Water Matters
July 2008
Banner photo: R.Maro/version-foto.de
The Gardens of Marrakech
Dr. Mohammed El Faïz lives in Marrakech and is a writer, garden designer and lecturer. He has written several articles and books including Les Jardins de Marrakech (Paris, Actes Sud, 2000), and has contributed an article to Gardens, City Life, and Culture: A World Tour (US, Dumbarton Oaks, 2008).
SGI Quarterly: Can you describe how Marrakech came to be founded as one of the first "garden cities" in the world from 1071 onwards?
Mohammed El Faïz: Gardens are the conceptual key to the development of Arab city architecture. In the middle ages, historians describing these towns praised the walkways, the orchards and the cultivation of plants surrounding the town. Everywhere, the model of the garden city prevailed--from Damascus to Baghdad, from Cordoba to Fez--houses appeared like cubes nesting in an ocean of green. Arabs associated gardens with urbanism in their towns.
Saadian pavilion in the Menara Garden, Marrakech, seen against the Atlas mountains
The art of making gardens, which counts as one of the most precious benefits of Islamic civilization, accompanied urbanization as shown in the city gardens of Andalusia and North Africa.
The town of Marrakech, which was constructed in 1071, held an impressive reputation as a green capital for nine centuries. It is in this city that the art of gardens was born in the twelfth century. A new style, the Almohad style, appeared at that time, with big orchards, deep ponds, water monuments, pavilions, all contained within fortifications and enclosures. The creators of these gardens knew how to make a garden, like a dream corner or piece of paradise, in a desert location.
Before 1912 (in the pre-colonial period) Marrakech was a garden city surrounded by richly cultivated green spaces which came right up to the ramparts. It remained like this until the 20th century. Its 65,000 inhabitants lived in a city, two-thirds of which contained typical traditional gardens like jnân and arsa.
The Agdal Garden in Marrakech
[CC Patrice]
SGIQ: What motivated your campaign to revive the Menara and Agdal gardens, where 100,000 fruit trees were originally planted?
MEF: The gardens of Agdal and Menara are remarkable monuments because of their age, but also the originality of their style, the value of their architectural compositions, growth and landscaping. Built in the 12th century, the same period as Koutoubia de Marrakech, the Hassan Tower of Rabat and the Giralda of Seville, they are among the most ancient gardens in the whole of the Arab world. From Spain to India, there are no gardens that predate 1157, or certainly none which have been preserved in the authentic style in which they were laid out. Remember that the Generalife gardens, which are part of the Palace of the Alhambra in Granada, date from the 14th century, and the Taj Mahal in India and the gardens of Iran are no older than the 16th century. Conscious of the unique heritage of these gardens, I have made sure that they are at the forefront of my research. We have also created an NGO (Association of Ibn Al Awwam) to save the hydraulic system that provides water to the gardens.
SGIQ: What does that hydraulic system consist of?
MEF: The city of Marrakech is distinguished by the existence of an original hydraulic system made out of khettara which are a kind of underground drainage system. This system was developed at the founding of the city in the 11th century. They have served to provide drinking water to the city and for the irrigation of the garden landscapes. In the 1970s, 600 khettaras were recorded making up a network of about 900 km. Today, this hydraulic heritage has disappeared under the combined effect of urbanization and the over-exploitation of the ground water. Despite my writing on this subject, we have still not managed to save the hydraulic system.
Of the 403 gardens with historic designs which have been recorded in the Arab Muslim world, only 121 have preserved their original form. Out of this reduced number of historic gardens, the majority of them are in a state of ruin--archaeological traces of the ruins have disappeared, and can be found only as references in books. These alarming statistics reveal how gardens in Arabic style are endangered monuments. Soon, humanity will not be able to admire any of these gardens any more, hence my repeated calls to UNESCO and to the ministers of culture in Arab Muslim countries. The Agdal and the Menara are a unique testimony of the 12th century.
A khettara
SGIQ: You have said elsewhere that the city planners of the 11th century "understood very early on that there had to be a balance, that without gardens and parks, the city would suffocate." Do you think that modern city planners could learn from them?
MEF: Some years ago I laid out a plan for the replanting and re-greening of the city of Marrakech, a city which has lost its own identity as a garden city. But unfortunately I did not find the finances to turn this plan into a reality. Instead, rapid urbanization has destroyed what was left of the city's urban ecology.
Moroccan urban planners do not seem to have given any thought to the Arab heritage of the garden city, or what we can learn from it. They have been concerned with property speculation and spiraling housing development.
But I hope to be able to inspire them to re-establish the principles of green urbanism and to reintroduce the art of gardening into their ideas. Only on condition of this, can we help bring about a new kind of urbanism, which is well integrated into the social, historical, cultural and environmental history of our civilization.
