Bab al-Amer () is one of the historic

city gates A city gate is a gate which is, or was, set within a city wall. It is a type of fortified gateway. Uses City gates were traditionally built to provide a point of controlled access to and departure from a walled city for people, vehicles, good ...

Fes Fez or Fes (; ar, فاس, fās; zgh, ⴼⵉⵣⴰⵣ, fizaz; french: Fès) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fès-Meknès administrative region. It is the second largest city in Morocco, with a population of 1.11 mi ...

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...

. It was the southwestern entrance to Fes el-Jdid, the royal city founded in 1276 by the

Marinids The Marinid Sultanate was a Berber Muslim empire from the mid-13th to the 15th century which controlled present-day Morocco and, intermittently, other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) ar ...

west of

Fes el Bali Fes el Bali ( ar, فاس البالي, lit=Old Fes, ber, ⴼⴰⵙ ⴰⵇⴷⵉⵎ) is the oldest walled part of Fez, Morocco. Fes el Bali was founded as the capital of the Idrisid dynasty between 789 and 808 AD. UNESCO listed Fes el Bali, alon ...

History

Fes el-Jdid was founded as a fortified administrative city in 1276 by the Marinid sultan Abu Yusuf Ya'qub. The city was built with a perimeter of double walls, which in some areas (e.g. to the east and west) ran together while in other areas (to the north and south) diverged from each other. Between the inner and outer southern walls of the city was a district originally known as ''Hims'' which housed the sultan's regiments of Syrian archers. Bab al-Amer was the original western gate to this district. The gate's name means "Gate of Order", likely in reference to the barracks of the city guards located near it at the time. An aqueduct bringing water from the '''Ain al-'Omair'' source also passed into the city near the gate's location. At some point before the late 16th century the Hims district was converted to the

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

quarter (

Mellah A ''mellah'' ( or 'saline area'; and he, מלאח) is a Jewish quarter of a city in Morocco. Starting in the 15th century and especially since the beginning of the 19th century, Jewish communities in Morocco were constrained to live in ''mellah' ...

) of the city. One of the three Jewish cemeteries was established inside the gate to the northwest (on the site of the current Place des Alaouites), while another cemetery (the current remaining Jewish Cemetery) was established much later to the east. Most likely during the Saadian period, a bastion known as Borj al-Mahres was constructed just south of Bab al-Amer, to serve as a defensive fortification at the southwest corner of the city. The bastion was later demolished, along with some the surrounding ramparts, on the orders of the governor Hamdoun er-Rusi, appointed by Sultan Moulay Abdallah during his first reign (1729–1734), during a period of unrest and repression. After the installation of the French Protectorate in 1912, major changes were made to the area. As the French administration judged the gate too narrow and inconvenient for traffic, they demolished the nearby aqueduct and much of the surrounding wall in order to build the main road that now passes next to it. They also created a vast open square on the site of the former Jewish cemetery to the northwest which became known as ''Place du Commerce'' and which is now known as ''Place des Alaouites''. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, King

Hassan II Hassan, Hasan, Hassane, Haasana, Hassaan, Asan, Hassun, Hasun, Hassen, Hasson or Hasani may refer to: People * Hassan (given name), Arabic given name and a list of people with that given name *Hassan (surname), Arabic, Jewish, Irish, and Scotti ...

ordered the creation of a new entrance to the Royal Palace (''Dar al-Makhzen'') from Place des Alaouites, at which time the now famous gates of the palace were constructed here.

References

Gates of Fez, Morocco Marinid architecture {{fort-stub