Medieval geographers and travelers recorded a kind of Moroccan food history that does not begin with recipes, but with the land itself. They wrote about rivers, gardens, oases, markets, livestock, fruits, oils, sugarcane, herbs, butter, honey, and the goods that moved between Moroccan regions.
From the 10th to the 14th century, authors such as Ibn Hawqal, al-Bakri, al-Idrisi, Ibn al-Zuhri, and Ibn Battuta, among others, described Morocco not only as a land of cities and routes, but also as a country of production, abundance, and exchange. Their accounts show what was cultivated, sold, prepared, transported, and valued in different parts of the country.
Through these testimonies, Tangier, Fez, Sijilmassa, Aghmat, the Souss, Draa, Taroudant, Marrakech, and other regions appear as places of water, gardens, souks, animals, regional products, coastal resources, and daily abundance. This is the food landscape behind Moroccan cuisine: not a list of dishes, but the world that made them possible.
Al-Istakhri: Fez and Sijilmassa in the Early Route Tradition
Al-Istakhri, a 10th-century Muslim geographer from Fars, belongs to the early Islamic tradition of route-and-region writing. In The Book of Routes and Realms, he helped map cities, roads, and regions through descriptions that connected geography with trade, settlement, and local resources.
For Morocco, his account is useful because it places Fez and Sijilmassa among the early centers of the western Islamic world. Fez appears as a fortified and growing city, marked by water, gardens, fruit, agriculture, and grain mills. Its rivers and channels supported cultivated land and food production, showing the city not only as a political or religious center, but also as a place sustained by its surrounding landscape.
Sijilmassa appears through a different geography: the oasis and the caravan road. Al-Istakhri presents it as a strategic city at the edge of the Sahara, surrounded by palms and known for dates. Its position made it important for movement toward the desert, while its oasis setting gave it an agricultural base.
Together, Fez and Sijilmassa show two early faces of Moroccan food geography: the irrigated urban landscape of Fez, with water, gardens, and grain processing, and the oasis world of Sijilmassa, where palms, dates, and caravan movement shaped local life.
Ibn Hawqal: Sijilmassa, Aghmat, and the Abundance of the Souss
Ibn Hawqal, a 10th-century Arab Muslim traveler, geographer, chronicler, and merchant, continued the geographical tradition of al-Istakhri. After meeting al-Istakhri, he first worked on revising his predecessor’s Book of Routes and Realms before developing his own geographical work, The Configuration of the Earth. His writing was shaped by travel, direct observation, and regional geography rather than abstract description.
He briefly describes Sijilmassa as a well-situated oasis city on a river whose waters rose in summer, in a comparison he makes with the Nile. Around the city, he mentions wheat, barley, palm trees, orchards, fresh dates, and cultivated greens. This short description is enough to show that Sijilmassa was not only a caravan gateway, but also a productive oasis supported by water and local agriculture.
Aghmat, located near present-day Marrakech, also appears in his geography as a large district marked by prosperity and trade. Ibn Hawqal connects it with Sijilmassa and other Moroccan regions, placing Aghmat within an early network of movement, cultivation, and commerce.
The Souss receives one of his strongest descriptions. Ibn Hawqal presents it as a region of exceptional abundance, where many products were gathered in one landscape: citron, walnuts, almonds, palm trees, sugarcane, sesame, and different kinds of greens. Already in the 10th century, Moroccan regions were being described through their agricultural wealth, useful plants, and food resources.
Al-Bakri: Tangier, Aghmat, Igli, and the Southern Food World
Al-Bakri, an 11th-century Andalusian Arab geographer and historian, gives a richer view of Morocco’s regional resources in The Book of Routes and Realms. His descriptions move from the northern coast to inland markets and southern valleys, showing how food appeared through geography, travel, trade, and local abundance.
Near Tangier, he describes a coastal site where freshwater springs emerged close to the sea. He also mentions samak Moussa — literally the fish of Moses, known in English as the common sole, Solea solea — and notes that he ate it and appreciated its taste. The detail is brief, but valuable: it gives one of the earliest firsthand food observations linked to Morocco's northern Atlantic coast.
Further south, Al-Bakri describes Aghmat, near present-day Marrakech, as a fertile and active region with irrigated gardens, date palms, and apples from nearby Niffis. Its Sunday market brought together oxen and many sheep, showing Aghmat as both a cultivated area and a center of livestock trade.
In the Souss, through the town of Igli near Taroudant, he records another landscape of abundance. Rivers, gardens, fruits, dates, sugarcane, local sugar production, argan oil, and honey all appear in his account. What stands out is the combination of cultivation and transformation: cane became sugar, argan fruits became oil, and local resources became valued foods and materials.
Al-Idrisi: Sijilmassa, Draa, Taroudant, Darn, and Marrakech
Al-Idrisi, a 12th-century geographer writing around 1154, gives one of the richest medieval views of Morocco in The Book of Roger. His descriptions are especially valuable because they move across regions, showing not only cities and routes, but also what the land produced and how products entered wider circulation.
In Sijilmassa, he records agriculture linked to water and cultivated land, with products such as henna, cumin, and edible greens. In Draa, he mentions indigo, showing that some Moroccan regions were known not only for food crops, but also for plants used in dyeing and trade.
The Souss and Taroudant appear as another zone of abundance. Al-Idrisi lists fruits and cultivated products such as walnuts, figs, grapes, pomegranates, citron, quince, apples, sugarcane, and sugar. This is important because it places sugarcane among the valued products of the Souss and Taroudant region, a zone that other medieval descriptions also associate with local sugar production.
Near Aghmat, he describes Darn Mountain as a place of water, gardens, plants, and trees. In this same regional world appears arkan, understood as argan, a tree whose oil had several uses, from lighting and food preparation to care of the body.
Marrakech brings the discussion from production to the souk. Al-Idrisi mentions specialized markets, including places associated with smoked or fried foods, soap, copper utensils, yarns, and textiles. He also records sfenj, a Moroccan fried dough, and locusts, showing that the city’s markets included prepared foods, everyday materials, and products linked to both eating and urban craft.
Ibn al-Zuhri: Roses, Rose Water, Sugar, and Copper
Ibn al-Zuhri, a 12th-century Andalusian geographer, adds another layer to the picture of Morocco’s food and material culture in his Book of Geography. His description is especially useful for what it reveals about Marrakech and its surroundings: not only food crops, but also fragrance, craft materials, and products that moved between Moroccan cities.
He describes the cultivation of roses around Marrakech, especially the Damascene rose, and notes that they were distilled into rose water. This detail matters because rose water was not simply a perfume. In Moroccan food culture, it belonged to a wider world of fragrance, hospitality, sweets, ceremonies, and refined urban habits.
Ibn al-Zuhri also links Marrakech with sugar and copper. Sugar connects this section to the southern agricultural world already described by earlier geographers, while copper points toward the material side of food culture: utensils, vessels, and the objects used in preparation, serving, and urban craft.
His testimony shows that by the 12th century, Moroccan food culture was not only about what was grown or sold in markets. It also included what was distilled, refined, crafted, and circulated between cities. Roses, rose water, sugar, and copper reveal a Morocco where agriculture, fragrance, sweetness, and material culture worked together.
Ibn Battuta: Fez and the Abundance of the Maghrib
Ibn Battuta, the 14th-century Moroccan traveler from Tangier, gives a different kind of testimony in The Travels of Ibn Battuta. Unlike geographers who described regions, crops, and markets, he speaks as a traveler returning home after years of movement across distant lands.
When he reached Fez, under the Marinid sultan Abu Inan, his praise of the Maghrib was shaped by lived experience. After difficult journeys, illness, hunger, and unfamiliar food conditions in faraway regions, Morocco appeared to him as a land of comfort and abundance.
He praised its fruits, water, and provisions, presenting the Maghrib as one of the most favorable lands he had known.
His comparison becomes more concrete when he turns to Egypt and Syria. He notes that mutton was far cheaper in the Maghrib than in Egypt, even when prices were high. Butter is another important detail: he says that butter was often difficult to find in Egypt, while the Maghrib had meat, fresh butter, clarified butter, honey, and other foods in abundance.
This testimony does not describe specific dishes. Its value lies elsewhere. Ibn Battuta gives us a traveler’s judgment of the Maghrib as a place where food was abundant, nourishing, accessible, and valued through everyday staples: fruit, water, provisions, meat, butter, clarified butter, and honey.
What These Sources Reveal About Moroccan Food Culture
Taken together, these testimonies show that medieval Morocco was not described only through dynasties, cities, and caravan routes. It was also described through the ordinary foundations of life: water, cultivated land, markets, animals, prepared foods, regional products, and the movement of goods between different parts of the country.
What appears through these accounts is a country of abundance, but not abundance in a vague sense. Food came from many landscapes and circulated through many hands. Oases, valleys, mountains, plains, coasts, and cities each contributed to the wider food economy. Internal routes allowed products from one region to reach distant towns, markets, and households elsewhere in the Moroccan world.
The same accounts also reveal the importance of craft. Food culture was connected to artisanship: copper and silver work, leather, wood, pottery, textiles, vessels, market tools, storage objects, and utensils all shaped how food was prepared, transported, sold, served, and preserved. Moroccan culinary life was therefore not only agricultural; it was also material, urban, commercial, and artisanal.
These medieval accounts do not give a complete history of Moroccan cuisine. Their value is different. They reveal the world behind the food: a society where land, labor, water, markets, artisans, routes, and regional knowledge worked together to create the material base of Moroccan food culture.