No Moroccan town carries Al-Andalus so visibly. Tétouan is Granada after 1492: the memory-town of an interrupted civilisation.

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Refounded in 1484 by Sidi al-Mandari — a Granadan captain driven from Andalusia — on the site of an old ruined city, Tétouan welcomed in succession the waves of expulsion of the Muslims of Spain: 1492 (fall of Granada, expulsion of the Jews), 1609 (expulsion of the Moriscos). Each wave brought its guilds, its techniques, its architecture. The patio gardens with a central fountain, the Andalusian zellige (lozenge motifs, light colours), the fine-arabesque brassware, the relief embroidery tarz tétouani — all come from Spain. The medina was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997.

I. A town founded by an exile

Sidi Ali al-Mandari, a native of Granada, led the resistance against the Catholic Monarchs before fleeing in 1484 towards the north of Morocco. There he found the ruins of an old Berber city, Titawin (which means "the springs" in Tachelhit), and obtained from the Wattasid sultan the authorisation to rebuild it with his Granadan followers. His wife, Sayyida al-Hurra — a remarkable figure of Maghrebi history — would later become queen of Tétouan and pirate queen of the western Mediterranean (1515-1542), an interlocutor of the kings of Spain and Portugal.

The town developed in cells around the seven historic gates (Bab al-Okla, Bab Mqabar, Bab Saïda, Bab Nouader, Bab Tout, Bab Remouz, Bab Jiaf), each corresponding to a guild quarter. Each great guild — goldsmiths, brassworkers, embroiderers, tanners, perfumers — occupied its street, its gate, its fondouk. This organisation has hardly changed since the 16th century.

II. Tétouani tarz, relief embroidery

The embroidery of Tétouan — tarz tétouani — is without doubt the most identifiable of the Moroccan embroideries. Worked in cross-stitch on silk or unbleached linen, it is distinguished by its moderate relief (intermediate between the flat embroidery of Fès and the thick relief embroidery of Salé), its geometric motifs of Andalusian inspiration (8- and 16-pointed stars, rosettes, scrolls), and its restricted but saturated palette — garnet red, cobalt blue, emerald green, saffron yellow, on a cream ground.

Tarz is traditionally taught to young girls in the m'allma — domestic workshops kept by a master-embroiderer, who takes about ten apprentices for cycles of three to six years. The masterpiece remains the hijab of Tétouani brides — a veil embroidered with gold and silver thread — whose execution sometimes requires more than a thousand hours of work. The National School of Arts and Crafts of Tétouan (ENAM), founded in 1919 under the Spanish protectorate, perpetuates the teaching of tarz at an academic level.

III. The School of Fine Arts and the Spanish heritage

The Escuela de Bellas Artes de Tetuán, founded in 1945 by Mariano Bertuchi — a Catalan Orientalist painter settled in Tétouan — played a decisive role. It trained several generations of Moroccan artists and perpetuated the traditional trades: illumination, embroidery, brassware, lutherie. Become after 1956 the National Institute of Fine Arts of Tétouan (INBA), it remains the oldest art school in Morocco and the only one to teach jointly the plastic arts, design and the traditional art trades — in a programme unique in the kingdom.

Bertuchi is also the founder, at the same period, of the Preparatory School of Indigenous Arts (which became the School of Art Trades) which trains craftsmen in the traditional gestures. These institutions, a heritage of the Spanish protectorate (1912-1956), explain why Tétouan keeps a craft and artistic vitality without equivalent in the north of the country — and an intellectual link maintained with Spain.

IV. A medina at the peril of tourism

Tétouan today receives far fewer tourists than Fès or Marrakech (estimate: 200,000 visitors a year against 1.5 million for Marrakech) — a discretion paradoxically protective. The town keeps a local craft fabric, an intact commercial function, a medina population that has not collapsed. But this same discretion deprives it of funding for heritage restoration.

The Agency for the Promotion and Development of the North (APDN), created in 2002, and the Foundation of the World Heritage Centre of Tétouan, have jointly conducted since 2015 a programme of rehabilitation of the fondouks and medersas. The Loukach Medersa (1809) and the Great Mosque (1808) have been restored in this framework. There remain about fifty degraded fondouks to treat and a new generation of master-craftsmen to train for brassware and embroidery.

V. To see, to learn

Essential places to understand the crafts of Tétouan.

• Hassan II Square Heart of the medina — Royal palace and entrance to the Andalusian town.
• Archaeological Museum Al Jala square — The most important museum of the north, Phoenician and Roman collections.
• Souk el Houts Medina — Fish souk, morning bustle.
• INBA (School of Fine Arts) Sania quarter — Oldest art school in Morocco (1945).
• Loukach Medersa Medina — 1809 medersa, restored 2017, open to visitors.
• Mellah South-east of the medina — Jewish quarter, Yitzhak Bengualid synagogue (1816).

VI. Sources

1. UNESCO WHC — Medina of Tétouan (former Titawin) — Inscription 1997. — link.
2. INBA Tétouan — National Institute of Fine Arts, founded 1945 by Mariano Bertuchi..
3. Maison de l'Artisan — Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceïma — Embroidery branch. — link.
4. APDN — Agency for the Promotion and Development of the North — Medinas programme..