Rabat Off The Beaten Path

There are numerous, old, less or more neglected graves among olive trees close to the southern corner of the Chellah's walls.

The rich and famous of the past, like sultan families were burried in seperate tombs placed traditionally below the ground level. The white, stone graves, which luckily survived till now, are richly decorated in Arabic calighaphy and Islamic patterns.

I used to see nestles of white storks on top of either telephone poles or roofs of houses in Poland. Well, "Polish" storks do not fly away to Morocco but through Sicily to Tunisiai n winter. These ones in Morocco maybe "French" or "British".

Numerous white storks of Chellah nestle on a top of mosque minaret and ruined walls. There is a huge, very tall tree with a few nestles in southern corner of the Chellah. It's a pity I didn't take more and better pictures of storks and their nestles.

When I passed by ancient Roman ruins of Sala Colonna, in Chellah, I entered the green space of the walled settlement. The relatively small gardens contain trees, a lot of bushes and few flowers and are maintained in, say, a little bit wild, English style. As it was getting hot I enjoyed a walk in a shadow although there were no benches to sit down. The best were numerous colorful butterflies which occupied some bushes in bloom.

The most characteristic and famous picture of Chellah is this stork's nest put up on the top of the minaret of the funeral mosque of the Merinides. I was lucky to observe two adult white storks although with no children.

Generally I must underline that after busy and crowded Rabat, Chellah was a place of peace and quiet with almost no visitors but many singing loudly birds and colorful butterflies.

When I passed through the entrance gate to Chellah, the first I saw large a bit sloping area covered by ruins of ancient Roman city Sala Colonna. I was a bit surpriced that I could easily walk on ancient stones...

Anyway, the ruins were not the best preserved, just a set of stones put in some secret order, and looked far worse than ancient ruins of, say, Ephesos (Turkey) and Pompei (Italy). Additionally there were no explanations put by the ruins. OK, it maybe fascinating place for a fan of ancient archeology whom I am not.

Before leaving Rabat I drove a car southwards to visit Chellah, an ancient burial ground built upon the remains of the ancient Roman town of Sala. Located off the beaten path, out of the city walls, Chellah was the best place I visited in Rabat. The necropolis is a complex and interesting series of tombs and ruins from both Roman and Islamic dynasties located on square area approx. 300 - 400 m long surrounded by impressive walls.

I easily parked a car on a large, surprisingly empty, unpaved parking lot in front of the impressive entrance gate called Bab Zaer. Massive brick edifice is designed in U shape and richly ornamented. I was asked to pay an entrance fee at the gate. There were no guided tours around the Chellah when I visited it. I simply could stroll around by myself.

Chellah - the oldest settlement in the area - is surrounded by own impressive walls and towers (on the right). Nowadays only main highway and a few hundred meters of a meadow seperate Chellah from the city walls of the white city of Rabat (on the left). When I saw Chellah from a distance, the place and its walls looked a bit strange and somewhat secret for me, like a very old castle put nowhere. Well, to understand what I was going to see, I had been forced to read about the history of Chellah.


HISTORY OF CHELLAH

1. Phoenicians and Carthaginians
Phoenicians established trading post at Chellah - no one knows when... They came from the land known then as Caanan in the Middle East (Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon). The Phoenicians were essentially a maritime people which established fish-salting factories. They were not interested in conquering, farming land or colonizing. Their succesors, more civilized Carthaginians (from Carthage, Tunisia), turned the Phoenician settlement into prosperous town and started to grow wheat.

2. Romans
The Third Punic War resulted in the end of Carthaginian power, Carthage was conquered by Romans in 146 BC. Since that time Romans moved westwards into the Berber kingdoms of Mauritania and Numidia(Algeria, Morocco now) which became part of the Roman Empire. Chellah grew up and was named as Sala Colonna by Romans. The city was inhabited by the Romnanised, part-Christian, Berber Mauritanians.

3. The Merinides
The Berber Merinides took control over the whole North Africa in 1296. The origin of the desert people, Berbers is still not known... Anyway, Merinides established burial grounds by the ruins of Roman Sala Colonna and surrounded it by walls in 13th and 14th century.

CONCLUSION: Chellah is a historical place on fascinating both co-existense and fights of different cultures and reflects mixed cultural heritage of Morocco.

The main and representative avenue of Rabat, Avenue Mohammed V ends with a square where mosque Es Sounna was built by Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah in the 18th century and renovated recently. Its minaret is the second highest in Rabat (the first is the Tower of Hassan).

Although I was not allowed to enter the mosque (it's closed for non-muslims) I could study its neo-moorish style although islamic architecture focuses on the interior space of a building rather than the exterior.