Morocco (MOR) Program Links - 1 2867
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Morocco: Culture and Society
Program Excursions
Please note: Final arrangements are subject to change
As early as the third weekend after their arrival, students start having a direct feel of Moroccan culture and society through excursions, field trips and village stays. While classroom activities are important for this program, learning through observation, through different forms of contacts and encounters, as well as through random interaction, which only educational excursions can provide, is equally rewarding.
The excursions not only provide a sense of context for whatever is presented in class with regard to Moroccan culture and society, but also provide a less formal opportunity for students to see for themselves and form their own opinions about the host culture.
Focus is placed mostly on history, different indigenous industries, the impact of tourism, development issues, environmental problems, civil society questions, cultural diversity, and interaction between Berbers, Jews and Arabs etc.
The highlights include informed and educational visits to the famous Fes tanneries, the Atlas cedar forest in Azrou, the Sahara dunes in Merzouga, the breathtaking palm groves of the Ziz and Draa valleys, the legendary Djemaa ElFna plaza in Marrakech, and of course Orson Welles' and Jimmy Hendrix' favorite Moroccan town, Essaouira.
Students make observations and rapid appraisals; do photographic essays and mapping exercises’ and learn in lectures and presentations by experts and specialists.
Goals of Morocco Program's Educational Excursions:
- Understand the dynamics of rural development
- Study different NGOs and their development projects
- Gain a sense of the diversity of Moroccan geography
- Relate Morocco's geography and ecology to its diverse cultures
- Understand the impact of tourism on Moroccan towns
- Gain a sense of Moroccan traditional handicraft industry
- Understand the historical roles of the different regions, towns, and cities visited
Four Dynasties in one Weekend
Visiting four imperial cities/towns provides an understanding of the role Morocco played in Africa, North Africa, and South Western Europe as both a medieval and post-renaissance empire. Students learn how to "read" a historical sense out of the various monuments left by the different dynasties and to form an idea of the length of the existence of Morocco as a country and a society. In Meknes, the imperial city that earned its fame during the time of Louis XIV and Voltaire, students will visit the tomb of the legendary Moulay Ismael as well as the stables that attest to his grandeur, wealth, and power.
After visiting the well-known Bab Mansour, students set off for Volubilis, the Roman city that served as a capital of what was known in late antiquity as Tangenica. Not far form Volubilis lays the Moulay Driss town nestled between the mountains of Zerhoun. This town served as the first capital of the first Islamic dynasty of Morocco, the Idrissids, who received significant amounts of support from the Awraba Berber people. Their second capital was the legendary city Fes, home to the first University in the world (built by a woman in the eighth century) and since then, one of the most active centres of learning and knowledge in the Islamic world. Fes's Medina, with its labyrinthine streets, its numerous bazaars, its bustling souks and its countless historical sites and monuments is a textbook case of what an Islamic medina was in the past and is in the present.