Sijilmassa Ruins

Sijilmassa was founded in 757 at the northern end of the trans-Saharan route and for six centuries was one of the richest cities in the western Islamic world - the point where gold coming north from West Africa was traded for salt, cloth and manufactured goods going south, with its own mint whose dinars circulated widely. Ibn Battuta passed through. It declined through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the trade routes shifted and was finally abandoned. What survives is unspectacular: low mounds, stretches of wall, the outline of a mosque, and excavation trenches from a Moroccan-American project that ran from the late 1980s and established the sequence. There is no signage, no ticket and no staff, and without knowing what it is you would drive past. The gap between the historical importance and the physical remains is the largest of any site in Morocco.

What you actually see

• A gold-trade terminus - the northern end of the route from West Africa, from 757.
• Low mounds and wall stubs - what six centuries of a great city have left.
• Excavation trenches - from the project that established the site's sequence.
• No interpretation - open ground with nothing to tell you what happened here.

When to go

October to April. An hour.

Honest expectations

There is very little to see - this is a site to understand rather than to look at. No signage, staff or facilities. Summer heat in the Tafilalt is extreme. Finds are in museums elsewhere.

Nearby

Rissani's souk and the Alaouite mausoleum are close; Merzouga is south-east.