The Mouassine Museum (; ) is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

in the Mouassine neighbourhood of the historic

medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...

Marrakesh Marrakesh or Marrakech ( or ; ar, مراكش, murrākuš, ; ber, ⵎⵕⵕⴰⴽⵛ, translit=mṛṛakc}) is the fourth largest city in the Kingdom of Morocco. It is one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco and is the capital of the Marrakes ...

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 to ...

. The museum is housed in a recently restored 16th to 17th-century house which includes an upper-floor apartment known as a ''douiria (''or ''dwiriya''). It was recently converted to a Museum of Music, with permanent and temporary

exhibits An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibitio ...

History

The house is located in the Mouassine district, which was the subject of significant development in the Saadian period (16th and early 17th century). In the 1560s

Sultan Sultan (; ar, سلطان ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it ...

Moulay Abdallah al-Ghalib ordered the relocation of 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 ...

community, which until then had occupied this district, to a new

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'' ...

district next to the

Kasbah A kasbah (, also ; ar, قَـصَـبَـة, qaṣaba, lit=fortress, , Maghrebi Arabic: ), also spelled qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term ''alca ...

of the city. This liberated new land which was subsequently redeveloped into new "model" neighbourhoods centered around the newly constructed

Mouassine Mosque The Mouassine Mosque or al-Muwassin Mosque () is a major neighbourhood mosque (a Friday mosque) in Marrakech, Morocco, dating from the 16th century during the Saadian Dynasty. It shares its name with the Mouassine neighbourhood. History Ba ...

and religious complex (as well as the

Bab Doukkala Mosque The Bab Doukkala Mosque (or Mosque of Bab Doukkala) is a major neighbourhood mosque (a Friday mosque) in Marrakesh, Morocco, dating from the 16th century. It is named after the nearby city gate, Bab Doukkala, in the western city walls. It is als ...

complex further west). This enticed a relatively large number of

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...

or aristocratic families to build their residences here, resulting in a concentration of structures dating from the Saadian period in this area. Examples of such Saadian-era houses include the

Dar Cherifa Dar Cherifa, historically known as Dar Ijimi, is a late 16th-century house in the Medina quarter, medina (old city) of Marrakesh, Morocco. It is located in the Mouassine, Mouassine neighbourhood and is one of the few well-preserved houses from the ...

(formerly Dar Ijimi), the Dar al-Mas'udiyyin, and the Dar al-Masluhiyyin (known also as Ksour Agafay). (Some of these houses today have been converted into cafés, restaurants, and hotels.) The building which the Mouassine Museum occupies today is located right next to the southeastern corner of the Mouassine Mosque, along ''Derb el Hammam'' street (named after the

bathhouse Public baths originated when most people in population centers did not have access to private bathing facilities. Though termed "public", they have often been restricted according to gender, religious affiliation, personal membership, and other cr ...

of the mosque). It consists of a residential home which includes a ''douiria'' (or ''dwiriya''), a small house or upper floor apartment which was used to receive guests, often integrated to a larger riad or mansion. It was built by an aristocratic Sharifian family in the 1560s, at the time when this neighbourhood was being created by the Saadians. Some of the painted

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

motifs in the house, however, appear to date from the reign of the later

Alaouite The Alawi dynasty ( ar, سلالة العلويين الفيلاليين, translit=sulālat al-ʿalawiyyīn al-fīlāliyyīn) – also rendered in English as Alaouite, Alawid, or Alawite – is the current Moroccan royal family and reigning d ...

sultan Moulay Isma'il in the late 17th or early 18th century. In recent times, the house was inhabited by the local Mellakh family (which included the painter Abdelhay Mellakh) since at least 1954 before being bought in 2012 by Patrick Manac’h and Hamid Mergani, co-founders of another museum in the city, the '' Maison de la Photographie'' ("House of Photography"). Although some of the old wooden doors and ceilings were visible, Manac'h suspected that the original walls of the house might be hidden beneath the recent layers of plaster, and recruited the help of Xavier Salmon, a curator at the

Louvre Museum The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

, to investigate. They conducted tests and discovered that under the thick layers of modern white plaster was the original pinkish

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

-based

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

of the historic ''douiria''. With the help of Salmon and other experts, a team of craftsmen were recruited to carefully remove the modern plaster and painstakingly restore the original decoration. Even some of the original colours had been preserved; an uncommon case for Saadian-era buildings. The historic house was opened as a museum and cultural venue in 2014 and in 2019 it also became a museum of

Moroccan music Moroccan music varies greatly between geographic regions and social groups. It is influenced by musical styles including Arabic music, Arab, Berber music, Berber, Andalusian classical music, Andalusi, History of the Mediterranean region, Mediterran ...

, in addition to hosting regular musical performances. Mouassine douiria DSCF8900

Architecture

The ''douiria'' or apartment is located on the upper floor of the house and is reached via a short staircase. This leads to a square salon covered by a wooden ceiling with a central skylight. On two sides of the salon, facing each other, are large alcoves which served as seating areas and are sheltered by their own wooden canopies or ceilings. The two other sides of the salon have large doorways leading to side rooms which might have been used as bedrooms or secondary salons. The main central room is particularly rich in decoration, with carved stucco featuring

geometric patterns A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated l ...

and

Kufic Kufic script () is a style of Arabic script that gained prominence early on as a preferred script for Quran transcription and architectural decoration, and it has since become a reference and an archetype for a number of other Arabic scripts. It ...

letter motifs as well as sculpted and painted wooden ceilings. The side rooms also have painted ceilings, featuring motifs from the time of Sultan Moulay Ismail (late 17th to early 18th century).

History

Architecture

References

Further reading