The Collège Moulay Idriss, known today as the Lycée Moulay Idriss, is a historic

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

in Fez,

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

History

The school was originally opened in 1914 as a ''Collège Musulman'', part of a new system of secular French schools in Morocco initiated by the French Protectorate administration. The schools offered a modern European-style curriculum as an alternative to traditional education systems which already existed, and were intended to educate the children of elite Moroccan families which worked with or for the new French colonial administration. The college in Fez was the first of what was initially only two such schools, with the second one opened in

Rabat Rabat (, also , ; ) is the Capital (political), capital city of Morocco and the List of cities in Morocco, country's seventh-largest city with an urban population of approximately 580,000 (2014) and a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million. ...

in 1916. In 1923 the school was renamed ''Collège Moulay Idriss'', while the one in Rabat became the ''Collège Moulay Youssef''. The school was initially reserved for boys; a separate school system for girls was also created in parallel. The curriculum was about evenly divided between French and Arabic, and included both modern sciences and traditional Islamic disciplines. The school was led by French principals up until the advent of Moroccan independence. In 1959, Aziz Abdelaziz Aïouch, previously a figure in the Moroccan nationalist movement, became the first Moroccan principal to take over its administration.

Architecture

The complex is noted for its emulation of traditional

Moroccan architecture Moroccan architecture reflects Morocco's diverse geography and long history, marked by successive waves of settlers through both migration and military conquest. This architectural heritage includes ancient Roman sites, historic Islamic architec ...

, but was designed by French architect René Canu. The traditional architecture, along with the organisation of the school system itself, was meant to evoke a certain sense of continuity with the established order and traditions. The main school building was designed in the style of a large traditional palace courtyard, filled with a riad garden divided symmetrically with a marble fountain in the middle. The courtyards of the school are surrounded by arched

porticos A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultu ...

, while the hallways and galleries behind these are decorated and paved with colourful ''

zellij Zellij (), also spelled zillij or zellige, is a style of mosaic tilework made from individually hand-chiseled tile pieces. The pieces were typically of different colours and fitted together to form various patterns on the basis of tessellations, ...

'' tiles.

References

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