Aït Benhaddou
Rocks and clay buildings merge into a harmonious unity
Aït-Ben-Haddou (Arabic آيت بن حدّو, ) is a fortified city (ksar) at the foot of the High Atlas in southeast Morocco. Since 1987, the entire old town center has been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site
The site was the capital of the Ben Haddou tribe (Aït). At the time of the Almoravids in the 11th century, they controlled trade on the old caravan route between Timbuktu and Marrakech at Asif Mellah. However, the ksar, which was built mainly from rammed earth and - the air-dried mud bricks, which are rather rare in southern Morocco - is probably of more recent date - the figures vary according to literature from the 12th to the 16th century. The number of inhabitants cannot be exactly determined either, but it is said that up to 1000 people lived in Aït Benhaddou at one time.
The village, consisting of an old and a new part, is situated almost 200 km (travel distance) southeast of Marrakech and about 30 km in northwest direction from the city of Ouarzazate on a mountain slope at an altitude of about 1270 to 1320 m on the shore of the Asif Mellah, which is water-bearing only in winter and spring. A road (P1506), which is about 45 km long and leads through the Ounila valley via Tamdakht and Anemiter to Telouet, has now been completed.
Date palms still grow on the banks of Asif Mellah. Due to the cool altitude, they produce few fruits, but in earlier times their fibrous trunks played an important role in the construction of the ceilings and stairways (partly ramps) in the residential castles (tighremts); moreover, mats, baskets, ropes, etc. were woven from the palm fronds.
Architecture
The old village consists of several residential castles (tighremts) built close to each other and partly interlocked. Their clay walls rest on natural rock and have a base zone of larger or smaller erratic blocks. The buildings with their corner towers and battlements give the village its defensive appearance, which is further enhanced by the hillside location. Most of the corner towers were decorated with geometric motifs in the upper area, whereby the recurring diamond motifs can be interpreted as abstracted eyes and originally probably had an apotropaic (disaster-repelling) function.
The originally completely windowless tighremts by Ait Benhaddou are all built around inner courtyards, through which light and air could enter the stables and storage rooms on the ground floor and the living and sleeping rooms on the upper floors.
It is striking that the old Ksar is not overlooked by any minaret. In the Berber-inhabited villages in the south of Morocco there were simple prayer rooms, but outside the cities (Marrakech, Taroudannt, Tiznit) minarets were not built until the 20th century.
On the hilltop above the Ksar there is a fortress (kasbah) - built in the 17th century to better control the population.
