Marrakesh Monuments & Heritage

The name "Agnaw", like Gnaoua, in Berber means "mute". This word was used by local Amazigh populations to designate sub-Saharan slaves, the latter rarely speaking Tachelhit. This gate was called Bab al Kohl (which also means "The Gate of the Blacks") or Bab al Qsar ("The Gate of the Palace").

The explanation provided by Maurice Delafosse in 1924 remained for a long time the sole etymological reference of the word and was adopted by generations of researchers; according to him, the Berber expression Akal n ignawen which means land of the Mutes, would have given rise to the words Guinea and Ghana and subsequently to the word gnaoua by phonetic resemblance. Gnaoua would therefore mean, by extension, black man or coming from the land of black men, that is to say sub-Saharan Africa.

The first citadel and royal residence of Marrakech was the fortress and residence known as Ksar el-Hajjar built by the Almoravid leader Abu Bakr ben Omar when he founded the city in 1070.[2],[3] This fortress was located just north of present-day Koutoubia. The last Almoravid emir Ali ben Youssef (reigning 1106 to 1143) built a palace immediately south of the fortress. Remains of these Almoravid structures have been excavated and the remains of a stone gate called Bab 'Ali, belonging to Ali's palace, can still be seen today alongside the ruins of the first Koutoubia Mosque.

When the Almohad ruler Abd al-Mumin conquered Marrakech in 1147, he is said to have destroyed many Almoravid monuments (especially mosques), but the Ksar el-Hajjar and the palace of Ali ben Youssef were still used as the official residence of the new Almohad leaders for a while. The Almohad caliph Ya'qub al-Mansur (reigning from 1184 to 1199), however, embarked on an ambitious construction project to create a vast new royal kasbah to the south of the city. Construction began in 1185 and was completed in 1190, although his successors probably continued construction in stages thereafter. The kasbah was a vast autonomous district surrounded by external ramparts and subdivided within it by defensive walls.

The Mellah of Marrakech was created by decree of Sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib of the Saadian dynasty in 1558, outside the walls of the El Badi palace. This allowed the sultan, as in Fez for example, to separate the Jews from the rest of the inhabitants in an attempt to better protect them from the fanaticism of the Muslim population encouraged at the time by the Almohads, notably after the massacre of the Jewish community of the city, in 1232.

In a study by Colette Zytnicki, it is indicated that the mellah of Marrakech was built in 1567, during the reign of the Saadian sultan Abdallah el-Ghalib. According to Michel Abitbol, from 1557 Abdallah el-Ghalib began to transfer the city's Jews to this walled district, adjoining the kasbah on the east side, where some Christians also resided and hosted European emissaries, but this was not the case. It was only in 1639 that it was, like that of Fez, named the Mellah[6]. Completed in 1662, then surrounded by walls, the Saadian mullah occupied an area of 18 hectares, to which must be added the 8 hectares of the cemetery. At the same time, until the end of the 16th century, Jews also lived outside.