Salé
— — the corsair city the river still divides.
Not only on a wall.
“The old corsair city on the north bank of the Bou Regreg, looking across the estuary at Rabat. White walls, an Almohad mosque from the twelfth century, the Bab Mrisa sea-gate that ships once sailed through to enter the medina. In the seventeenth century the Sallee Rovers ran a small republic of pirates from here. The call to prayer still crosses the river twice a day.
Salé, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Salé sits on the north bank of the Bou Regreg river where it meets the Atlantic, opposite Rabat, the Moroccan capital. Together the two cities form an urban area of roughly 1.9 million people; Salé itself counts about 900,000. The medina is enclosed by walls built under the Marinid sultans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Great Mosque of Salé was founded under the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf and completed in 1196, making it one of the older Almohad mosques still in continuous use in Morocco.
The Bab Mrisa is the most unusual gate in the Salé walls and probably anywhere on the Moroccan coast: built around 1260, it was a sea-gate that opened onto a canal so corsair ships could slip directly into the medina. The horseshoe arch rises more than 11 metres and carries Almohad-style geometric carving. Behind it sits the Madrasa of Abu al-Hassan, a Marinid school built in 1341 with carved cedar, zellige tilework, and a galleried courtyard that visitors can walk for a small fee.
The medina is freely walkable. The Madrasa of Abu al-Hassan charges a small admission, typically around 20 dirhams. Most visitors arrive from Rabat by tram across the Hassan II Bridge, a fifteen-minute ride from the Hassan Tower stop. The Sunday souk on the south side of the medina is the busiest day for textiles and pottery. Non-Muslims may not enter the Great Mosque but can walk the streets around it. The call to prayer carries clearly across the river to Rabat five times a day.