Hamid Mernissi is a Moroccan writer, traveler, and observer of life who was born and raised in the ancient Medina of Fez. His work grows from a lifetime of wandering, through cities, deserts, cultures, and ideas, always searching for the quiet wisdom hidden in everyday experiences. Trained as much by the streets of his childhood as by books and journeys across the world, Hamid writes about memory, culture, dignity, travel, and the human spirit.
From the road
AnthropologyThis article analyses the relationship between language and historical context in the production of scientific knowledge, arguing that detaching scientific language from its historical context transforms science from an open knowledge system into a closed, normative structure.
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Before the French Came, Fez Already Knew How to Govern ItselfReflections on a city, its institutions, and the meaning of civilizationWhen we speak of the histor...
A Memoir of Memory, Belonging, and the City That Never Left Me
A boy leaves Fez. Fez never leaves the boy.
The Boy from Fez: Morocco, Told from WithinAn anthropologist's childhood, a civilization remembered, and a human story for everyone.There are places in thi...
The Consumer Has a Place in This Travelers are not responsible for fixing the economics of the travel industry. But travelers deserve to understand what they are buying.
The Andalusians who came to northern Morocco could not bring Granada, Seville, or the other cities they had left behind. But they could preserve fragments of that world in the places where they began again.
It may be the smell of bread your mother baked, the tree you climbed as a child, a schoolyard, a song, a father's expression, an old neighbor, a family table around which people once gathered.
A century ago, an early traveler could open a Guide Bleu, discover the Imperial Cities, and set out toward Marrakech, Rabat, Meknes, and Fez. Today, someone can open a telephone thousands of kilometres away and book essentially the same route in minutes.