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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.
Much farther 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 Ordovician island arc, but, if I’d been there 260 Ma earlier, 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.
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.