Of Minarets and Mosques

You can't visit Morocco and not see the mosques everywhere....they are THE dominant force on the architectural scene. The call to prayer -- five times a day -- is pretty dominant too.



This is a view from a hotel on a hill overlooking Fes -- specifically the medina.

I think the thing that was so surprising was that in the entire 10 days we were there, I didn't see a single person praying (er -- that is -- other than us and those we were with). I mean, I expected that when the call to prayer came, we'd see men whipping out their carpets and kneeling -- but no -- nothing. Now, I admit, I wasn't up to see what was happening at the 5:23 am call -- but there were four other times when we were in Newville, or in the medina, or in the big square in Marrakech, and no praying -- at least as far as we could tell, was going on.




I guess I was a bit disappointed. Even in our hotel in Marrakech there were arrows pointing east so one would know which direction to kneel. And we were there on Friday -- so sat at a cafe facing the big mosque to see the faithful stream into it. It holds, I understand, about 20,000 people. I would say it was less of a stream and more of a trickle -- thought to be fair, and in the interest of complete disclosure, there was another side to the mosque -- maybe more were streaming in that side.



The faithful pouring into the mosque at 12:37 pm, Friday afternoon.




In fact, as I think about it, I only saw one man carrying his mat to worship. That was on Friday on his way to the mosque. No one else took his own rug. I did see some rather nice ones for sale, however, in the souks in Marrakech.



So my question is -- where are all the faithful, and when/where are they praying?