Volubilis - After The Romans

After The Romans

Whatever circumstances accompanied the fall of Roman Volubilis, it is clear that the city continued to be inhabited for centuries more. By the time the Arabs arrived in 708, they found the city – its name now corrupted to Oualila or Walīlī – inhabited by Christians and Jews, many of whose ancestors had fled the persecutions and heavy taxes of the late Roman Empire. Much of the city centre had been abandoned and turned into a cemetery, while the centre of habitation had moved to the southwest alongside the banks of the Khourmane river. A wall divided the Roman city centre from the new town. It remained Romanised; inscriptions from the early 7th century commemorate multiple members of the gens Julia, who appear to have been the ruling family of the time and Latin inscriptions continued to be made as late as 655.

Volubilis remained the capital of the region but by the 8th century, Islam had taken hold in the region, as shown by the presence of Islamic coins found on the site. It was here that Moulay Idriss established the Idrisid dynasty of Morocco in 788. A direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, he fled to Morocco after escaping from Syria following the Battle of Fakhkh in 787. He was proclaimed "commander of the faithful" (i.e. sultan) in Volubilis, which was then occupied by the Berber tribe of the Awraba, under Ishaq ibn Mohammd. He married Ishaq's daughter, fathering a son, Idris II, who was proclaimed imam in Volubilis. Moulay Idriss established the eponymous town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun on a nearby hillside in 789 but was assassinated in Volubilis in 791. Idriss II subsequently founded the city of Fes to serve as his new capital, depriving Volubilis of its last vestiges of political significance.

A Muslim group known as the Rabedis, who had revolted in Cordoba in Granada, resettled at Volubilis in 818. Although people continued to live in Volubilis for several more centuries, it was probably totally deserted by the 11th century. The name of the city was forgotten and it was termed Ksar Faraoun, or the "Pharaoh's Castle", by the local people, alluding to a legend that the ancient Egyptians had built it. Nonetheless some of its buildings remained standing, albeit ruined, until as late as the 17th century when Moulay Ismail ransacked the site to provide building material for his new imperial capital at Meknes. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake caused further severe destruction. However, fortunately for posterity, an English antiquarian named John Windus sketched the site in 1722. In his 1725 book A Journey to Mequinez, Windus described the scene:

One building seems to be part of a triumphal arch, there being several broken stones that bear inscriptions, lying in the rubbish underneath, which were fixed higher than any part now standing. It is 56 feet long and 15 thick, both sides exactly alike, built with very hard stones, about a yard in length and half a yard thick. The arch is 20 feet wide and about 26 high. The inscriptions are upon large flat stones, which, when entire, were about five feet long, and three broad, and the letters on them above 6 inches long. A bust lay a little way off, very much defaced, and was the only thing to be found that represented life, except the shape of a foot seen under the lower part of a garment, in the niche on the other side of the arch. About 100 yards from the arch stands a good part of the front of a large square building, which is 140 feet long and about 60 high; part of the four corners are yet standing, but very little remains, except these of the front. Round the hill may be seen the foundation of a wall about two miles in circumference, which inclosed these buildings; on the inside of which lie scattered, all over, a great many stones of the same size the arch is built with, but hardly one stone left upon another. The arch, which stood about half a mile from the other buildings, seemed to have been a gateway, and was just high enough to admit a man to pass through on horseback.

Visiting 95 years later in 1820, after the Lisbon earthquake had flattened the few buildings left standing, James Gray Jackson wrote:

Half an hour's journey after leaving the sanctuary of Muley Dris Zerone, and at the foot of Atlas, I perceived to the left of the road, magnificent and massive ruins. The country, for miles round, is covered with broken columns of white marble. There were still standing two porticoes about 30 feet high and 12 wide, the top composed of one entire stone. I attempted to take a view of these immense ruins, which have furnished marble for the imperial palaces at Mequinas and Tafilelt; but I was obliged to desist, seeing some persons of the sanctuary following the cavalcade. Pots and kettles of gold and silver coins are continually dug up from these ruins. The country, however, abounds with serpents, and we saw many scorpions under the stones that my conductor turned up. These ruins are said by the Africans to have been built by one of the Pharaohs: they are called Kasser Farawan.

Walter Harris visited Volubilis during his travels in Morocco between 1887–89, after the site had been identified by French archaeologists but before any serious excavations or restorations had begun. He wrote:

There is not very much remains standing of the ruins; two archways, each of great size, and in moderately good preservation, alone tell of the grandeur of the old city, while acres and acres of land are strewn with monuments and broken sculpture. A few isolated pillars also remain, and an immense drain or aqueduct, not unlike the Cloaca Maxima at Rome, opens on to the little river below.