Merinidische graven

Fez reached its height in the 13th and 14th centuries under the Marinids, who made it their capital and in 1276 founded a new town, Fez Jdid, west of the old city, Fez el-Bali¹. The hill of al-Qulla overlooks the northern side of Fez el-Bali and its ramparts, with a view over the Sebou valley². Written sources record the burial of many pious people on this site as early as the 11th and 12th centuries, and credit the Almohad sultan Muhammad al-Nasir (r. 1199-1213) with a fortress there containing four mausolea, a mosque and a hammam, fed by channels from the Wadi Fez². These buildings fell into ruin during the famines at the end of the Almohad period².

Under the Marinids the hill became a royal necropolis, also called Kbibat Bni Mrin². Between 1361 and 1398 the successors of Sultan Abu al-Hasan and other princes were buried here; Qantara calls it the last and most important of the Marinid necropolises, the first being Chellah in Rabat². Early in the 16th century Leo Africanus saw the tombs decorated with fine ornament and marble stones bearing epitaphs in engraved letters set off in rich colours, and he mentioned a palace with tombs of Marinid kings that filled onlookers with admiration². Today the tombs are in ruins².

No document allows the plan, architecture or decoration of the Marinid necropolis to be reconstructed, but the remains of three mausolea and of a mosque with its mihrab can still be seen². Qantara lists the materials as stone, fired brick and lime mortar². Few significant remains of these funerary buildings survive, and their origins and models are still unclear; Qantara suggests, from old descriptions, that they resembled other royal mausolea of Morocco, especially the near-contemporary necropolis of Chellah and the Saadian tombs of Marrakesh².