Fez is a city of north-central Morocco between the Middle Atlas and the Rif, founded in successive stages between 789 and 808 by the Idrisids — Idris I and his son Idris II — as a refuge for descendants of the Prophet and as a node for the Andalusi and Kairouan migrations that shaped its medieval character.
Fez is conventionally treated as the spiritual and intellectual capital of Morocco. The Qarawiyyin mosque-university, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, is one of the oldest continuously operating institutions of higher learning in the world. Successive Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid (Zenata), Wattasid, and Alaouite administrations expanded the medina; the Marinids built the Fes el-Jdid royal city in 1276 alongside the older Fes el-Bali.
The medina has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981, the largest car-free urban area in the world, with several thousand alleys threading between artisan quarters specialised in tanning (the Chouara tannery), brass, leatherwork, and textiles. The mellah of Fes el-Jdid was the first Jewish quarter explicitly so designated in Morocco.
Tamazight (in its central variety) survives in the rural communes around Fez and in the Sefrou and Bhalil hinterlands; the city itself is overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking. The Tamazight cultural revival of the 1970s and the contemporary Amazigh movement maintain a literary and academic presence in Fez, supported by the Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University.