But, we don't get to see that. Not because they're trying to manage and control crowds - not because they're trying to avoid turning the mosque into an overrun tourist site. But because they just don't want non-Muslims defiling / invading / getting to experience their space.
I'm all for respecting sacred space. I'm all for maintaining mosques, universities, whatever they may be, as usable for the actual people for the actual purpose and not overrun with tourists. But to say that only we people - ethnically, religiously, whatever it may be; us and not you - are allowed in, I find frankly offensive. I mean, consider military bases or political offices (or, indeed, any office building of any kind) : okay, if you don't work there, you don't have official business there, then there isn't good reason for you to be there, and there's probably real security concerns, or reasons having to do with avoiding outsiders disrupting things... That's normal, that's fine. That's just to be expected. But if you go to a US military base, or the US Capitol Building, or the headquarters of X corporation, they're not saying "all Americans, come in freely, everyone else, out." If you visit the Vatican, or Notre Dame, or Westminster Abbey, no one is saying "all Christians come right on in, all others, no." .... It's discriminatory. You want to visit the Imperial Palaces in Japan? Some are open to *everyone*, regardless of nationality, but it's by application and there's a process, and I think you might even need to show your passport or official ID for some kind of security check, but even so it's not open to only Japanese and closed to everyone else. ... And some of the other palaces are closed to just about everyone, Japanese or not. Only people with official business are allowed into certain parts of the Tokyo Imperial Palace, and certain parts of the most famous Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. And certain parts of just about every church or synagogue in the world: you can't just walk in to people's offices, after all. Hey, the "behind the scenes" areas of most museums, theatres, and other public areas are also not open to the public. Fine. That's perfectly normal. But to say that every single mosque in the entire country is open to any and all Muslims and closed to everyone else... that's just flat-out discrimination. No good.
Cold waves of Atlantic wash over beautiful Hassan II Mosque towering above the city
Casablanсa, Morocco
Facing northeastward and looking at the side portal adjacent to the Bab Oudaya.
For the list of my primary sources for this series, see the bottom of the Part 1 essay.
In 1976 this relatively modest arched passage was the main entrance to the Kasbah. And it still is. But half a century ago, as this photo shows, it was in sore need of a substantial amount of restoration work. Not only had some of the arch-supporting stones of the doorframe fallen away; much of the rest of the rock was badly weathered.
This was especially evident in the whitened surfaces, which appear to be heavy deposits of salt-compound efflorescence that were leached out of the rock’s interior. That’s a plausible hypothesis, anyway, given the proximity of the saline Bou Regreg tidal estuary and the North Atlantic itself.
However, if you take a look at the modern version of this spot on Google Earth Street View, you’ll find that the locally quarried Salé Calcarenite used here has indeed been lovingly cleaned and restored. This distinctive if less than enduring stone, now once again sporting its original Earth-toned tints, began its career as shoreline bedrock located just across the mouth of the river. It ranges in age from the Pliocene to the present Quaternary period.
When I first started to research the Salé and its widespread use in Rabat, I was excited to find a second calcarenite in architectural use. The first I’d known of was southern Indiana’s redoubtable Salem Limestone. That Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous) selection, which since the latter part of the nineteenth century has been produced in huge quantities, is undoubtedly America’s most common building stone.
Calcarenite is perhaps the oddest form of limestone, and one that because of its granular texture is often mistaken for sandstone. It’s composed of calcareous fossil fragments glued together with still more calcite. There’s something about this composition that makes it a mason’s dream. It is handily sawn into sections of whatever size you wish, and it’s almost as easy to carve into finely wrought detail as a bar of soap.
Interestingly, since I began my Rabat album, I’ve come across two other examples of this offbeat sedimentary rock type that have been extensively utilized by Old World builders. The first of these, taken from the Pleistocene Agrigento Formation, was used for the incomparable complex of Doric temples erected by the Greek colonists of Akragas, Trinacria —now Agrigento, Sicily. In fact, those beautiful structures stand directly on the bedrock from which their stone was quarried.
The other calcarenite is the Miocene-epoch Marés Stone found on two Balearic isles, Mallorca and Menorca. It has been employed there for everything from the magnificent Palma Cathedral to simple farm-field walls. And in true calcarenite fashion, the Marés and the Agrigento are both renowned for their buff-to-golden coloration, and for their superb workability.
As I continue my rambling researches here and there, I wouldn’t be surprised if I stumble across still other architecturally significant varieties of this fascinating, fossil-rich rock.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Architectural Geology of Rabat album..
At the entrance to the Kasbah of the Udayas. Gazing at the upper portion of the outer gate of the Bab Oudaya.
For the list of my primary sources for this series, see the bottom of the Part 1 essay.
At this level of scrutiny it’s vividly obvious that the stone used here, the locally quarried Salé Calcarenite, is an excellent carving medium despite its long-term preservation issues. It shares that virtue with its trans-Atlantic calcarenitic equivalent, the Salem Limestone of southern Indiana.
Besides the graceful geometric detail there’s an elegant inscription in Kufic and my favorite feature of all. It’s definitely of biologic origin, but I’m not really sure whether it represents palmettes or scallop shells. My Plant Kingdom bias notwithstanding, I hope it’s the latter, because it would be an appropriately marine reference to the tidal estuary (the Bou Regreg) and the great ocean (the North Atlantic) that lie just beyond the Kasbah’s walls.
In some recent posts I have emitted some dark and grumbling comments about my own species, which in truth is showing its worst side in many ways these days. But now, inspired by the beauty of the architectural ornamentation pictured above, I feel obliged to do a balancing act and come to humanity’s defense. Somewhat.
Recently I came across a rant by a YouTube personality, full of prideful scorn, who describes himself as a “doomer.” He is part of a community of people that makes a lot of hay out of the ecological overshoot and climatic chaos that is increasingly overcoming us.
There’s plenty of good science documenting these terrifying threats, but I personally can’t stomach anyone who chatters away about such things in online social-media settings and glibly suggests humankind should go utterly extinct so that Mother Nature can return to her pristine innocence. As if she ever had any.
The fact is that Homo sapiens comprehends surprisingly little, lives largely by delusion, and embodies many vile things that we often can’t admit to. And yet in our best expressions of art, architecture, engineering, and science we’ve also made amazingly close approaches to the sublime.
One of the reasons the great novels of the past are so important to read and read again is that they open up our understanding of the deficiencies, glories, and complexities of the human psyche. Here I think of the works of Melville, George Eliot, and Dostoyevsky in particular. And, as I recall, there was a certain Elizabethan playwright who also covered that beat pretty well.
But nowadays most people are blissfully uneducated in the way that matters most. Whether they’re PhDs or ditch-diggers, they stubbornly cling to the lowest level of their own intelligence and surrender themselves to self-justifying stories.
We believe humanity is so splendidly innovative that it will solve any problem the next century throws at it. Or, if you prefer to join this club instead, our species is a parasite or disease that needs to be eradicated so our poor suffering planet can recover. The doomer I mentioned above espouses that, in a vocabulary-starved outpouring of scatological insults. And his audience gleefully agrees with him. What he exposes, of course, is a seething self-hatred deflected outward to the whole human world.
The truth is that the Thanatos-worshipping doomers trumpeting their collective death wish are just as peabrained as the purveyors of that classic form of American stupidity, techno-optimism. No one seems to grasp that in our short history we’ve been very good, sometimes, and very bad, sometimes. So simple explanations do not reflect reality.
While our brains are clearly not adapted to the modern world we have so heedlessly thrown ourselves into, the fact remains that in the midst of murder, tribalism, and genocide we’ve proven ourselves capable of creating the transcendent. The Bab Oudaya, like many other human works I could prattle on about, makes that clear for us to see. We should take a little pride in that, whatever happens next.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Architectural Geology of Rabat album.