By ahblackwell
I stood on my tip toes, my elbows resting on the cool stone wall and my chin sitting on my hands. The green stretching before me wound its way through rows of carefully planted vegetables until it joined the maze of leaves and trees and climbed up the hills before us in smooth, perfectly partitioned grass. Long boney trees jutted out of the grass, their knotted gray bark standing out darkly against the vibrancy of the green hills, and sprouted large twisting nests at the tops of their trunks where storks were perched and clicking happily. I turned to retrace my steps back along the stone wall, but not before pausing to drink in the serenity of the green space before me.Following my friends as we walked single file and chatted about the beauty of the countryside surrounding us, I shielded my eyes against the afternoon sun that was making its way from behind the clouds that had been darkening the walls of the expansive towers around us. We meandered our way through the stone paths that took us up and out of the ancient site, making sure not to trip over the tumbling rocks that made up the inside of the fortress. We passed under the crumbling brown walls of the gate that has been standing for almost 2,000 years and turned towards our city, its traffic and noises rushing back into our senses. Challah, the great stone walls that stood behind us, were built in 40 A.D. to protect an early Roman fort. They encircle expansive grounds that hold the stone outlines of ancient bedrooms and public baths. The mosque’s minaret stands tall and beautiful against the Rabatii sky, its blues and turquoises and oranges only slightly worn thanks to occasional up-keep of the building.
Challah’s grounds provide an incredibly silent and serene escape from the hustle of Rabat, which is surprising considering its proximity to the busy city. Storks and other migrating birds must prefer the ancient site’s stillness, as well. We were lucky enough to witness their presence just in time for mating season, when the pleasant clicking of their beaks can be heard throughout the grounds. The safe haven provided by the fortress walls has allowed the landscape to grow free within it, and we enjoyed exploring the pocketed gardens with their fruit trees and palm fronds that exposed stork nests through the leaves high above our heads. Behind one of the smaller walls, an oasis of rolling green hills and hidden valleys is secluded from the encroaching cities. A small house, wrapped in ivy and cacti, was able to produce a garden within the immensity of the foliage nestled into the house’s valley. The brown brittle stone walls of Challah stand out brilliantly against all of the green. Challah’s beauty and peacefulness can mostly be attributed to its age. An ancient site, the fortress grounds and surrounding hills are left visibly untouched by citizens of Rabat and neighboring Sale.
In Casablanca, the site of the Mosque of Hassan II is drastically different. A large group of students, including myself, took the train to Casablanca last weekend in order to take advantage of one of our only free weekends during the semester. A much larger and more “modern” city than Rabat, Casablanca’s buildings stretch high into the sky. The highest building in the entire country is located in Casablanca, which is the main minaret of the Hassan II Mosque. Set against a blue backdrop of ocean and sky, the mosque’s immensity is best referred to as “beastly”, for it cannot be entirely taken in by eye or by camera without significant effort. Completed in 1993, the mosque was a 60th birthday present for King Hassan II. The white marble exterior of the mosque shines brightly in the sun, and the blue and turquoise tiles emanate the surrounding sky and ocean in their rich colors. However, despite the mosque’s size and luminosity, the inside of the mosque is truly the most spectacular. Non-Muslims are not allowed into the mosque except at specific times on guided tours, so as to allow Muslims who have come to pray to be able to do so in peace. Several SIT students and I took a tour with an English speaking tour guide, which was key for learning about the mosque’s many surprising facts.
Every square inch of the inside of the building is dripping with detail, from the eleven-ton cedar and gold filagree ceiling that retracts in less than three minutes to the Venetian glass chandeliers to the tiny flowered tiles that line the walls of the mosque’s untouched hammam (public bath). 9 hectares of marble, 11 tons of titanium, and an inconceivable amount of cedar wood and glass went into the mosque, which took six years of 24/7 construction to complete. One of the most surprising things to me about the mosque is that, although largely funded by the king, the construction of the mosque was funded by the taxes of Moroccan citizens. According to the tour guide (who claimed that the actual price of the mosque is not actually known), the people of Morocco were not upset that their taxes went to the mosque’s construction because they love their king and they unanimously supported it. Grand mosques built to display the power of a king and the “love” his people have for him are a popular thing of the past, or so I thought. Though, despite its cost, it is likely that the building’s construction did help the Moroccan economy: all of the materials except the titanium (Russian) and the glass (Venetian) were bought from within the country. Regardless, it is difficult for me to fathom that a modern country could build such an immense piece of architecture in the name of a king, the same as it might have been done in 40 A.D. when the Romans built Challah. And so an ancient tradition lives on.