What was Sijilmasa, the lost desert city?

Sijilmasa is the great ghost of the Moroccan south, and I love taking guests to its ruins near Rissani precisely because so few people have heard of it. Founded in the 8th century in the Tafilalt oasis, it sat at the exact point where caravans either plunged into the Sahara heading for the gold fields or emerged from them, exhausted, into Morocco. That gateway position made it extraordinarily rich.

At its height Sijilmasa minted its own gold dinars, and coins struck here have been found across the medieval world. When I stand among the eroded walls, I tell guests they are looking at what was, for a time, one of the most important commercial cities in Africa — a place that taxed the salt and gold passing through and grew fat on the trade.

It was also a seedbed of dynasties. The Tafilalt region around Sijilmasa is the ancestral home of the Alaouites, the family that still rules Morocco today. So this dusty oasis is not a backwater at all; it is, in a real sense, where the current royal story begins, which is why nearby Rissani still holds an important place in the national imagination.

The city declined through political strife and the slow shift of trade to the Atlantic coast, and by the 14th and 15th centuries it had largely emptied. Today you walk among low ruins and excavation trenches rather than standing monuments, so I always set the scene first. It rewards imagination more than the camera — and a stop here pairs beautifully with the Rissani market and the dunes of Merzouga just beyond.