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Ibn Danan Synagogue

Ibn Danan Synagogue

Photo: R Prazeres · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Fez, Morocco
Client / Owner
Mimon Boussidan
Year
Completed 1680
Access
Tickets required
Style
—

The Ibn Danan Synagogue stands in the Mellah, the Jewish quarter of Fez, Morocco. It was built by a wealthy merchant, Mimon Boussidan, in the seventeenth century, and one historian dates it to 1680. A Saadi sultan destroyed an earlier building in 1646, and the synagogue was rebuilt by 1701. All its rabbis from 1812 until its closure in the 1960s came from the Ibn Danan family.

The Moroccan-style building is made of brick, lime mortar and plaster. Three pillars divide the main room, which has a painted wooden ceiling, walls with blue Moroccan tiles and a large carved wooden ark. There is a vaulted cellar and a ritual bath.

By 1996 the building had collapsing roofs and rotting beams. It was restored with American Express and Moroccan support and reopened in 1999.

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