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.

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).

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.

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.

There is an anarchist essence inherent in Islam, which deserves our attention. Koranic cosmology states that a human being in the state of nature is a ‘slave (or serf) of Al-lâh, just as a sunflower is a slave of the sun, because they are organically linked. The concept of submission to a Single Reality (al- islam) does not translate into submission to human institutions, rather the reverse: it leads to a rejection of all external coercion as contrary to the nature of things. Muslims reject the limits that the market and the institutionalisation of life impose on their freedom, as an inner space in which intimacy with Creation becomes possible. The freedom that Muslims recognise is not political freedom under protection of the State, but an inner state/space that enables us to reject the world of representations, reject the fiction of power that some sheathe themselves in. This is based on idea that human beings are noble in essence, that their state of nature (fitrah) is superior to their state of culture. Ibn Jaldún says: “The political and educational order is contrary to the power of the soul because it embodies an instance of external control”.This point explains why Islam has been described as ‘mystical anarchy’. Abdennur Prado is a writer, president of the Catalan Islamic Council and co-director of the International Congress of Islamic Feminism.