Chefchaouene Qasaba

The city spreads over the sides of a narrow valley nestled between two peaks, from where it gets its name “Chefchaouene” meaning “the two horns” in Tamazight. A holy city, and the centre of religious and cultural radiation in the north of the country, it attracted ulemas, students and marabouts. It owed its reputation to its founder Mawlây ‘Alî ibn Rashîd, a descendant of the Idrisid shurfa, to the many mosques and zawiyya it housed, and to its proximity to the tomb of the great holy sayyid ‘Abd al-Salâm ibn Mshish al-‘Alamî.

The city was founded in 1471 by the sharif Abî al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-‘Alamî, who was better known under the name Ibn Jumaa and was descended from the El Akhmas tribe, in the region of Chefchaouene. He was assassinated by the Portuguese. His cousin the emir Abû al-Hasan ‘Alî ibn Rashîd, led the building works on his return from his warring journey to Granada. Having transplanted the site onto the right bank of the Oued Fowarat, he built the nucleus of the citadel (qasaba) where his close friends and family lived, as well as fighters from his coalition to protect and defend his city. It was the arrival of the Saddians that put an end to Ben Rashîd’s family’s power.

The city also included a mosque and living quarters circled by solid ramparts. The buildings are stepped along the narrow and winding streets. The massive and successive arrival of Andalusian families during the period of the Spanish re-conquest contributed to the urban, demographic and architectural development of the city and gave it its typically Granadan features.

Because of its initial, purely military role, the medina was built around a central nucleus, the qasaba. This fortress is located in the north-west part of the Souiqa district. It served as a command base to fight the Portuguese occupiers. With its more or less regular, rectangular layout, it is bordered by a rammed earth wall, around which runs a wall-walk crowned with merlons. The wall is flanked, at uneven distances, by eleven towers, of which the most imposing example was built in the early sixteenth century at the time of Mawlây Muhammad. It is a square tower, with three floors. The last floor is a mirador from where the whole of the medina and its surrounding territory can be viewed. The appearance and the proportions of this work, its architectural masses and its construction method are reminiscent of Andalusian fortifications, and in particular of the residential towers in Granada. Two gates pierce the qasaba wall – one to the east leads to the souk and the city, the other to the west leads to the mosque.

The inside of the qasaba has currently been developed into a big garden with two large basins. In the north-east corner is the building that houses the collections of the Ethnographical Museum and the Centre for Andalusian Studies.