Is Nothing Sacred Music and the Madrasa Ben Youssef

Just in case you think that I have been waxing poetic about visiting the graves of pious people, I will give you some more "worldly" news - Whitney Houston was in Rabat for a very highly touted music concert. Apparently the tickets cost 800 dirhams, about 85 dollars, a lot more than most Moroccans see in a week's work. I saw a clip of her on the news while over some one's house, May God cure her and us of our illnesses, Ameen.

On another music related note, I was kind of looking forward to being in Fes this summer for what used to be billed as the Bismillah Fes Sacred Music Festival. When it began it was mostly a forum for celebrating different forms of Muslim religious songs from around Morocco and the Muslim world. Looking at this years program though, it is safe to say that that format is something of the past. Most of the performers are neither Moroccan nor Muslim and the few Muslims that are performing are being paired with Christian performers - like the Gospel and Qawalli (Indo-Pakistani Sufi Music) performance. I guess that in watering down all things Islamic we prove how "open" and "liberal" we are , when doing things as Muslims was not about being closed-minded but just about having self-esteem and valuing our own cultural production.

So, anyway, lets talk about another watering down of Islam in Morocco and that is the state of the Madrasa ben Youssef in Marrakech, opened in the 14th century, it was an Islamic seminary that rivaled that of the Qarawiyin in Fes. It was part of a "re-organization" by Morocco's French colonizers and was eventually closed in 1960 by Moroccan post-colonial authorities. Dale Eickelman writes about it in his book, Knowledge and Power in Morocco.

I was a bit unsure of how to find Ben Youssef because it is inside of the medina (old mazed city) which means that the guide book map is just symbolic. So i did what any good American would do and went up to a police officer directing traffic and asked him how to get to the Madrasa. Only i mistakenly called it the "Yousoufia," at which point the officer looked at me like i had asked him where I could go to buy some drugs and then said, " you mean Madrasa Ben Youssef?" I replied in the affirmative, to which he said to me whilst still staring at me as if i was disturbed, " Are you confused?" The way he said it came out quite harsh and so i was reluctant to reply, what do you reply to such a question? Luckily, he asked me again, " are you confused?" I still did not reply. Third time, " Are you confused?" to which i said emphatically " yes!" Which seemed to bring him a slight bit of satisfaction and then he proceeded to give me directions which basically consisted of " You see that minaret, walk towards it, when you get to it , go right, then take the first left you can and keep walking until you get to a place where they sell fish, then ask someone else from there."

Eventually, after stopping to buy a few things here and there in the medina and asking atleast 5 people, we arrived at the Ben Youssef. ( I never saw any fish) Madrasa Ben Youssef is now a museum, and should i say a very expensive museum, it costs 50 dirhams to enter. I know that that is only about 7 to 8 dollars, but in Moroccan terms that is an enormous amount of money to pay for something that is neither food nor clothing, especially when other cultural sites generally charge about 10 or 15 dirhams. I was so flabbergasted by the price that i stood there in shock with my friends who were visiting. There were four of us, so that would have meant 200 dirhams for us all! So we stood there for at least 5 minutes trying to rationalize paying that much until finally the man at the desk said, okay just give us 25 dirhams each." I think that was the student price or the Moroccan price versus the foreigner price, I don't know.

Once we got in howerver,we were so glad that we actually gone inside. The Madrasa ben Youssef is a very amazing and sobering place. This was a place where students came from all over Morocco to study the Islamic Sciences and is was also where they lived. Yes, it looks a lot like other Madrasas that you can see in Fes, but there is definitely something special about it. I guess its because you can actually go upstairs and see the students quarters. At least 120-ish students lived there. We went upstairs and looked at the architectural detail and the attention given to creating the communal spaces was very amazing.

Me and my travel companions were all quite sad, we said to each other , " wow- what a waste, look at what we [Muslims] have given up," This is what we no longer value and this represents what was our best cultural production, intellectually and artistically.

All of the pictures in this post are from the Ben Youssef. One is of a reconstructed student room ( meaning they have placed in them items that the typical student would have had in his room) Other shots are either from the downstairs courtyard or looking down from student rooms onto the courtyard.

You did get the sense of walking out of this Madrasa, that something really great has been lost.