Beni Mellal

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Beni Mellal
Beni Mellal Coat of Arms
Beni Mellal (Morocco)
Beni Mellal
Beni Mellal
Basic data
State : MoroccoMorocco Morocco
Region : Béni Mellal-Khénifra
Province : Béni Mellal
Coordinates 32 ° 20 ′  N , 6 ° 22 ′  W Coordinates: 32 ° 20 ′  N , 6 ° 22 ′  W
Residents : 192,676 (2014)
Area : 50.7 km²
Population density : 3,800 inhabitants per km²
Height : 550  m
Main street of Beni Mellal (in the background the Tassemit mountain that surrounds the city)
Main street of Beni Mellal (in the background the Tassemit mountain that surrounds the city)
City park at the source of Ain Asserdoun

The city of Beni Mellal, with a population of around 200,000 ( Arabic بني ملال, DMG Banī Mallal , Central Atlas Tamazight ⴰⵢⵜ ⵎⵍⵍⴰⵍ Ayt Mellal ) is the capital of the region Beni Mellal-Khénifra in the national center of Morocco .

Toponym

Beni stands for "sons of ..." or "tribe", mellal means "white". The place name Beni Mellal , formerly Kasbah Beni Mellal after the fortress ( Kasbah ) built in the 17th century , goes back to the regional tribal group of the same name with Berber - Arab origins. In the Middle Ages the city was called Hisn Day (Hisn Daī) from Arabic hisn, (hosn, huṣn) = "fortress".

location

Beni Mellal is located on the western edge of the Middle Atlas in the south of the fertile Tadla plain on the national road 8 (route impériale) , a former camel caravan route, about halfway between Marrakech in the southwest and Fez in the northeast, at an altitude of about 500 to 600  m . Other main towns in the Tadla Plain are Kasba Tadla and Boujad (approx. 34 km and 60 km north, respectively) or Fquih Ben Salah (approx. 40 km northwest). A winding side road leads south into the mountains to Azilal (a good 80 km south). The city's local mountain is Jbel Tassemit, a good 8 km south-east and approx. 2200 m high . The climate of Beni Mellal is warm to temperate; Rain (approx. 495 mm / year) falls almost exclusively in the winter half-year.

population

year 1994 2004 2014
Residents 140.212 163.286 192,676

The city's population consists almost exclusively of members of various Berber tribes from the area. Most of them have immigrated since the 1970s - because of the lack of rain in their home villages, but also for socio-cultural reasons (hope for work, improvement in material living conditions and health care, better opportunities for schooling for children, etc.).

economy

Beni Mellal is the market center for fruit, vegetable and grain growing in the region. The Tadla plain begins north of the city with an agricultural area of ​​approx. 300,000 hectares. Of this, 117,500 hectares are irrigated through canals that have been built since the 1930s, the rest of the land consists of 137,000 hectares of rain-fed farming area, the rest is forest. The canals discharge water at Kasba Tadla and, north of it, from the Oum er-Rbia , the country's longest, year-round river. Beni-Mellal is about 15 km south of the river at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. The city gets its water from a spring a few 100 meters higher in a south-eastern outskirts on the foothills of the Hausberg. The fields west of the city between the river and the mountains are irrigated from Morocco's largest reservoir (Barrage Bin el-Ouidane) near the road to Azilal. It is located 28 km south of Beni-Mellal and at 130 m it also has the highest dam in the country. It was designed by Coyne et Bellier and built between 1949 and 1953. Pipelines lead steeply down into the plain to an electric power station in Afourèr, a modern small town 20 kilometers from Beni Mellal. With the nightly overproduction of electricity, part of the water is pumped back into an artificial reservoir at an altitude of 1280 meters.

Cotton and grain are grown in the fields ; 23% of sugar beet production and over 12% of Moroccan production of citrus fruits and olives come from the Tadla plain. Vegetables, figs , apples and cattle also end up in the Beni Mellal wholesale market .

history

Hisn Daī was probably the capital of an Idrisid prince when this dynasty split into several small empires in northern Morocco in the first half of the 9th century. In the 11th century the settlement was known for its numerous workshops in which Jewish blacksmiths worked copper. At that time, the leading production center of al-maghrib al-aqsa (today's Morocco) was located here. The coveted copper goods were transported to the Sudan region in caravans in the 13th and 14th centuries . The ruins of this city were found about 1 km east of the city center in the district of Somaa .

Since the conquest by the Almoravids (1057/58), the Tadla plain lay for centuries in the border area between the land that was administered by the sultans (bilad al- makhzen ) and the "land of the apostates" (bilad al-siba) , the was in the sphere of influence of various Berber tribes. The area became a battlefield for centuries. The Alawites -Sultan Moulay al-Rashid defeated the Berber 1668/69 Sufi -Bruderschaft of Dila and destroyed their northeast of Kasba Tadla located headquarters ( Zawiya ). The chief marabout and his companions fled to the Ottoman- controlled Tlemcen (now in northwestern Algeria). With Ottoman support, the Dila-Marabout Ahmad al-Dalai returned from exile in 1677, had the Zawiya restored and again received the support of most of the tribes from the Tadla region and the Middle Atlas against the Sultan. The successor to ar-Raschid, Sultan Mulai Ismail , was able to achieve a victory over the order only with difficulty in 1677.

The Sanhajah fighters of Ahmad initially defeated the Sultan's expedition. Only in April 1678 was Ahmad expelled from the Tadla region and fled to the Middle Atlas, where he remained influential until his death in 1680.

Central square in the old town

In order to secure his sultan's power in the long term, Mulai Ismail had a number of fortified settlements (kasbahs) built or existing facilities expanded a decade later along the main route through the Tadla plain towards Fès . In 1688 the Kasbah of Beni-Mellal was built; similar castles were built in Kasba Tadla, Khenifra and Dila. From 1699/70, Mulai Ahmad, one of the sons of Mulai Ismail, ruled the area from Kasbah Tadla. The fortress in Beni-Mellal had to withstand repeated Berber attacks and was rebuilt several times. The caravans to Marrakech needed the escort of local tribes in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the route was considered unsafe.

Beni-Mellal remained an insignificant market town until the 1950s. Since the completion of the Bin el-Ouidane dam, which was built by the French between 1948 and 1955, the city has experienced an economic boom as a trading center for agricultural products. Another source of income since the 1980s has been remittances from workers who have emigrated to Europe, 80 percent of which go to Italy. Most of the Moroccan workforce in Italy comes from Beni Mellal. Temporary droughts, but above all the uneven distribution of land, are the causes, because 40 percent of the farmers in the region have less than 20 ares to cultivate. All smallholders put together only 12 percent of the land.

Cityscape

City expansion into the plain to the west

Beni Mellal is a modern city that emerged mainly in the second half of the 20th century. The built-up area forms roughly a semicircle, the straight side of which runs in a north-west to south-east direction parallel to the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. From the small, higher-lying old town, the new districts stretch far into the plain. The bus station is on the thoroughfare, Boulevard Mohammed VI . Since the turn of the millennium, large-scale residential areas have been growing even further outside, and in some cases older cheap residential areas are being built over here. Small parceled fields begin behind the houses. A belt of handicraft businesses, including many auto repair shops, surrounds the central business district in a ring with apartment blocks that extend up the hill to the old town. Some open spaces are cemeteries, wasteland or are used as weekly markets.

The center of the old town is a tree-lined square. The cream-colored houses have been renovated; the square is surrounded by an arcade with horseshoe arches. To the east are the winding streets of a simple residential and market district. A small remnant with a flank tower has been preserved from the former surrounding wall made of rammed earth .

Kasbah Ras el Ain

An approximately 1 km long avenue lined with orange trees leads east to the most important local recreation destination , the city garden Jardin de Ain Asserdoun . In the middle of a park with tall trees, the spring rising from the mountain is directed in wide cascades and watercourses before the water irrigates the forest and plantation area between here and the city. In this green belt on the south-eastern edge of the city, olives, oranges, apples, potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables thrive in small gardens next to each other. This also includes the Zaouia Sidi Ahmed bel Kacem with a minaret from the Almoravid period.

A few hundred meters above the city park, an almost square fortress, which also dates from Mulai Ismail's time, sits enthroned on a hilltop. From the Kasbah Ras el Ain, also Kasbah Ain Asserdoun , there is a view of the entire city and the plain. The small, carefully restored and mostly plastered stone building has four crenellated corner towers. The architectural style is similar to the southern Moroccan detached from rammed earth constructed residential castles ( tighremts ).

Web links

Commons : Beni Mellal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beni Mellal - Population Statistics
  2. ↑ Beni Mellal - Map with altitude information
  3. ↑ Beni Mellal - Climate tables
  4. ↑ Alain Vidal et al. a .: Case studies on water conservation in the Mediterranean. FAO Report, No. 4, July 2002, p. 37
  5. ↑ Bin el Ouidane ( French ) Secretariat D'etat Charge de L'eau et de L'environnement. Archived from the original on October 9, 2011. Retrieved on August 23, 2011.
  6. ↑ Nicolas de Walque: Afrouèr - Maroc. ( Memento from February 18, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) AlkorDraka geomembranes
  7. ↑ Anne Chaponniere, Vladimir Smakhtin: A Review of Climate Change Scenarios and Preliminary Rainfall Trend Analysis in the Oum Er Rbia Basin, Morocco. (PDF; 389 kB) International Water Management Institute, Working Paper 110. Colombo (Sri Lanka) 2006, p. 4
  8. ↑ Thomas K. Park, Aomar Boum: Historical Dictionary of Morocco. Library of Congress. 2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2006, p. 62
  9. ^ Ian Blanchard: Mining. Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages: Vol. 3: Continuing Afro-European Supremacy, 1250-1450. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, p. 1513
  10. ^ Dale F. Eickelman: Moroccan Islam. Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center. (Modern Middle East Series, No. 1) University of Texas Press, Austin / London 1976, p. 34
  11. ^ Jamil M. Abun-Nasr: A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, pp. 231f
  12. ↑ Steven Colatrella: Workers of the World: African and Asian Migrants in Italy in the 1990s. Africa Research & Publications, London 2001, p. 147
  13. ^ Arnold Betten: Morocco. Antiquity, Berber Traditions and Islam - History, Art and Culture in the Maghreb. DuMont, Ostfildern 2009, pp. 253f, ISBN 978-3-7701-3935-4