The Royal Stables in Meknes, Morocco
Royal stables in Meknes, Morocco
Yesterday I wrote about the Royal Stables in Meknes. Today I show several more photos taken during our visit. On our visit to Morocco we visited six of the nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites. While these stables are not separately listed, they do make up an important part of the historic city of Meknes with the whole city being on the list.
Below is a water wheel inside the stables. This was part of the extensive water supply system used throughout the stables and adjacent granaries.
Read more about the stables here.
Royal stables in Meknes, Morocco
Royal stables in Meknes, Morocco
The Royal Stables in Meknes, Morocco
Royal stables in Meknes, Morocco
The Royal Stables in Meknes are one of the more impressive buildings we visited during our visit to Morocco. They were built during the rule of Moulay Ismail (born 1645 and lived until 1727). He was a ruthless leader and he had a great love of horses. This impressive building is all the more remarkable when you realise the size of it, the engineering feat accomplished to build and maintain it and what it achieved.
The stables housed no less than twelve thousand horses and their attendants, a groom and a slave for each one. The horses were treated far better than their carers. To build such a facility was amazing, but the story doesn’t end there. Huge granaries (see next photo) were also constructed to store the grain to feed the horses. Feeding so many horses would have been difficult enough, but the stores held a twenty year supply of grain. Thick walls were constructed and a forest was planted on the roof, all in order to keep the grain cool.
You can see more photos of these stables tomorrow, and also read about them on the Morocco.com website (click here).
Royal stables in Meknes, Morocco
Royal stables in Meknes, Morocco
Bab el-Khemis Gate, Meknes in Morocco
Bab el-Khemis Gate in Meknes, Morocco
One of the features of our visit to Meknes in Morocco was to see this magnificent structure, the Bab el-Khemis Gate. The ancient wall stretched from it in both directions and the nearby gardens were immaculate. We were able to stop and alight from our tour bus to take photos of the wall, the gate and the gardens along the thoroughfare running through the gate.
Bab el-Khemis Gate in Meknes, Morocco
Bab el-Khemis Gate in Meknes, Morocco
Bab el-Khemis Gate in Meknes, Morocco
Bab el-Khemis Gate in Meknes, Morocco
Scenes of Meknes in Morocco
Overlooking Meknes, northern Morocco
Overlooking Meknes, northern Morocco
Overlooking Meknes, northern Morocco
Overlooking Meknes, northern Morocco
Overlooking Meknes, northern Morocco
Contrasts in modern Morocco
Traditional transport in modern Morocco
In many ways Morocco is a modern country quite at ease with high rise buildings, busy CBDs in the cities, modern communications – note the mobile phone towers in today’s photo – and many local concessions to and adaptations of the modern, western world.
Some traditional things still abound – like the people with their horse and cart (see above) taking their produce to market. The market was probably in a nearby Medina. I’ll show photos of the medinas in another post.
This photo was taken in Meknes.
On second thoughts: the “horse” may well have been a donkey. Donkeys far outweigh horses as beasts of burden in northern Africa.
Then of course, there are some locals who cannot afford a horse or a donkey.
Street scene in Meknes, Morocco