MARRAKESH, MOROCCO: Fighting to Keep Ancient Traditions Alive

[Music] [Music] so i've just arrived in marrakech and i chose to stay in this quarter of the medina which is called siddi ben sliman and actually takes the name of one of the seven saints here in marrakech i decided to stay here because it's a lot more authentic you can really see like local life here in marrakech and i'm hoping to get that perspective during my time here this is a place where locals live and work and i want to discover that local culture and that authentic side of the medina and of marrakech the medina is home to thousands of riyads traditional moroccan homes with multiple stories that center around an open-air courtyard that contains a fountain riyads were the stately city homes of the wealthiest citizens such as merchants and courtiers who were able to build mansions which included interior gardens these interior gardens were a popular feature of palace architecture in the islamic world because water and greenery were associated with images of paradise in islam in recent years there has been growing popularity in using these traditional moroccan houses as part of morocco's tourism industry with many crumbling and ruined riads being bought and converted into hotels guest houses or restaurants [Music] one of the defining characteristics of a quarter or a typical quarter here in the medina is a fountain like the one that you see behind me this one is still functioning but most of them in the medina they don't work anymore so you can see that actually you still get water from the fountain which is pretty cool i mean i've seen quite a few times like kids coming and filling up buckets of water it's amazing like you've got all these um beautiful like mosaics as well this is from like the 10th i think or 11th century so pretty amazing that it's completely intact very beautiful designs [Music] this is the hamam city ben sliman so another thing that's very characteristic of the medina and in every quarter of the medina you'll always find a herman so you have i think men's and women's they're obviously separate and usually they come here maybe once every week once every 10 days it's kind of like a sauna like a steam bath so this one is this one in this neighborhood and you can see like again very beautiful tiles just very old her mom as well because this is a very old neighborhood [Music] this is the local mosque of this neighborhood the city ben sliman mosque which is very very beautiful and you've also got the school as well so these are two things that you find in every quarter of a medina just like wandering around the streets of the medina and getting lost but there are so many places where you just have like the most beautiful details so you can see like the arches and and the colors and you've got like people's homes here and some of the doors when they're slightly ajar you can see the um the tiles with the typical moroccan mosaics and you know if you wander around the medina get lost you'll really kind of come across some really beautiful places [Music] [Music] you have mint [Music] got lots of fresh mints now fresh herbs smell absolutely delicious yeah this is amazing this is you can mix it dead fresh mint for the tea for the mint tea good for all the lots of these um stools selling local bread so bread is a huge huge thing in marrakech well in the whole of morocco this one i think i'm gonna this one two three dirham this is half some onion with spices what's it called the name cinnamon in arabics arabic cinnamon movement great okay so this is the local market here and you can see they've just got so much fresh food fresh vegetables like it's amazing how much stuff they've got huge oranges bananas avocados this market is pretty crazy it's the babs market which is a local quarter there's so much like fresh fruit strawberries apples like oh my gosh it's incredible the orange juice is quite famous here in morocco because the oranges are very fresh and you can just see they're everywhere they're just amazing people just doing their shopping their local shopping [Music] uh so this is one of several monuments here in marrakesh in the medina which i think if you visit them you get a really good idea of how historic marrakech is the city's around a thousand years old and this is one of the palaces which is now in ruins the baddie palace baddie means the incomparable it was commissioned to be built by the then ruler the sultan al-mansour he was from the sadian dynasty so morocco has a history of different dynasties that would rule the country and the sadian dynasties were one of the dynasties that ruled for a long time so he commissioned the palace to be built in the 16th century you can imagine in the times that it was a functioning palace he built it from most luxurious materials gold ivory turquoise so it was a very lavish palace it's absolutely stunning i mean the palace is in ruins now unfortunately once the sultan passed away the next ruling dynasty basically stripped this whole palace of all the materials all the gold all the ivory and they moved all that material to the other capital of morocco which was meknes so it's really been left in ruins but you can really see like how vast how grand this place is and imagine what it would have been like when it was a beautiful functioning palace [Music] wow it's amazing you can still see the detailing on the steps made of this beautiful tile work in this gorgeous turquoise color it's incredible that it's still preserved so well sultan ahmed al-mansour was just as extravagant in death as he was in life after he built baddie palace in the 16th century he transformed a nearby necropolis into a lavish tomb complex where his own impressive tomb resides along with those he held in great esteem including family members princes and some jewish dignitaries the sadian tombs showcased the incredible skills of master artisans who used materials including imported italian marble and gold intricate tile work known as zelige work and woodwork to construct this beautiful complex it's a site which radiates with beauty [Music] [Applause] jaffa is a local meraki who was born and brought up in marrakech and knows the local spots in the old medina where you can witness an authentic daily life wow with it he's making the towels like this he's making my hands it's all like cotton cotton yeah this is a towel for the hammer for the hammer and it's all doing it by hand everything in my hand wow this is like a really kind of traditional way this is a very traditional one look at his foot one foot here [Music] since he was 12 years old so that is literally what he's been doing all is pretty much all his life okay thank you wow this used to be a hotel in the pasta it's caravan where were they coming from are they coming from to come from wow so do you break them yeah and you sell them here okay so they look like they're kind of from for example slippers or bags from a leather door they buy bars and you take them back to the safari so do you sell do you buy and you go to sell like a trading this is the caravan that's how it works and it was it was camels right come on but now no more caravan trade so so this place was given to artisans to artists that's what you see now a lot of artisans all over the place okay making like this one is making bags making making bells this is one of the oldest of the public ovens in marrakesh so the people they make the dough at home and they bring it to him to bake like this bread this belongs to a family yeah in this culture also this pastry how does he know like what bread is for what family you remember so he remembers them and whose bread is who's bread oh this is it it's for you oh wow that's a hob sugar breath the hub i hope he's not giving me one of his families brent no no no this is meant for the public actually because these small ones they he baked them to sell to the public and people come to buy yeah the public comes back like the lady we saw outside yeah she's slowly spread and she's selling it oh wow that's amazing this is a cake from uh from uh corn corn cake it's good yeah corn cake wow every quarter every single quarter in the medina telling me always has a mosque a bakery and a hammam that's what you'll find in every quarter of a medina so this is the place where the water is heated for the hubble oh so the proper proper public hammam used by murakshi you heat it with a wood fire yeah see how many times he has over there this is where you cook the tangy so when we say tanjia it's always associated with the city of marrakesh you can make it in other cities but decorate because it is where the tangier started in the first place inside you put meat yes garlic olive oil preserved lemon preserved butter and suffer this is the preserved lemon taste it taste it perfectly this one is this one takes one year to preserve right this is what gives the the taste to the tamiji he's more than that he's a musician yeah music [Music] oh [Music] [Music] marrakesh is an ancient city which has acted as a hub of trade and commerce for nearly a thousand years one of the most fascinating aspects of this city's rich and diverse history is its relationship with the arts and crafts from leather textiles and especially metal craftsmen to this day use the skills that have been passed down generation through generation in the various trades and some artisans have had their family workshops in the medina for over 100 years so this is the traditional dish here in marrakech which is the tan shia which i really want to try it looks incredibly tasty and it's cooked in a very distinctive pot which shares the same name and it's beef yes beef yes it's very delicious yes yes taste a little bit and see what it's like to taste a little bit [Music] that's so incredibly tender and the taste is so good yeah what happened wow so this is the pot which is called the tangier wow [Music] looks so good thank you looks absolutely delicious so they cook the meat usually it's either lamb or beef but you can also have chicken as well and they'll add spices to it a few spices like cumin and paprika and then they'll slow cook it for three hours they'll put it in this pot which is a tangier pot and then they'll take it somewhere where you can put it traditionally in hot ash and then cook it for around three four hours and then it becomes like this very tender meat they always serve as bread with the dish and it's called hobs bread so you can mop up the juices the meat literally melts in your mouth it's so tender so flavoursome [Music] another age-old tradition synonymous with marrakech is the art of storytelling which is thought to date back to the 11th century stories of ancient myths legends and folktales would often be verbally told to crowd and cafe clock in the old medina is one of the last remaining places trying to keep this ancient art alive what is storytelling everything in our lives is a story and everybody is a storyteller the storytelling aspect in morocco is one of the fundamental pillars of the whole culture if you go and ask about storytellers in morocco they're like the documentaries of history of the moroccan history because what is the best way to deliver a message to have fun with it you're gonna be hearing a story from his majesty and of course i'm going to be providing a translated version of the story [Music] happily ever after because happiness is relevant but they lived moderately happily ever after you know and that's the end of my story thank you so much [Applause] the traditional storytelling in morocco started with the creation of the country that's like 1200 years ago wow because morocco apart from the united kingdom morocco is currently the second oldest ongoing active kingdom that have ever lived in in on the face of the earth the storytelling we grew up with it um it's in our blood it's in our roots in our culture we tell stories about you know how the boogeyman would get you in the streets we tell stories to teach we tell stories to entertain if you say storytelling is one of the components of the moroccan life that the true moroccan life you would find storytelling inverted into it [Applause] um [Music] [Music] hello [Music] [Music] located on the southern slopes of the high atlas mountains is the road of a thousand kaz bars kathbars are ancient fortresses that were occupied by wealthy leaders and these stunning monuments helped to tell the story of morocco's rich and diverse history behind me is a casbah teluet and this is the first cav bar along the way that we're going to go and have a look around kevbar bartelowet has a very interesting history to it so i want to go and have a look and see what it's like [Music] you can see that in its former days this kaz bar must have been absolutely stunning just love the color it's all like a red brick which is very typical characteristic of marrakesh and the kaz bars the family that was presiding over this kaz bar was the l glowy family a very very wealthy family and the head of the family the pasha was called tami l galway he was a very very powerful man he had a lot of political and cultural and economic influence in morocco and he was a pasha of marrakesh in 1912 morocco became a french protectorate and samuel blaui became very close with a french colonialist so in the end he ended up betraying the king the sultan at the time mohammed v and he helped the french colonialists exile mohammed v because the sultan had become very intent on gaining moroccan independence and gaining independence from the french but then in 1955 muhammad came back from france and he declared morocco independent but unfortunately samuel glauwe died two years later and to this day the the government here in morocco hasn't really made an effort to restore it because of the nature of the the betrayal that the glory family bestowed upon king mohammed v oh this room is really well maintained so you can still see beautiful tile work very typical moroccan tile mosaic work called zelige here it's very colorful comes from fez and you know you probably had hundreds of moroccan craftsmen that designed this beautiful room it's probably where the family held lavish parties and invited very important people because you know they're very wealthy very influential and it said that they held kind of very ostentatious parties here and you can really see that this incredible room is made to impress guests [Music] [Laughter] hmm [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] behind me you have one of the most famous cat bars here in morocco which is the kaspar eight ben hadou and this cav bar is actually a world heritage unesco site it was built in the 17th century and it's very famous and well known here in morocco because a lot of international films like the gladiator were filmed in the height ben hadou and it's a great example of the traditional mud brick kaz bars that were built a few centuries ago here in morocco [Music] this kaz bar is called kasbah amrodil and it was built in the 17th century by a very wealthy arabic family they had huge plots of land so they had a lot of income coming in from agriculture and cattle and so they built this beautiful casbah and it's also very famous because the king of morocco chose this casbah to be the one on the banknote the old moroccan durham banknotes kaz bars are fortresses and typically a wealthy family would live in one along with their servants and soldiers they're very grand so it's hard to believe that it was just for one family [Music] so i'm in the bit which is called the courtyard so the riyadh and this is very traditional the way that they had the houses in you know the olden days in morocco would be a riyadh style so you'd always have a central courtyard with a fountain in the middle and that would be very much like the centerpiece of the home and if you stay in the riyadh's in marrakech then you'll see that they all have that central feature which is you know the courtyard they're all defined by a courtyard and a fountain in the middle and fruit trees that are growing [Music] well so as soon as i walk in here i can really feel like how cool it is that the air is much cooler inside that's one of the reasons why they built these homes using the clay because it kept the heat in when it was cold but then when it was hot it was also very good at cooling down the home and so you can really feel when you come inside it's it's cooler so this is what would have been the prayer room and there are five windows facing towards the direction of mecca so those five windows represent the five pillars of islam so the five pillars of islam are you believe in the prophet muhammad and allah you pray five times a day you fast during the holy month of ramadan you give money to the poor and you go to mecca at least once in your life for the pilgrimage even though this kaz bar is very old it was originally built in the 17th century the families still do restoration work especially because when there are heavy rains the mud disintegrates so the last time they restored this kaz bar was around 10 years ago and when you look around and you see especially on the rooftops the detailing they've used exactly the same materials that they used when they first built it which is the mud clay so very much preserves the original structure of this beautiful building [Music] [Music] marrakech is the most visited city in morocco and i was apprehensive about being able to find authentic local life easily but there's a whole other side to the medina which i've thoroughly enjoyed exploring and i've come away with a real appreciation of the rich moroccan heritage which is so ingrained in the social fabric of this bustling metropolis [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: Malini Angelica

Views: 577,099

Keywords: #marrakech, #marrakesh, #morocco, #travelvlog, #traveldocumentary

Id: N5lopKllTtw

Length: 33min 36sec (2016 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022