Travel Notes I: Casablanca and the Hassan II Mosque on the Oceanic Threshold

'Mankind is like a bird, yesterday Gebze, today we informed our relatives in Turkey that we reached Casablanca, the 2nd largest port city of North Africa, the largest city of Morocco, the largest city of Morocco by the Atlantic Ocean, i.e. Casablanca, which is converted from Portuguese, in Turkish, the white city, Darü'l-l-beyda, as the Arabs call it, on Saturday 28 January 2023. Being an old man, I thought that I should share the preliminary notes of the trip with my friends in Turkey on a daily basis, so that I would not forget them when I write them later; as a comrade of Ibn Battuta Agha, I thought, otherwise he would be offended, why didn't you write about my country with due importance?

We decided to take a breather during the mid-term break. Together with a group of friends, we reached al-Memleketü'l-Mağribiyye. I had seen Arab countries in the Middle East region, but it was my first time in an African country.

Mr Suleiman, Mr Ali, Mr Ahmed and our guide Mr Malik from Hatay welcomed us.  Such trips are an opportunity to see familiar faces during boarding and to make new friends whom you will get to know closely during the journey and with whom you will keep in touch for the rest of your life.

The Westerners call this country Morocco, historically the transformed form of Marrakech, and we call it Morocco based on its capital Fes. Let me give you a general information first, because when I saw this place, I thought of other Arab countries and my morale improved. 

The cities we saw are very clean, there are toll highways, but the other roads are also nice, people travel very comfortably, taxis and public transport buses are new, there are trams and high speed trains, especially Tangier, Rabat, Tetuan are exactly like a European city, I will talk about it when I come to the place. Already Casablanca and Tangier (Tangier, Tingis, Tengerines) are famous for jazz festivals, there are also theatre and cinema festivals. Tangier and Souveyra were once the centre of young people called hippies and musicians, and cannabis consumption was quite common. I saw a sign on the window of a cafe in Suveyra saying that drugs (muheddarat) are forbidden here, but I didn't take a photo of it, in case they would say something. 

Oh, let me make a note right at the beginning:  After a while, we got into a conversation with our driver Abdülkebir, who was our companion for 8 days. When he said, "Be careful, say Fez with an elongated elif, Morocco means face to face confrontation in our language, in a way, come out if you are a man", I felt like saying "breee breee". I think it is a corruption of the term "face", here French is kind of like the official language, the language of trade and diplomacy, they speak English too, so there is no problem in terms of language. Spanish is already a second language around Tangier. 

- Morocco, Morocco, Land of the Maghreb: What is the Official Name of the Place?

This is al-maghribu'l-aksa, the far west, there is also the central Maghreb and the near Maghreb, which consists of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, which were under Ottoman influence for a long time. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9jIJgygk-8&ab_channel=MevlutUyanik

The point we have reached constitutes a border for the Ottoman-Turkish administrations. Because the Ottoman Empire, which had been in the region for more than 300 years as the Algerian Beylerbeydom, and as I mentioned above, was in contact with Fes, the important city of Marrakech, and took these regions under its patronage. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhI7HJkEjqQ&ab_channel=MevlutUyanik

We stopped you here, if you pay attention, the flags of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia have a crescent, but we are the only ones who do not, said the guide and a shopkeeper we met.  

The interesting thing is that there is French influence everywhere and they see this as patronage, they do not consider it as colonialism. When I asked what is the difference between them, he said Algeria was under French colonisation, Libya was under Italian colonisation, look at them and look at us, there is no point in dwelling on the subject. 

As Socrates Agha's method of playing the ignorant, I asked him how did you stop us, I got a little nervous when he said that you are a Turk and do not know your history. He said, "Your Arabic is good, what do you teach?" I said, "Philosophy." He said, "Then you know Ibn Tufeyl and Averroes." I asked him again, "Let's go back to Turkish history." I said, "We follow the path of Hz. Ali through Hz. Hasan, the dynasty is called Aleviyyun, and we practice according to the Malik sect. 

- Biladu'l-enbiya and biladu'l-awliya

He continued his speech with a discourse saying that the Mashriq/east of the Islamic world is called biladu'l-enbiya, the land of prophets, and this place, al-majlis al-maghribiyya, is called biladu'l-awliya, the land of wise men. They wrote Allah, homeland and Melik/King on the mountains and dams to show that they continue this lineage. I think the most common names are Muhammad and Hasan. Already on the special flag of the Alawite dynasty إِن تَنصُرُوا اللَّهَ يَنصُرْكُمْ

In other words, "if you help Allah, He will help you".  The five-pointed star on the national and general flag is also here. 

In fact, like Egypt, this place is also a region of mutearribe, i.e. Arabised regions, and there are also local people called Berbers who still use their own alphabets.  In fact, we can see the colonial mentality through this concept. The people called Amazigh were the first inhabitants of these places, the Romans called them barbarians, and Berber probably evolved from here. Arabic is the official language in the country, but French is more effective in the economic and diplomatic spheres, and so is Spanish. The people speak a local dialect called Darice. Berber is spoken by the indigenous people in the mountainous regions. 

The names of institutions are written in Arabic, Latin and Berber alphabets. It is governed by a unitary parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy, Melik Mohammed VI, of course there is also a prime minister.  If I explain this a little bit, it is a parliamentary monarchy with two chambers (House of Representatives and House of Counsellors). 

I was going to say it later, but let me write it here, they call themselves al-alawiyyun because they reach Hz. Ali through Hz. Hasan in the Friday sermon.  Melik, who is also the Minister of Defence and Chief of the General Staff, appoints the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Justice, Interior, Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs, which are called "Ministries of Sovereignty". The Prime Minister then proposes the other Ministers who will form the government. The government is responsible to the King and the House of Representatives. The Crown Prince, who bears his father's name, is already one of the richest young men in the world. 

In previous travel notes, I used to insert historical data between the text, but here I have prioritised general information, I hope you are not bored. Let's talk a little bit about the father melik/king. Mawlay (Moulay, I think it is more correct to read as Mullah) al-Hassan bin Muhammad bin Yusuf al-Alawi, born in 1929, was the longest reigning Melik in the Arab world from 1961 when he took the throne until 1999 when he died. 

As far as I can see, the country did not tolerate either Arab nationalism in the name of socialism (Gaddafi/Libya; Saddam/Iraq) or the neo-Salafi (Wahhabi and Islamist-radical in my opinion) and Ikhwan al-Muslimin discourses, which are active in Egypt and other Arab countries. Since he has close relations with America, Israel and Western countries, he can be called the most westernised Arab leader. At the same time, he actively used the title of emir al-muminin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pNVLsypKq8&ab_channel=MevlutUyanik

Its most critical move was the seizure of Western Sahara, rich in underground resources, in a civilian mobilisation of 350,000 people in what it called the "green march". Spain had to accept this. It made an agreement with Morocco and Mauritania and de facto withdrew from the region. The fact that it is characterised as a friend of Israel is due to the negotiations they held in 1965 before the famous 6-Day War, I guess the Arabs wanted to get rid of their defeat by blaming it on Morocco.  The King of Morocco helped the Jews fleeing Spain to establish and live in cities like Shafshavan and to migrate to Israel and European countries. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_vp0llDiKs&ab_channel=MevlutUyanik

There is still a Jewish museum in the country. The 1979 Camp David agreement is considered one of the architects of the Camp David agreement, which is said to be due to the influence of the Jews from the Maghreb who left the country. It should also be remembered that during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel angered Syria by sending a 'solidarity battalion' to Syria. 

People dress as they like and walk around comfortably, no one is harassing anyone, everyone is busy with their work and pursuing their livelihood. Do the people have economic problems, surely they do, because one of the important sources of livelihood is tourism, agriculture and some mines. In 2015, when a shopkeeper who came from Turkey and opened a business here said that one tl was seven dirhams (Mad) at that time, and now one dirham is two tl, I realised that our situation was not very good, I am very smart. 

Tangier (Tangier) is 14 kilometres from Spain via the strait of Jabal Tariq, ferries are frequently available during the day, and the official institutions in this region are mainly written in Arabic and Spanish. It has been one of the most important centres of trade since the Carthaginians and Romans and maintained its status as an international autonomous region until 1956.  It re-entered the African Union, from which it left for a while, and is a member of the Maghreb Arab Union (MAB), the Arab League, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Community of Coastal-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the United Nations. 

- Alice Rabbit in Wonderland: Casablanca

On Sunday we woke up to the sound of seagulls and from the window of the hotel we saw the four corner minarets of the famous Hasan II Mosque. 

It was built in such a way that it can be seen from all over the city. It is the minaret of the world's largest mosque after Mecca and it has a 210 m minaret that can be seen from all over the city of Casablanca. 

After breakfast, when we went down the street and made a general price comparison in the market named Mercan, we realised that this was not a cheap country at all. A little further on I looked, there was Bim, yes, you read it wrong, BIM, there were nearly a thousand branches in Morocco, the largest of the Arab countries. Since we were not satisfied with the hotel, we had to change it, while we were going to the new one, we stopped at a place by the ocean and went to the exchange office, I looked at Alice's rabbit on the face of a huge apartment block. When I saw it, I already realised that I had come to the world of wonders, after all I am awake :-) but then I saw that they also made examples of famous athletes and historical paintings. The paintings on the faces of the apartments add a nice atmosphere to the city. 

We settled in the hotel by the sea, a little later we came to visit the mosque where 80 people outside and 20-25 thousand people inside can pray at the same time. The prayer times are opening and only Muslims enter.  Since it is still time for the call to prayer, we visit the courtyard and the ocean side, part of the mosque was built on the filling of this area. I think this is the place where the authorities will pray on the sea with glass on special occasions, but of course it is closed. It was designed by a French architect who lived in Morocco for a long time and internalised its cultural characteristics. They wanted to complete it in time for the 60th birthday of Hassan II, the Moroccan Sultan of Morocco (1989), but it was completed only in 1993. If you have visited Spain and Al-Hamra, the artefacts here will be very familiar to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYJ0f7yBi8&ab_channel=MevlutUyanik

 The mosque was designed according to a rectangular plan 200 metres long and 100 metres wide. It is furnished with ceramic tiles with contrasting colourful geometric patterns, wooden ceilings with pen work inlaid with eight-pointed stars, fountains and eight-pointed fountains placed around the courtyard, all traces of the Moorish culture of North Africa.  The face facing Mecca is as wide as possible. These areas were designed perpendicular to the naves to give width. In fact, the middle nave of the main worship area of the mosque is 40 metres high, and the two naves on the sides are 27 metres high, so you can imagine its magnificence. We performed the noon prayer with the congregation, they prostrate for a very long time, you feel like sleeping from tiredness.  

After the mosque, we went to the second stop of the first day, the square named after the father of Mohammed the 5th, the father of Hasan II, who ensured the independence of the country. When I saw the name Anfa in the workplaces, I asked the guide, it was the first name of this place, it was a Berber village. I also asked about the signs saying Kech, which is the name of Marrakech among the locals. There are white and red taxis on the road, when I asked what this was, I learnt that the first one belongs to you when you get in and the other one is a minibus taxi. The square is lively, the first colonial building called Pasha's Court has the words "Court House" written on it in Latin Arabic and Berber letters. There is also a 50 m tall clock tower in four corners. We visited this place on the last day when our flight was delayed due to weather conditions, in the quiet morning. Such squares get lively at noon and after noon. 

Then we visited the office of Hassan II, which is a new building built in classical style, it is possible to see the inspiration of al-Hamra here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqn6BOEzwVE&ab_channel=MevlutUyanik

Then we visited the sea fortress called skala and wandered around the old city (od madina). In almost all cities the ancient places are organised in the same way, but here I found ibn Khaldun street while people were looking for shopping. Then dinner and transition to the hotel, already tired from the road.