"Welcome to Tangier is like your home, happy, very happy and nothing else. Why not ?.... Go go and look for Charlie you will be in good hands you know what I mean in good ?....in good hands, he will help you around and .... do you understand my friend'"
Abu Ali
11 Archival description results for Abu Ali
The urban and social structure of neighbourhoods in the medina is one of vast intricacy and complexity, being organized around a series of vital establishments for the everyday life of their inhabitants, such as the hammam or public baths, the bakery, schools and the foundouk, or caravanserai. Communal bakeries provide the heating for the public baths or hammam, fully active establishments that are very important for the cohesion of the city's social fabric. Foundouks are establishments where visiting merchants traditionally stayed and stored their products overnight. Most have now lost their original function and are adapted for other uses, such as dwellings or workshops.
"Those who are on the road of the heart show their wounds...". Farid Ud-Din Attar. S.XI. Persia. Cd rom_interactive. Zayd Ibn Dawra 2000 Marrakesh. Collaborations: Zoubida el Bouzidi. IDEP.
Anonymous guide. Fes el Bali, the old medina of Fez founded in 809 by Idris II, is still completely contained within city walls. The gates (Bab Bou Jeloud, Bab Fteuh, Bab Er Rsif, Bab Guissa...) therefore retain all their social and symbolic value, associated with the different activities of the city and its inhabitants.
The search for water, the descent deep into the well of the heart. Based on a 17th Century Persian poem by Najmudin Kubra. The most probable is that sooner or later we will meet in an apparently dry and arid wilderness. Unexpectedly our footsteps have left us there, all roads are possible, but none of them seem to lead anywhere. In our loneliness we find that contemplation is our only company, the quiet gaze shows us a quiet world, a world that slowly begins to show itself outside of the parameters of desire or functionality to be a world with no outside or inside. Now we understand better, that that which we see is no stranger to us and this journey takes on a diverse and interpretative sense. A small group of men appears in the distance, we go closer and follow them. One of them is a water diviner, he looks for water with an olive branch, his steps are quick, suddenly, as if receiving a blow he falters, and perhaps will fall, we fall... On a dry bush in the wilderness a few small flowers have bloomed, our steps now pass over a path of dust, stones, brambles and acacia, crossing gates, and whispers, murmurs, or laughter of children... Lying on the dirt, like the dirt, so that a well can open in our chest and consciousness can descend close to the heart, there we will see without words, with the sounds of heartbeat breathing, a reminder of the place we come from, of where we belong, from where appearance springs, like those clouds that form whimsical figures that linger only a moment... A search for what there is of life in us. The presence of that which makes us live. Video Serie: El Hamdulillah Tapes.
Fez is the Moroccan city with the liveliest tradition of artisans. Far from being "just a job", the activity of the artisan reflects a whole conception of the world and a way of experiencing time and giving it meaning. This native wisdom is passed down from parents to children, from the maalem, the master, to the apprentice.
Fez is one of the North African cities to have had most madrassas, of great architectural beauty. Madrassas, former Koran schools and now open for visits as public monuments, formerly provided one of the functions that raised Fez to the height of its splendour: the study of Islamic tradition and the body of laws and regulations governing social life. They were also the home of the students. Madrassas: Bu Inaniyya (1350), al-Attarin (1323), Seffarin (1280), al-Sahri (1321).
The markets of Fez, accessible from the main streets of the medina, are mostly situated very near the entrances to the city and reflect the vitality of an economic microsystem associated with the basic needs of the medina and its immediate rural surroundings.
1998, Tangier. Conversations in the bar La Poste with Tangerian writer Mohammed Chukri and New York poet Ira Cohen, stories of death, separation and loss under the mantle of friendship.
From the series Fez Ciudad Interior. Silences and wind in the olive trees, contemplation, labyrinths and dreams. Abdelfettah Seffar, a craftsman who lived in London for years and decided to return, talks about Fez, a veiled city, and reflects of the West and its conflicts.
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