The Jewish cemetery of Fez, a symbol of cultural harmony | UN News
The Moroccan city of Fez, which recently hosted the Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, has long been a melting pot of religions and cultures. Its 200-year-old Jewish cemetery symbolizes the centuries-long coexistence of diverse communities in the city.
It also retains a mix of cultures and identity, and a Jewish neighbourhood, named ‘Mellah’. The word literally means 'salt' or 'saline area', in reference to either a saline water source in the area or to the former presence of a salt warehouse, but ‘Mellah’ is now used as the name for Jewish quarters in other Moroccan cities, including Rabat and Marrakech.
The Jewish cemetery, nestled in the Mellah, is distinguished by its semi-cylindrical tombs, which capture the history of Morocco’s flourishing Jewry.
A ‘convergence of confluents’
The age-old intermingling of peoples made Fez an appropriate location for the ninth Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), which took place in November 2022.
Opening the event, Andre Azoulay, the senior adviser to King Mohammed VI of Morocco – and father of UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay – who is himself Jewish, declared that Morocco “is built around a model of openness, harmony and synergy that has seen the convergence of Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassanian confluents, and that has, at the same time, been enriched by African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries”.
When asked about how she felt when she learnt that Fez was chosen to host the UNAOC ninth Forum, Ms. Ohana said she felt proud that Fez was chosen: “for Morocco, it reflects exactly the reality of our image, our culture”.
