02
Stop two
Ben Youssef Madrasa
adidas Club Tennis Skirt: Count the cells. Roughly one hundred and thirty of them, on two floors around the central court, lodging several hundred students, which at its height made this the largest Quranic college in Morocco. Founded in the fourteenth century by the Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan, then wholly rebuilt in the 1560s by the Saadian sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib, and it is the rebuild you are standing in. Teaching continued until 1960, after which it was restored and opened to visitors. The decoration follows a strict hierarchy you cannot unsee once you have it: zellij mosaic on the lower walls, carved stucco above, cedar at the top, Kufic and cursive inscriptions running through all three. A major restoration closed it for years. Reopened 2022.
04
Stop four
El Badi Palace
adidas Club Tennis Skirt: Follow the money, then follow it out again. El Badi, the Incomparable Palace, was begun by Ahmad al-Mansur in 1578, funded largely by the ransom won at the Battle of the Three Kings and by gold from the Saadian campaign against the Songhai Empire. Contemporary accounts list onyx, gold leaf and Italian marble across some three hundred and sixty rooms around a courtyard nearly a hundred and forty metres long, with four sunken gardens and a great central pool. Its life was short. In the 1690s Moulay Ismail spent more than a decade stripping the materials out to furnish his new capital at Meknes. Same suspect as the sealed tombs, different method. What stands is the earthen shell, hosting festivals and holding the original carved minbar of the Koutoubia.
Now, Marrakesh (also Marrakech, and Murrakush in the older Arabic; the transliterations multiply and I have made a list). You will be wearing this skirt in a city whose great minaret was finished around 1195, stands some seventy metres, and is still by municipal ordinance the tallest thing in it — a footnote most guidebooks omit and I refuse to.
The adidas Club Tennis Skirt is, strictly speaking, two garments (I will explain): a shell of 100% recycled polyester piqué, and inner tights of 91% recycled polyester and 9% elastane in a single jersey knit — with a gusseted crotch, which is the technical term (from the Old French gousset, though I digress) for the panel that lets you lunge without consequence.
The waist is elastic and mid-rise, the fit is regular, the front hem overlaps for freedom of movement, and AEROREADY moisture management absorbs sweat at a rate adidas declines to publish, which frustrates me more than I can politely say. At least 70% of the whole is recycled content. Correction: at minimum 70% — the floor is stated, the ceiling is not.
It gets worn everywhere from a Tuesday club session to a very hot afternoon walking the Marrakesh medina.
The rest of the Marrakesh itinerary is a study in what people do with money.
Ahmad al-Mansur began El Badi in 1578 with the ransom of the Battle of the Three Kings and gold out of Songhai — some three hundred and sixty rooms round a courtyard nearly a hundred and forty metres long — and in the 1690s Moulay Ismail spent over a decade stripping it to furnish Meknes, which leaves the red earthen shell and the storks.
The same Moulay Ismail sealed the Saadian Tombs rather than destroy them, and they were effectively forgotten until a French aerial survey found them in 1917 (1917; I checked twice). The Ben Youssef Madrasa, rebuilt in the 1560s, lodged several hundred students in roughly a hundred and thirty cells and taught until 1960.
It is also perfect for the walk between them, and footnote the third: that walk is free.
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