Name of the place
Destination of any magic, Jemaa El Fna told through its storytellers, dancers, vendors and water snake charmers, the history of Morocco yesterday and today while subjugating its visitors charm that starts in the morning and still finds its peak in the evening.
Another symbol of the Red City, religious, one, the minaret of the nearby Koutoubia closely with the square, the medieval Moroccan columns written between the eleventh and fourteenth century refer to a Rahba Al Ksar, an esplanade palace located in the vicinity of the Koutoubia. It would have imposed publicly exemplary sentences from the twelfth century. The palace in question and certainly the Ksar al-Hajar built in the late eleventh century by the Almoravids, whose ruins remain at the foot of the Koutoubia. Over the centuries, the urban space evolves, grows and shrinks gradually instead. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the place is described by the Spanish author Marmol Carvajal as a cosmopolitan place where reigns already strong business. The current name of the Jemaa el Fna not appear until the early seventeenth century in historical texts. The Sudanese historian Abderrahman Es-Saadi, author of the Tarikh al-Sudan gives the only plausible explanation. Saadian Sultan Ahmed Al Mansour would have projected the construction of a great and wonderful mosque on said site. Also we had given him the name of mosque bliss or tranquility (Djemaa el HNA). Then a plague decimates a portion of the population, including the king, and prevents the completion of the building. Therefore, the place was called the place of destroyed mosque likely explanation for the word "El Fna." One can also say that Jemaa means "meeting place". Thus, mosque and instead unite in a single function: a short-lived rally ...
In the early eighteenth century, the place is first mentioned in a chronicle as a place to show, through the reference to halqa this sphere created between storyteller and audience. Beyond entertainment, the whole Moroccan society at the time that the historian al-Youssi portrayed in its various components, ethnic and linguistic minorities, rural and urban. Flying over the centuries until 1921, when a Vizierial stopped Mohamed El Mokri proposes for the first time on Djemaa el Fna ranking among the sites to save. Instead begins to the present aspect: the buildings of the post and the Bank of Morocco have just been built, several hotels and coffee shops are open around the square. But the promulgation of Royal Decree prohibits any construction that would jeopardize the Jemaa el Fna identity. The architectural work of the place is to optimize the space within, the idea being that the show is on the square. It's all the people who made the appeal of this legendary place. In 1985, the Medina of Marrakech and therefore Jemaa el Fna, which is an integral part inscribed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO. In May 2001, Djemaa el Fna is proclaimed Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Activities instead come from an ancient tradition, constantly renewed, related to the city. Also it is a unique testimony of a living but endangered tradition.
The primary purpose of Unesco is to safeguard these traditional practices and protect against mass tourism, standardization of culture, industrialization and armed conflict. But today, the square is facing a major contradiction: at a time when the oral heritage acquires official status and international recognition, he knows at the same time the most complete renunciation since the chain from master to disciple linking the old to the new generation seems to break. If Jemaa el Fna is the place par excellence of entertainment, it assumes a more mercantile form, under the pressure of modernization and a constant increase tourism. Is that, wanting to preserve the oral heritage of the place, Unesco stepping awkwardly its tourist attraction. The actors are being diverted from their own purpose or can no longer practice their activity according to tradition. Consecration double-edged.
