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The Tannery

March 31, 2007

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After seeing the tannery in Fez, I will never look at leather in the same way. It is the oldest tannery in the world and a bizarre world unto itself. The leather souk is one of the most fascinating sights in Fez (which is full of fascinating sights) and it dates back at least nine centuries. It is not a sight we will ever forget.

It is known for its horrible smells and they give you sprigs of mint to place under your nose to help with the smell, but it was not as bad as I had been told on the day we saw it. Perhaps it is worse in the heat of the desert summers. There are lots of odd smells in Morocco (including one in our lovely riad bathroom drain!) from the sublime to the horrid, but we really did not need the mint here, still it was a cute touch. Who can resist smelling mint?

We climbed up endless steep claustrophobic,rickety stairs (that I have learned to endure in Europe) past some beautiful leather goods of every kind to a terrace over looking the tannery below. It was a sight that has not changed since the 11th century and generations in certain families have worked this hard, smelly, hot job.

The tannery processes the hides of goats, sheep, camels and cattle, turning them into high quality leather goods like bags, shoes, coats etc and it is done manually without any modern machinery. The tannery is composed of numerous stone containers filled with many different colored dyes, looking almost like a giant child’s paint box. A charming man enlightened us about the process as we watched from the balconies, pointing out the different aspects.

The donkeys are loaded with prepared skins and the tanners dunk them in brightly colored dyes carefully, dyeing their own arms and legs as they go. Then they gently lay them in the sun to dry. Our Berber capped guide explained that the secret ingredient was pigeon droppings (for their ammonia) and that it was
a natural process. Next to the colored vats, is a white area where the pigeon dropping concoction separates the fat from the skins. The dyes are made out of natural ingredients like henna, saffron and mint. Some people call this leather making process in Fez a nine centuries old production line!

We saw lots of beautiful leather goods, but since we travel in a very tight space, we can not be shoppers. We settled for a cute pair of Moroccan slip on shoes for Mozart. They had a lovely adult size pair in our room which she (and all of us) clomped around in, so she was very happy to have her own pair.

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