Go to a bus station in Fes after dark. Tell them you want to go to Rissani, and then reject their urgings to visit Merzouga, even if they have a friend there; especially if they have a friend there. Then if you can sleep on the bus, wonderful. If not, gaze at the Atlas Mountains under the stars.

When you arrive, you’ll be in the heart of Morocco; where it all began. Where the caravans began, where the kingship began, where the Arabs first taught the desert inhabitants how to grow dates.

Today, Rissani is overshadowed by tourist traps either side of an expanse of the Moroccan Sahara. A kilometer or so north of the city, the dry heat has preserved the oldest ruins of a trading post that dates back to the 8th century; the oldest city in Morocco by some estimations, and the birthplace of the imperial dynasty.

“Rissani is not the real name, the real name is Sijilmassa,” says Mustafa, a caravan trader who has lived in Rissani his whole life, and who sells art, jewelry, and caravan goods during the wetter months. “Sijilmassa was the Door of Africa. 52 days by camel to Timbuktu. The caravans go, they take salt, and we make change—swap. We make swap, we give salt, slaves, and we get back gold”.

Having raised three children on camel caravan earnings, he is happy to coax the odd traveler into his shop and regale them with stories of Rissani’s great past.

Today, Rissani is still a destination for what remains of the traditional Saharan trade routes. The souk at the heart of the town still sees caravans of camels and lorries alike loaded and unloaded, with animals, dates, fabrics, herbs, and goods from countries further south, sold and loaded up again for passage to future destinations.

In a country that has become the most-visited of any African nation, and is one of the most tourist-friendly places in both the African continent and the Arab world, Rissani is a place to see an older Morocco, the kind that enchanted Westerners from the early Romans to authors like Paul Bowles.

City of kings and dates

“Rissani is the city of the king, the Alaouite Dynasty. They say Fes is the old city of Morocco, this is not true. Sijilmassa is 32 years older than Fes,” said Mustafa. Indeed the mausoleum of Moulay Cherif, the great-grandfather of the first king of Morocco can be found there.

Sometime in the 8th or 7th century, or perhaps even before that, when the Arab conquest of the Middle Ages had not begun in earnest, Arabians came to Sijilmassa where rivers that have long since been dammed or diverted left the area green and lush with date palms.

It was the Arabians, Mustafa explained, who first told the Berbers and others who lived there how to cultivate dates by introducing male and female fruit-bearing species near enough to create cross-pollination. A wide variety of dates are to be had there today, from the big, wrinkled “Medjool” dates that make their way to markets across the West, to the smaller, harder, cream-colored “carnishi dates” favored by Moroccans themselves.

Mustafa went further to say that in earlier times, the common name for Sijilmassa was something like “your word,” or “on your word,” because the inhabitants agreed with the Arabs that in exchange for teaching them how to cultivate dates, they would give over between a quarter and a third of all dates produced.

Being far out in the desert, long periods often went by without news reaching the wider Arab world of what went on in the city, including several coups by various Maghreb tribes, but it was clear even from the very early struggles between the Umayyads and Abbasids that Sijilmassa was very wealthy.

Ibn Battuta, a Mahgreb scholar who traveled from the Sahara to China, wrote about Sijilmassa in several instances, saying after first arriving sometime in the 14th century that, “I reached the city of Sijilmasa, a very beautiful city. It has abundant dates of good quality. The city of al-Basra is like it in the abundance of dates, but those of Sijilmasa are superior”.

He noted upon seeing the Chinese city of Quanzhou that “in this city, as in all cities in China, men have orchards and fields and their houses in the middle, as they are in Siljimasa in our country. This is why their towns are so big”.

Making “Swap”

At “March of the Caravans” Mustafa practices an artistry as old as words. In the West, we refer to the kind of thing that men like Mustafa do as bartering, trading, or haggling, but no matter where one travels in Morocco, the phrase the locals use is to “make swap”.

The process has been refined by the great merchant cultures of the Maghreb for thousands of years, and takes place over many customary layers.

This author met Mustafa under auspicious circumstances. Nearly arguing on behalf of a poor price for dates, Mustafa intervened on my behalf, asking why the merchant would demand a price of me that he wouldn’t demand of him.

Here, Mustafa had on a pair of jeans and a North Face fleece, and latching onto my Italian, invited me back to his home for tea. Unlike hungry merchants on the street, Mustafa was delicate. Regularly allowing as many hours as possible to pass between first contact, and making a sale. Prices are quoted as written figures on a notepad, and almost never spoken aloud.

Making a swap is not to commence until all common discussions, of family, weather, and world affairs have exhausted themselves, and tea has been had at least once, ideally twice. Then, and only then, will business begin. By then of course, the merchant is a friend — you’ve drunk their tea, met their kids, agreed on politics. You’ve shared stories, and so the price you’re quoted is surely a favorable one.

For the thinking man, the process is as thoroughly mystifying as any human behavior, and today the back and forth, the wheeling and dealing, echo off the walls of the souk in Rissani as they likely have for 1,500 years. By June, with his stock hopefully exhausted, and the scorching temperatures keeping visitors away, Mustafa will make up a caravan and travel for as long as two months, he says, going anywhere he pleases; sleeping during the heat of the day and traveling by starlight.

He may go south to trade for gold, or into the Atlas Mountains for silver and carpets. He invited me to join him, asking to bring designer brands from the stores from my home near Milan, such as Armani and Gucci, especially handmade leather shoes and tailored suits.

Rissani is as close to a picture of the mystical Morocco which fascinated so many during the 19th century and is one of the few special places left in the country today where you can still see the leylines of time and culture passing back over your shoulder to years long turned to sand and dust. WaL

 

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