M E K N E S C I T Y
Imagine being so untrusting of your own tribal people that you import more than 10,000 slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa to serve as your army. Then imagine a building so vast that it housed 12,000 horses for them to ride with, next door, a huge cool granary built of stone with no cement only clay plaster to store a years worth of feed for both horses, their slaves and grooms (one of each per horse), the army and the city populace. Within the granary, ten wells supply water to a vast reservoir across from the building. Imagine being so fearful of your enemies that everything – the city boundaries, each of the several royal palaces – is surrounded with walls several feet thick, many feet high. Sounds impossible? This was Meknes at the end of the 17th century, Sultan Moulay Ismail’s capital.
