The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems hardly to leave room for the development of the humaner qualities; yet the flowering of Moroccan art and culture coincided with those tumultuous years, and it was under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre of Moroccan learning and industry, a kind of Oxford with Birmingham annexed.

Fez is the city of arts and learning, that is of what remains of the once famous and profound Moorish doctors of Spain.

Fez is sombre, and the bazaars clustered about its holiest sanctuaries form its most sombre quarter.

Nasir-Eddin and the same Ullug Beig say, for certain, that Fez is the court of the king in the west.

Then one remembers the marketing of the Lady of "The Three Calendars," and Fez again becomes the Bagdad of Al Raschid.

Fez is a most ancient centre of population, and had long been a famed city, before Muley Edris, in the year A.D. 807 (others in 793), gave it its present form and character.

Fez is the rival of Morocco.