Casablanca

14 October 2022

I had time today to learn more about Casablanca's rich history as a port city.

First stop was the Jewish Museum in Casa Oasis. This small museum is housed in a building which opened in 1948 as a home for children of Jewish families orphaned during WW2 period. It was run by a French resident of the city, Mrs Célia Bengio .The displays included authentic black and white photos and information about Jewish families who moved from Germany and Spain to seek protection. It is the only museum of its kind in the Africa and is a gentle reminder that there are Jewish communities throughout the African continent.

Casa Oasis is a calm, peaceful, affluent suburb of Casablanca - a real contract from other areas I'd visited.

I returned to the main centre to visit the inside of the Hassan II mosque. Crowds of people were leaving as I waited to enter as today, Friday is a main prayer day and thousands of people had been attending the gathering. Inside, I was immediately taken by the size of the main space and the peaceful atmosphere within. The main mosque holds 30,000 people, 25,000 males on the ground floor and 5,000 females on the first floor. There is room for a further 80,000 people in the outdoor courtyard. An incredible venue for 105,000 to gather together. We were shown the craftmanship of Morocco - wood carving, marble work and mosaics. The only imported work being the chandeliers and white marble columns from Italy. We were told that the mosque took 6 years to build with three shifts of workers, working round the clock. There is a unique roof structure which slides open to provide ventilation when needed. It truly was an impressive sight and I could only imagine the atmosphere in the space when full.

I spent the rest of the day wandering round the medina - the 'old town' of the city and then the contrasting "new town' built in the 1920s. It appears that Casablanca became a laboratory for the principles of urbanisme d'avant-garde, including a trenchant division and complete disassociation between the medina and the ville europeenne. For the colonial administration, the Moroccan medina was said to once have been 'a breeding ground of disease to be contained, an antiquity of the past with Oriental charm to be preserved, and a refuge for would-be insurgents to be squelched'. The first resident French General Lyautey, chose Henri Prost as his handpicked urban planner, to design the ville européenne of Casablanca as this new town. There were further architectural influences, however the remains of the Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Neo-Moorish influences were the bits that caught my attention today. It was great to visit some of these old buildings, many with adjacent café shops and speak to their owners / managers about their history. Many have old black and white photos on their walls to provide context.

I finished the day at central market where the last fish catch of the day had just come in. Oysters were on sale as was the largest lobster I've ever seen.